Pictures from Langkawi

Hi there… to much to write about. Just check out the photos on my Facebook page

 

Wrong turns

7 April 2011
Kuala Lumpur

Sitting at the DOME cafe overlooking the lake and fountains at the base of the Petronas Towers. I have walked from my fantastic 43rd story apartment at Berjaya Times Square – home to the world’s 5th largest mall. It is so large, in fact, that there is a roller coaster INSIDE of it that I hope to ride later.

On my walk here I got myself turned around in relation to the towers and ended up going the wrong way when looking for this park. To my delight, however, I stumbled upon the Ampang Muslim Cemetery. Those of you who have known me a long time will know that I love cemeteries. They are usually the most peaceful place in any city. 20 minutes caught in a rainshower under a big tree in this cemetery was probably the most relaxed and peaceful I’ve been in months. And they always give me a unique perspective on the character of the culture in which I find myself. In many places, the way a city honors its dead reveals the interesting combination of geo-cultural tradition, religion, and personal style – both of the deceased and of the family caretakers of the plots.

The names can reveal the diversity of the community too. This community, for example, included a plot overflowing with white orchids dedicated to one Diane Gail Hamzah nee Gleeson – an obviously Anglo woman, married perhaps to an Arab, living and dying in Malaysia.

This one cemetery plot also symbolizes for me one of the things I love most about Kuala Lumpur in the less than 24 hours that I’ve been here – the stunning diversity. It is overwhelmingly Asian, to be sure, mostly Malay, Chinese and Hindi. But abayas and hijabs and saris and pashtun pajamas are common and live comfortably with skin-tight mini-skirts, high heels and spiked hair-dos. KL is  a truly modern melting pot – more so than any place else I’ve been except possibly New York. NYC has Latinos, Africans and African Americans, all of whom are virtually absent from KL. But rarely in NY do you find yourself in a large popular outdoor cafe seating hundreds with as many hijabs as eye-glasses. Another thing I find amusing about this city is the pervasive scent of clove cigarettes. It brings me back to my youth, smoking Djarums in the woods of Greenwich, CT.

I consider myself a primarily urban woman. And yet there are few modern cities I actually enjoy enough to want to stay in them for long. Until today I might have said that New York and Paris were the only ones. But today Kuala Lumpur has launched itself into their company without reservation. Why? The diversity. The character. It is different than Paris or NYC, but the ancient banyan trees in the middle of a city block and the scooters and hijabs and saris – they all make for a combined charm NYC & Paris can’t match. I don’t know how I could have gone so long without hearing more about Kuala Lumpur. Who knows what the rest of Malaysia will bring…

The view from my sheltering tree. Did I mention that they almost locked me inside?!

 

 

Honor and Dignity

On this trip out of Baghdad I was honored to share our plane with a fallen soldier and participate in the dignified transfer of that soldier from our C-130 to the next vehicle in the long chain returning the soldier to their family. On a dusty windy tarmac, in our rumpled green camouflage or traveling denim and mismatched body armor, it was one of the most deeply dignified and honorable and moving experiences of my life.

The ceremony included all 50 of us on the flight (civilian, military and flight crew) standing at attention, or with hands on our hearts, facing each other, while six soldiers transferred the casket between us, with solemn, measured dignity, the 50 feet from the rear of the plane to the rear of the receiving vehicle.

I asked the marine leading the ceremony if I could know the soldier’s name. He said he didn’t know. I feel like I need to find out. And yet there is a part of me that makes it more special to not know – as if my participation in this anonymous transfer allows me to honor the thousands who have fallen in Iraq in the past eight years.

If this seems uncharacteristically sentimental of me, watch the movie, “Taking Chance“. It is the story of a marine escorting another fallen marine across America and back to his family. One of the most profound and moving films I’ve ever watched and I strongly recommend it to everyone. It also gave me, months ago, the exact feeling I had yesterday. There is little I can do to help my friends and family understand most of my life in Iraq. But if you watch the movie, you will understand at least this one small piece.

 

Iraqi road trip by the numbers

Eight days, six helos, six fixed wings, seven flight lines, five PRTs, two restaurants, five DFACs, three PXs, one especially flirtatious Ugandan cashier,  one Iraqi feast, 45 provincial reconstruction team officers, eight Italian surgeons, three former British military officers, six gherka guards, one Iraqi general and his two sargeants, dozens of Iraqi children receiving free surgery, one lake, one Ziggurat, one flat tire and fourteen towels.

… and not enough photographs, sorry. But here’s my map of Iraq with all the places I’ve been these past 15 months.   You can follow along geographically from there.

Sunday morning at 0900 I, and my two colleagues, launched ourselves into the Embassy intra-Iraq transportation in the hopes of getting to the PRT (provincial reconstruction team) offices in Salah ad Din province by nightfall (barely 150 kilometers) Shuttle to the first flight to BIAP (Baghdad International Airport). Then on to Kirkuk. Then to Speicher base. 9-5.30 to go 150 KM. Welcome to life in Iraq. Everything is like this – takes 4-5 times as long as you’d imagine and requires 4-5 times as many people and 4-5 times as much effort. I’m used to it now though.

Same goes for scheduling. When I first got here I wanted schedules of activities laid out for me. But everything always goes horribly wrong. It also always works out, often better than I would have planned, but never the way it was originally intended. One of my traveling companions was fairly new to Iraq, and I got the feeling she was a little uncomfortable about how wide open our schedules were at the PRTs. I kept saying, “Don’t worry. We’ll show up. We’ll see who’s about, and talk to them. Trust me, you’ll get plenty of good meaty conversations.” I don’t think she did trust me, until the third PRT. In addition to the folks we thought we’d talk to, there were staff available that we didn’t know were going to be around, particularly locals. And we had time that we didn’t think we’d have, due to flight delays from dust storms. It all worked out.

The purpose of our Knowledge Management trip was to ensure that the PRTs knew what to save and where to put it before they closed and to do interviews with as many PRT staff as possible to capture the tacit knowledge of their experience in the province to build out profiles of the political, economic and educational environment.

Notables in Salah ad Din? We had a barbecue with some of the PRT staff outside the CHUs on the second night. Perhaps the most amusing part of Salah ad Din, however, was the fact that when we arrived, we realized that the PRT had provided us sheets for our rooms, but there were no towels (I’d forgotten to ask – most other PRTs have had towels for me). So Sunday night, after dropping our battle rattle (body armor and helmets along with bags)  and touring the base and the PRT and having dinner, we went to the PX (US Army Postal Exchange – basically a little convenience store type place) to find towels. First PX only had hand towels. Second PX had none at all. So we went back to the first PX and we each bought three small brown hand towels to get us through our washing up. By Tuesday morning, when we headed to the flight line for the help back to Kirkuk, we’d been on two helos and one fixed wing. We’d eaten at two separate DFACs, had a dusty, t-wall ensconced barbecue and accumulated nine towels.

Tuesday it was off to Tallil Air Base near Nasiriyah, where the offices for the PRTs for Muthanna, Maysan and Dhi Qar provinces were located. First back to Kirkuk then to BIAP then to Tallil. The Dhi Qar PRT is actually run by Italians – residual from the coalition days – and we learned the day before our arrival that the Deputy Director of the Iraq Task Force of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was arriving the same day, along with the US director of the Office of Provincial Affairs and her entourage. We were no longer the priority and when the plane arrived in Tallil, and those other folks were greeted by the Deputy Team Leader of the PRT (American) who would have otherwise been our control officer. No worries, I’m used to changes in plan. 🙂 We were met, instead, by a guy doing security for the PRT. Not an Italian, but in fact a former British military officer – reminiscent of the coalition days in Iraq. Turned out he and his colleagues, who’d been at the PRT for years, were a wealth of information, not to mention being delightfully humorous in their oh so British way. Oh, and this is where the gherkas come in. Rather than Ugandan or Peruvian guards like the US has guarding its bases and the embassy, the Italians have Nepalese gherkas. So delightfully good-natured and friendly.

That night we ordered pizza from a local restaurant on the base which was surprisingly good. But not as good as the pizza that the Italians have cooked themselves, in their own brick oven, at the Italian embassy back in Baghdad (some of you may remember that from last year). We dined with the whole visiting gang and then off to bed.

Next day was meetings with officers from the Muthanna and Maysan PRTs. The actual operating sites for those PRTs were miles away and extremely small and austere, but they had come to the offices at the Tallil base as a central place to meet with us. Many of them often work there on the way in and out of country as well. And so, as I mentioned, we got to meet up with a bunch of officers we would never have imagined we’d have got to see. It was great.

It was on this day that we went to our third PX. Late in the day, I went to the PX to see if I could find larger towels for us, and was overwhelmed by the ministrations of an overly eager Ugandan cashier who decided that I was to be his new bride and began planning our trip back to Uganda. Found micro-towels, which are very thin shami type material and got two (figured if one of them didn’t want one I’d take it). Then I got two regular towels (50% off – how delightful) for my colleagues in case neither of them wanted the micro towel. So now we are up to 13 towels. 🙂

That night there was a great Iraqi feast planned at the Dhi Qar PRT. One of the locals arranged to bring in all kinds of local food, including an enormous pot of dolma (stuffed grape leaves), my favorite. Also kebob and these potato and rice knish type things and pastries. I can never remember what it is all called. The feast was in honor of the Italian surgeons that had come with “Smile Train” – a global non-profit that provides free surgeries to children with cleft palates. They had been working out of a mobile surgical hospital that had been set up by the Italians and US right outside the base. The feast included a presentation of drawings by a local artist to all the surgeons (and anesthesiologists and nurses, etc.) The artist had been at the hospital all week doing artwork with the children and their siblings while waiting for and/or recovering from their surgeries. It was wonderful. Those surgeons were just amazing. I had conversations with a few and thanked them for their work. I remember one man responding, “Oh no. This is my holiday! This is a gift for me, for my heart.” Beautiful.

Next day we had more conversations with Dhi Qar staff and wrapped up the day with a pasta dinner with the deputy team leader and a couple of the British guys at little “restaurant” on the flight line. Please note that throughout Iraq I use the word “restaurant” loosely. Mostly it means the equivalent of a pizza/sub shop in the US – plastic and paper cutlery and plates, soda cans and molded plastic chairs. Only been in one proper restaurant in Iraq – a Lebanese place in Erbil.

Show time on Friday was 0645 for the helo to Basrah, but the dust was crazy – could barely see 500 metres. Weather hold for two hours. Weather hold for another two hours. Then at around noon, they cancelled completely. Of course within about an hour it was totally clear. Figures. Oh well. This is Iraq. So we had a day to catch up on our work and consolidate our notes and go to the gym (at last!) Even managed a visit out to the hospital to see the children and families being helped by Smile Train – they were all so happy and grateful. And had a drive past a little man-made lake on the base where we were told that Kingfishers often congregated to feed on the little fish. From the lake we had a view of the Ziggurat of Ur (where the biblical Abraham was allegedly born). Couldn’t go to it because it was off the base and would have had to get special security team to drive us out, but took a picture…

Saturday morning catch another flight to Basrah and jam a day and a half’s worth of meetings into one day and take advantage of the tiniest DFAC ever (on the PRT site) and one of the largest (on the US Division – South headquarters site across the base). Amusing event was upon return to the PRT with the Deputy Team Leader (a colonel), we discovered a very mean looking humvee in the DTL’s parking spot with a couple of Iraqi Army officers milling about around it. The colonel didn’t speak much Arabic and the officers didn’t speak much English, but eventually they figured out that they were parked in his spot and moved the humvee. When we got into the office we discovered that they had brought an Iraqi general, who was meeting with the Team Leader.

The following morning, my colleague brought out of her CHU a micro-towel she said she found in the CHU. DTL said she could go ahead and keep it and that brings us up to fourteen towels.

The last adventure of the trip was getting a flat tire on the way out and the amusing experience of having four Iraqis, two US civilians, a major and a colonel working together to change the tire. Talk about international teamwork… 🙂

The wheel was rusted on and they had to pull a piece of the iron grating out of a drainage canal to bang the wheel off.

Really wish I could put up the fabulous close up photo of our enthusiastic and very humorous and friendly Iraqi handyman joking around with the colonel, but I don’t want to risk getting him identified as working with Americans and possibly killed. 😦 I love these brave Iraqis who are willing to work with us to make their own country better one project at a time (in this case, the airport in Basrah), even at personal risk. They will be the ones to bring their country out of hatred and into a place of respect in the international community again.

Basrah to BIAP with some stops on the way. Then back to the embassy. Eight days of adventure. Even without trips into the cities to engage directly with Iraqis it was great to be out and about – no matter how many towels.

 

Christmas WikiLeaks

Dear Kids,

There is no Santa. Those presents are from your parents.

Love,

Julian Assange
WikiLeaks

 

Insha’allah (aka “IST to SYD”)

6-8 November 2010
Attaturk Hawalimani Istanbul to Sydney International Airport

It appears the bad mojo isn’t going down without a fight. My flight to Kuwait was scheduled to depart at 2155, so around 1845 I proceed to Turkish Airlines to check in. The first thing I ask the clerk is whether I can check my bag all the way to Sydney even though I’m changing to Etihad Airways in Kuwait. He takes my itinerary and passport, says, “One moment, please,” and runs off out of sight to the far end of the check-in aisle. After about 10 minutes he comes back to tell me that my flight has been cancelled. I pause. I think of Jody. I think of the face of the bad mojo in the flames of the burning list of crappy things that happened on this trip. I stare at the man.

Somehow I remain calm. “Okay,” I say, “What do we do now?” He brings me down to where he’d been enquiring, which turns out to be the supervisors desk. It’s crammed with people and an especially loud, especially large middle-aged blonde woman screaming at one of the supervisors. I stay on the periphery of the chaos while my little man dives right in and pushes through the crowd, hops the luggage belt, and proceeds to rummage with computers, phones, and other supervisors. After about 15 minutes, the screaming Dutch woman and her entourage (along with a dozen other people who were apparently on the same flight to Amsterdam that appears to also have been cancelled) are escorted off somewhere and I am called to the front as my little man explains my situation to the supervisor: I need to be in Kuwait to catch a 4am Etihad flight to Au Dhabi and then a flight on to Sydney. I raise my eyebrows hopefully at the supervisor who gives me a fleeting but human look.

The supervisor taps away on the computer and shortly tells me that they only are responsible for the Turkish Airlines portion of the ticket and cannot help me get to Sydney. I ask if they can get me to Abu Dhabi and maybe I can pick up that flight. He says there are no flights to Abu Dhabi tonight. I sigh.

I stare at him and my little man in a kind of stunned but semi-amused and baffled silence.
The supervisor prompts me, “Is there somewhere else? I can send you where you want to go”
“Well, I want to go to Sydney, but is there any place in the Gulf you can get me tonight so I can get to Abu Dhabi by 8am?”
He instructs my little man to take me to the office and advises me that one of his colleagues will help me further. I follow.

Well, guess where the angry Dutch woman and her entourage ended up? She’s screaming at about half a dozen female agents at once in a very tiny office. One of the agents, also a large, strong, blonde woman, had clearly reached the end of her prodigious customer service training and was having no more. As I walked in she was saying to the Dutch woman, “Watch yourself. Watch yourself.” A few minutes later I heard the Dutch woman start in again quite vigorously, but the agent cut her off instantly, looking her straight in the eye saying, “I’m not talking to you any more.” and promptly looking away to the man behind her. I stayed quiet and waiting for my little man to explain my plight to another agent.

Eventually, this very pleasant, dark-haired woman about my age called me over and said there was a flight to Dubai at 8pm she could put me on – and Abu Dhabi was only about an hour or so away by taxi. She smiled broadly – clearly pleased that she could help someone so quickly and easily and someone who didn’t yell at her. But it was already 7.30p and I looked worried. Her face fell as I half whispered “But I still have to pay this speeding ticket or they won’t let me out of the country?!” clutching the thin paper covered with Turkish chicken scribble documenting my shameless violation of Turkish traffic laws. I was deeply impressed when my new fixer hesitated only ever so slightly as I watched her brain work at lightening speed. “Okay. It’s okay. I will get someone to help you. We can do it.” She was already typing the last few things on the keyboard to confirm my seat and verify that I could get a visa on arrival in Dubai. In one fluid movement she rose from her desk to escort me around the now steaming but relatively silent Dutch woman and bags back into the buzzing terminal and instructed me to stay there while she went into a back room to fetch another young female agent at whom she talked in rapid and vigorous Turkish as they walked and caught me up in their momentum. As we were all walking she finished talking to the other agent and turned to me and said this woman would take care of me the whole way. My former fixer then peeled off with a smile and headed back to her office while the young woman and I were already making our way at a brisk clip to a special agent’s desk. I just followed.

As we approached the desk, my young woman began talking rapidly to the agent behind the counter while we were still a good 10 metres away and by the time I arrived at the counter a few seconds later, the agent handed me my boarding pass and my new young fixer was helping to load my luggage on the belt. Two seconds later I was handed my baggage claim ticket, whilst my young fixer was already moving us on to the next destination. I took the boarding pass and the claim ticket, thanked the ticket agent, and hurried after my new young fixer.

I thought she was taking me to an ATM machine because I knew the police office was in the opposite direction (something the woman at the immigration fines desk had told me earlier when I asked where to pay the ticket). But to my surprise, we arrived at the desk for immigration fines. I turned to my sweet young fixer, almost embarrassed to tell her that A). I’d been here before and it was the wrong place – I’d been told to go to the police station across the terminal, and B). I need to go to an ATM because I don’t have cash (originally I would have had three hours to take care of this). She looked confused momentarily, and a little panicked. “The ATMs are downstairs,” she confessed, with a worried look. But then she immediately pulled out her phone and started calling people. I stare at her, bewildered.

As soon as she hangs up I say, “How do I get downstairs?” she points to the stairs and says she will go back to the immigration fines counter to verify that I really can pay the fine there. “Okay. I’ll meet you back there in a few minutes!” I holler over my shoulder as I break into a run towards the stairs. She gives me the thumbs up and a smile as she starts dialing again. I run down the stairs and halfway across the terminal to get to the ATMs and run back again and scramble impatiently back up the escalator. Thank goodness there were no problems with the machine. I run up to the immigration fines desk and my young partner with the phone to her ear nods and points to the woman behind the counter. In my fevered state I throw the ticket and the 150 Turkish Lira and my passport through the window at the old woman. I don’t know Turkish but I could tell my young partner was telling someone at the gate that I was on my way and to be sure to hold the flight for me. But the whole thing is taking too long. I panic slightly.

The old woman behind the counter couldn’t seem to find the ticket in the system, according to my fixer. I stare, stunned. “But wait,” I exclaim, “I have a US passport, but an Australian driver’s license. Maybe that’s the problem?” My young partner translates and the old woman finds it. She hands over a receipt and my young partner and I perch apprehensively, like racers, ready to bolt off to passport control. But what about my 20 Turkish Lira change? I wait. One second, two seconds. My partner and I are both visibly antsy. Three seconds. I’m just about ready to let go of the 20 when the old woman hands it over and away we go again. “We will go to the other passport control.” she says. I follow, quickly.

She gets me into a special line and I wait behind only one man. She says she will go around and meet me on the other side. I step up to the passport control agent and hand him my documents through the window. He glances at them quickly and says, “No. You have to go to the passport control at the other end of the terminal.”
I flip. “No. NO. NO! I’m going to miss the flight!”
“No. I cannot take you here!” he shakes his head.
But I cannot leave, because I can’t see my fixer on the other side and I cannot do this alone. I appeal to the female guard at the entrance to this special passport control line, but she can’t help and doesn’t really speak good English anyway. I melt down a little and turn around in circles looking for help in all directions and finding none.

Finally I see my young fixer on the other side. “Go through passport control there!” she shouts and points at the guy I just talked to. I yell back at full volume in a panic across the whole of passport control, “He won’t let me in! He won’t let me in! He says I have to go back down there!” I gesture wildly down the endless terminal. She comes up from her side and the guard comes up from my side and the two of them start yammering in Turkish to the passport control agent. But my fixer eventually surrenders and comes out to me saying that we have to go to the combined police/passport control booth because of the speeding ticket. This time we actually run.

It felt like some sort of buddy superhero movie with us running madly together through the terminal. She finally delivers me to the proper folks and says “When you are through, go left and all the way back down to get to gate 223.” As I thank her I try to hand her the 20 Turkish Lira note I got as change for my fine, but she refuses. We share a quick smile and say good-bye. If there’d been time I would have hugged her. I get through passport control. I run – like a madwoman. By that time it was five minutes to eight and the flight was supposed to leave at eight. I run faster.

After interminable hallways and moving walkways that didn’t move, at last I arrived at gate 223 out of breath. “Calm down.” the woman says. I am puzzled until I notice heaps of people sitting in the boarding area. All that running, and the plane wasn’t even boarding yet. I sat. I breathed heavily.

We ended up sitting for another 45 minutes before boarding and another two and a half hours in the plane on the tarmac, waiting to be cleared for take-off. The 8pm flight was due in Dubai at 2.35am – plenty of time for me to contact Etihad before my 4am Kuwait departure to let them know that I wasn’t going to be in Kuwait but wanted to join in Abu Dhabi. But as we sat on the tarmac, the possibility of my reaching Etihad before my Kuwait departure slipped away. Without prior notice, and missing the first leg of the ticket, the chances of them letting me on in Abu Dhabi were greatly reduced. And the longer we waited to take off, the possibility of my even reaching Abu Dhabi in time to make the flight was fast slipping away as well. I sighed. I sat back in my seat that didn’t recline and began to write about the adventure.

Thank goodness I was sitting next to a charming and amusing Cypriot named Tuncay who kept me smiling in spite of myself. He was irrepressible. By the time I sat next to him I was very angry, nervous and anxious. Whenever I tried to explain my story and my apprehensions he just laughed and told me a joke or changed the subject or regaled me with the history of Turkey or Cyprus or said something devilish. It was great because I very well might have made my mojo worse with the mood I was in. And as you will see, I didn’t have many minutes to spare for more bad mojo. So, eventually, he wore down my negativity. I surrendered to Tuncay’s good humor and enjoyed the flight and passport control with the one and only Cypriot I’ve ever met (from Turkish Cyprus, just to be clear).

We arrived in Dubai at 0530 – pretty damn late. Passport control is understaffed by slow-moving agents in the classic Emerati white robes and headscarves and processing takes 45 minutes. I say good-bye to my new friend from the flight and settle in to wait for my luggage – the one thing I’m convinced won’t be a problem now since it is just a one-leg itinerary from Istanbul to Dubai (as they made perfectly clear in Istanbul when they told me they couldn’t help with any other part of my ticket). But the bag never shows up. The workers are pulling the last luggage from the belt but mine is not among them. I try not to freak out and ask for the baggage office.

A lovely, dark-skinned woman about my age tracked down my bag. Apparently the Turkish Airlines staff had put my full itinerary on the baggage – all the way to Sydney. My new fixer was able to verify that the bag was, in fact, in Dubai (just metres away from me no doubt) – but since there is no transfer of bags from Dubai to Abu Dhabi they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. But the fact that it was “in Dubai” did not necessarily mean, the woman cautioned with a  somber face, that I would actually be able to take possession of it any time soon. “I don’t know how long it will take to find it. It’s a huge facility back there.” We agreed that while she went to look for my bag (or get someone on the job), I would try to find the Etihad ticket office to see if I could manage to get on the Abu Dhabi flight. It was a bit of an up and over to find the general ticket office, where I learned that Etihad doesn’t have an office in Dubai because they only fly out of Abu Dhabi. The 60 year old Indian man who helped me at the general ticket desk was very nice, but he couldn’t do much more than call the Etihad call centre. The young gentleman on the other end of the phone said that the policy is that a passenger can’t join a ticket out of sequence. But he advised me to get over to Abu Dhabi and tell the agents there my story and that they might be able to override the policy. I took a deep breath.

While I was wrapping up the call, my Indian grandpa started whispering “Ask him the schedule for the shuttle.” When I did, the guy on the phone asked when my flight was. “10am” I said. “Okay… then the last shuttle you can take to make the flight would be the 7am one.” “What time is it now?” I look at grandpa… He looks at his watch. “6.53” he says reluctantly. “Okay,” I sigh. “So that’s not really an option then is it?” We all know it is a rhetorical question. I thank the guy at the Etihad call centre and hang up. My Indian grandpa says, “Look, just take a taxi over there and see what the shuttle folks can do for you. Sheikh Zayed Drive, at the Chelsea Tower. All the taxi drivers know where it is.” I sigh. I breathe. I wonder if Mahilia found my bag. I thank him and dash out the door back over and down to get back into baggage claim.

Mahilia had said to go to the baggage office behind the taxi rank to get someone to escort me back into baggage claim. My level of urgency was of no consequence to the folks in the exterior baggage office and it took me a good five minutes of begging, pleading and ultimately foot-stomping and name-dropping (I think Mahilia was a supervisor) to get them to finally escort me back to Mahilia. When she saw me, she gave me that half smile that says, “I can’t tell you what you want to hear.” She said she’d talked to the folks out back a couple of times but they still had not been able to locate my bag. I told her what Etihad had said and she advised me to go to Abu Dhabi and try to get on the flight. “When you get to Sydney you can file a baggage claim report and we’ll put the bag on a plane to Sydney.” Although the screw up of the Turkish Airlines staff by putting Sydney on the claim in the first place is what kept me from being able to collect my bag in Dubai, it ensured that the global agreement about baggage would be honored and they would ultimately deliver the bag to the final destination on the tag (if the proper paperwork were filled out in the proper place and order of course). I reflected bemusedly on my choice the previous morning to pack extra clothes in my carry-on bag in case my luggage was lost. Was it intuitive or did my action somehow cause this? But I didn’t have time for reflection. I had a decision to make – leave my bag and maybe, big maybe, get to Sydney on time, or wait for the bag and possibly not get there for at least another day. I closed my eyes for a split second.

“Okay. I’ll leave the bag here in Dubai and go to Abu Dhabi.” knowing that my chances of getting to Abu Dhabi in time, nevermind convincing them to let me on the flight, were very slim and getting slimmer by the minute. “Thank you.” She was kind enough to give me her email address to follow up with and I ran out (again) to the taxis. But first I had to find an ATM (again) because Mahilia said the taxis didn’t take credit cards and I had no dirhams. Luckily I didn’t have to wait long for a taxi. To the driver I said, “Sheikh Zayed Drive, please. Chelsea Tower.”
He looked at me kind of funny so I said, “For the shuttle to Abu Dhabi airport.”
“Abu Dhabi airport?”
“No. Sheikh Zayed Drive, the tower, for the shuttle.”
“Shuttle?”
I started to get a bad feeling. He drove. I sat quietly and nervously.

Until 20 minutes later when he drove right past the signs for Sheikh Zayed Drive.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Where are you going?” knowing full well where he was going. “Are you going to Abu Dhabi Airport?”
“Yes.”
“Aaaaaghh!!” (yes, I did actually scream – my first in this whole ordeal). I pointed at the signs for Sheikh Zayed Drive six lanes over yelling, “But that’s Sheikh Zayed Drive where I asked you to take me!!” They told me you’d know where it fucking was!! Aaaaaggghhhh!!!” (yes, I did scream again, loudly and unashamedly, and cursed). He looked surprised that he’d made a mistake and feigned an apologetic face, but I had no doubt that he did it on purpose to get more money out of me. But I told him I was very mad at him and that besides I only had enough cash on me to cover the trip to Sheikh Zayed Drive. He said okay he would find an ATM. I sulked.

Shortly thereafter he pulled over at the single most crowded petrol stop I have ever been to in my whole life. I got more dirhams and actually ended up at Abu Dhabi airport at around 8.30am somehow. The driver decided to try to rub it in by saying I never would have made it by the shuttle, but I decided not to argue that this truth did not excuse the gross moral violation of his hustling me but I didn’t want to talk to him. After running to Terminal 3 from where he dropped me at Terminal 1, I finally found a lovely Etihad supervisor named Shivanthi who seemed to take my dilemma to heart and she began making calls. But the situation seemed to get more and more complicated as she called one person after another on the landline and three mobile phones, while simultaneously solving other passenger and agent problems. I stood silently and prayed to be willing to accept the things I could not change.

At 0910 she said they were closing the check-in counters. I wasn’t sure whether that meant I was on the flight or off the flight. I didn’t say anything. But then she made one more phone call and then tapped a few keys and I heard the most beautiful sound of a boarding pass being printed. She said I couldn’t get a refund for the unused portion from Kuwait to Abu Dhabi, but at least she could get me on the flight to Sydney. I nearly kissed her. I stared at my boarding pass in near disbelief, then looked at the clock in disbelief… 0925. The flight was already boarding and I hadn’t even got through passport control! I ran off once again.

I got to the gate with only enough time to stop in the WC to brush my teeth and throw water on my face. I am now on the plane at 1015 local time, sitting next to two 9-month old infants and absolutely thrilled and grateful to be here. Away we go… At this very moment that I write this we are starting down the runway – how perfect! And…. wheels up!

I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes from Helen Keller: “The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of it.” I am deeply indebted to many wonderful human beings who made it possible (with barely minutes to spare) for me to arrive in Sydney on time: my little man, my lovely agent and my superhero buddy from Turkish Airlines in Istanbul; Mahilia and my Indian grandpa of Dnanta Airport Services in Dubai; the Etihad call centre guy; and Shivanthi from Etihad in Abu Dhabi. I suppose I even have to thank my taxi driver.

I will never ever forget this journey. More than anything I suppose I re-learned the value of pressing on in spite of overwhelming odds, of being willing to re-prioritize constantly, and of jettisoning extra weight quickly and without remorse. I also re-learned that I am indeed a skilled problem-solver and operate at my best in crisis situations, especially when I have sole decision-making authority. I am reminded of a quote from the movie Brazil. I believe it was DiNiro’s character who said “Travel light. Live fast. Work alone.”

… 14 hours later…

I will be landing in Sydney within the hour. I can only believe that it has been God’s will. Insha’allah.

 

Turkey with Jo

Sorry for not writing in so long, but I’ve been working really hard and not much of interest had happened. I’m now on R&R again and met up with my sister Jody in Turkey.

Jo and Caryn at lunch in Kas, Turkey

We had this horrible bad luck/mojo/juju following us the whole time, but it was still great to see her.

You can see the photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=292164&id=645442789&l=e203c72631

And here is Turkey, the short version:
Istanbul: cold, rainy, crowded, bad hotel, bewildering and great Turkish scrub and rub with 50 of our nearest and dearest half-naked strangers, good dinner, brekky with kitty, spyrographs

Drive to Gallipoli: Bad sig…nage, grumpy locals, endless empty fruitless roads, lost, dark
Eceabat: Good hotel, fireworks for Turkey Republic Day, nice ferry, no people

Drive to Pamukkale: long
Pamukkale arrival: crap hotels, crap food, crap internet, Crapital One (credit card problems)

Pamukkale travertines: quiet, peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, stunning, calming
Drive to Kalkan: good views, winding roads through colorado-like scenery

Kalkan: sunning, sitting, reading, eating, swimming, sleeping RINSE, REPEAT, great views, cute town, good food, football, ruins, Patara beach, scenic drive, fish sandwich from fat man who threw out incumbent customer to seat us at best table and then ran across the street to buy our fish

Drive north: laughing, gritching, farting, belching, speeding (130 turkish lira ticket)

Kutahya: crowded, bad signage, traffic fustercluck, overpriced crap hotels

Roadside Petrol Motel: cheap, clean, very very friendly, relief

Then back to Istanbul airport…

 

Oz

After Borneo it was on to Australia to see my friends in Melbourne and in Canberra, where I lived for two years.

I flew into Melbourne and hired a car at the airport with the intention of getting in a good long 8 hour drive to Canberra. In the international zone (“green zone”) in Baghdad I can drive places, but there are checkpoints every 500 metros so I don’t really get to build up a lot of speed. 🙂  As many of you know, I love long drives and this was to be one of the highlights of my trip.

I stopped to see a friend for breakfast before heading to Canberra and when departing the very small garage under his apartment building I backed into a concrete post. Now I can give all kinds of explanations and justifications for this – I’d been on a plane for 10 hours; It was the first time driving in Australia (opposite side) in nearly a year; the car park was exceptionally small… etc, etc. But the fact is that I just wasn’t paying attention. I heard it. I felt it. And as I pulled into the street and my friend drove up behind me he pointed at the rear of my vehicle. But I didn’t want to get out and inspect it. It was just too embarrassing, too tragic, and at that point, having been in the country less than 4 hours, I really didn’t want to know how awful it was and how much it was going to cost. You see, I had kicked back the insurance on the hire car. I always do. In my risk analysis, the odds of my getting into an accident don’t justify my paying the incredible insurance amounts that are primarily a money maker for the rental company. It is a risk I have been willing to take and for years it has paid off for me. But now it had all caught up with me.

I spent the first two hours of the drive trying to reconcile myself to the accident and its inevitable cost. I still didn’t know how much damage there was but I was determined to orient my state of mind towards acceptance, regardless of the scope of damage. When I finally did stop for a coffee and inspected the damage I was accepting, but very disappointed. The whole rear bumper and rear hatch/boot door with window would have to be replaced. Cost? Ugh. I didn’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was $2000-2500. The rest of the drive to Canberra was a test of my spiritual fitness. I was determined not to let this incident ruin my holidays. But it was a very tough battle. A bit of logic helped. In considering the fact that I had been rejecting insurance on car hires for years, I figured I had probably saved at least $2000, so in reality this was a net zero incident in the big picture. And I could be grateful that I currently have a job where this amount of money isn’t anywhere near as frightening and devastating as it would have been even last year. But it still sucked.

My week in Canberra was a bit strange. I had attempted to prepare for it by realizing that it could be like a homecoming, or it could be like a high school reunion or a visit to your old school, where you realize you can never go back. It turned out to be a bit of both. It was great to see old friends, but I also felt like a very different person than I was when I lived there and it made for some awkward feelings. I also experienced some very extreme culture shock – which I had not prepared for. I had not been in Western society for nearly eight months and it turned out to be quite a bit more overwhelming than I’d anticipated – the conspicuous consumption, the bling, the advertising, the noise – just a general overstimulation that affected me in ways that I still can’t fully explain. I just felt off-kilter most of the time I was in Australia. This affected my ability to interact with my friends as comfortably as I’d hoped.

My camera broke shortly after I arrived, so I don’t really have any pictures of my Oz adventures. Sorry about that. For those of you that have been following this, this is now the third camera that has broken on me in about a year. I’m really puzzled by it.

I did, however, manage to get a few photos of the new puppy we got for my friend:

After one day with Jed, we decided to go back and get one of his brothers. So now Jed and Jon are keeping my friend Jay very busy and very entertained and loved.

Their papa is a Bull Arab & Mastiff cross and their mama is a Wolfhound – so these guys are going to be massive. I’m very sad that I won’t be able to watch them grow up. By the next time I see them they will probably be full size (shoulders at about my hip)!

After Canberra I went back to Melbourne and then spent a few days out on the Great Ocean Road. It was wonderful to be by the sea. It rained most of the time, which was somewhat distressing for my friend, but was delightful for me. Short of a few brief rain showers in Thailand in April, I hadn’t experienced continuous rain since last December in Washington, DC. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The landscape down there – along the coast from Lorne to the 12 Apostles, but also in the forests and the rolling pasture land – was spectacular and we just drove and drove from one tiny town to the next. It was very relaxing. Well, not the whole time. My friend has the BMW with the most powerful motor there is. And then he got it souped up even more. He doesn’t get to drive it out on the rural roadways much and so he was having fun zooming around and testing the acceleration by punching it to 140 in the 40 zones occasionally. It was fun for the most part, but I did get a little bit of whiplash from the G-force when he didn’t warn me he was going to accelerate.

Walking along the sea was also greatly restorative for me. There is something about it that is so spiritually nurturing.

One of the biggest things I realized in going back to Australia was that Iraq is my home now. I feel it really deeply and I am very keen to get back. I will be landing in Doha soon and will transfer to a short flight to Kuwait. But then I have to wait about 20 hours to catch the next daily flight back to Baghdad. Three weeks of holidays would be considered great by most people, but this is the second one for me and in both cases it has been almost a little too long. But I suppose it is good to be ready to come home.

But Baghdad will be different too. There was lots of staff turnover while I was away – especially in terms of leadership. I’ve got a new supervisor now. So who knows how that will play out. And I know I will come back to a compound where new people who’ve been there just a few weeks, will be treating it with a sense of ownership that will seem odd to me. But the best news is that my gym has re-opened! And I will be able to get back into my Insanity workouts.

My physical and spiritual routines have been disturbed by this holiday to a greater degree than I would have liked. I have learned that this is not good for me and that I need to work harder at maintaining my routines on future R&Rs. I’ve learned lots of things about myself on this trip. In fact, I really do feel like a different person – starting with the rocket attack that hurt my friend, to Borneo, to a variety of circumstances in Canberra and Melbourne – I feel like I’ve become tougher, calmer, more determined, but at the same time more independent, less social, and generally more of loner in many ways. I don’t know. Maybe when I get back to the embassy this won’t seem has severe as it does now. I’ll let you know.

Time to shut down the computer as we prepare to land in Doha. I look forward to returning to the Arab world – to Arabic language and hijab and dishdashas. I don’t know why, but it feels like home to me.

Until next time…

p.s. When I returned the car in Melbourne I was told that I had actually paid for the SPOM plan (the “Super Peace Of Mind” plan) and didn’t have to pay a thing for the damage. Plus, I got $77 back for returning the car early. What do you think of that? 🙂

 

More Borneo

As I was going through my photos to spice up the previous post I realized that I left out lots of bits of the trip. While the previous post was memory driven, you really need to view all the photos with captions to get the full effect. To see all the photos, with captions, go to the Borneo photo album on my Facebook page.

Photos include the military policewoman that helped me find accommodation when I missed my flight in Banjarmasin:

The funny kids in Pangkalan Bun:

More wildlife like this proboscis monkey:

Typical homes along the river:

And places Amul had worked as a ranger and research assistant working on crocodiles:

Examples of spots where crocodiles had flattened the reeds when sunning themselves:

And shots of the sibling watercraft we shared the river with:

Shots of Camp Leakey (which was were Julia Roberts stayed when she came to film her special on orangutans):

Li-han and Yo-yo fixing the propeller with a metal file (in their bathers):

examples of meals Ippan cooked for us:

and the funny boy in the keletok in front who kept throwing kisses at me from the onboard toilet:

 

The Jungles of Borneo

So many new experiences so far from a city I feel like I’ve been gone for a week. This is good. Motoring up the river in our klunking and choking keletok (the name is an onomatopoeia – the sound the engine makes: keletok, keletok, keletok…). The whole thing felt a lot like something out of The Deerhunter or The African Queen.

The boat was manned by four young Borneo men from the main port town of Kumai (population maybe 500?) – from where we launched. They ranged in age from the adorable Ippan, our cook at 18, to Amul, my cheerful and attentive guide, at aged 25. Yo-yo, our shy captain, and Li-han, his right hand man, fell somewhere in between. These two didn’t speak English and didn’t talk much anyway, but they laughed easily through their shyness to reveal a stunning variety of missing teeth, which seemed to only add to their charm.

Amul, my guide

Ippan, my cook

Yo-yo, my captain

Li-han, my first mate

Ippan was shy at first, but he was trying to learn to be a guide and wanted to practice his English so both Amul and Ippan were my constant companions. They were very good at spotting monkeys, birds, orangutans and other wildlife for me. They were energetic, as young men are, but humble as boys much younger might be. I took to them all very quickly and we ate meals together and soon became our own little family.

Perhaps the event that most cemented our friendship was when Amul and I came back from trekking around Camp Leakey to find Yo-yo and Li-han in their bathers, all soaped up and having a bath/swim in the river.

I had been desperate for a bath, having made do with birdbaths that morning and the previous one in Banjarmasin. I begged Amul to let me go for a swim. But due to company policy, he was unrelenting about my swimming, even for just a brief moment, due to crocodiles. He pointed out the clutch of reeds where an English man’s body was found. The croc apparently drowned him and stored him there for a later snack once he had softened up a bit.

I didn’t want to get sweet Amul in trouble by making him let me swim, but I pouted until he finally agreed to let me bathe if I restricted myself to a partially submerged portion of the dock about 5 feet by 5 feet and 1 foot deep in the brown water – not brown from dirt, but brown from minerals from an upstream mine. It was like bathing in watered down prune juice, but I put on my swimsuit, grabbed their soap, and joined them in their playful suds-fest.

This produced nervous giggles, in part because they mostly come from good Muslim families where the only half-naked women they would ever see would be their wives. Although these boys weren’t particularly devout, and as guides had certainly seen plenty of Western women in their swimsuits, they were still sort of shy about it. But my jovial camaraderie and teasing with them and pushing them in the water broke the last bit of ice between us and we were all family after that.

The following morning, when I was determined to have a full morning wash, I put on my swimsuit again and poured the buckets of brown river water over my head just like they did.

As I wandered around the boat in my bikini, I commented to them how comfortable I felt with them. “You are so young,” I said, “I don’t have to worry about you. I see older men as guides on other boats and I wouldn’t walk around like this with them, but with you it is like I am your auntie so I feel OK.” Amul teases from below deck: “More like grand mother!” I curse at him and we all fall to laughing again.

But the truth is that I do feel very lucky with my crew. Other boats had old men and even somewhat leering young men that would have made me feel protective and defensive (and certainly never wear my swimsuit),

but my boys were fantastic. Every one of them was a hard worker – always tidying up the boat and making sure I had coffee or water or cushions to rest on or my camera in my hand before I even reached for it. And every night they made my bed. I felt like a queen.

The only thing I could have asked for was a few more orangutans. On the main day of our visits to the rehabilitation camps/reserves it rained off and on, which kept most of the orangutans under cover. But I still had some amazing experiences viewing them in the wild on the side of the river and up close at feeding platforms deep in the jungle.

At Camp Leakey especially, 50 km up a tributary river, I had some great experiences including a very close encounter with a mama and baby less than a metro away. I could have reached out and touched her but we had been advised against it. She grabbed the hand of the man sitting next to me because she though he was holding food. She almost grabbed my hand too, but mine was open, palm up, and she could see I had no food – so she looked into my eyes for a minute then swung away. She was low on a thin tree, bending it to us with her weight while holding another tree for counter balance. When she was done with us she gently shifted her weight and the tree (with her and her baby) slowly drifted away from us. She grabbed another branch and was soon up and away in only a few smooth and graceful motions – effortlessly bending the trees from one to the next to travel as if walking on air.

And if you have the bandwidth, this video I took was AMAZING – she and her baby are SO close (click image to open the YouTube page):

This was entirely unlike the young male who was crashing around in the forest behind her. He was about the size of a 10 year old boy and probably about as old. It seemed clear to me that he was still learning how to identify how much weight a tree branch would hold and how far different types of trees would bend. He was obviously doing a little “trial and error” – well, more than a little.

Every few minutes we’d see a tree in the distance bend, bend, bend and then we’d hear a terrific crack as the branch broke, or sometimes the whole tree (if it was thin), and then the whooshing sound of the wind whipping through the branches as the tree would snap back upright. Then we’d invariably hear the crash, bang, crash, thud of the branches as they cartwheeled to the forest floor – as did our friend occasionally. But his brute strength and very long arms almost always managed to save him from the forest floor completely.

This explosion of sound and movement in the semi-distant forest would then collapse into semi-suspicious silence as I imagine our friend shaking the stars out of his eyes, contemplating the logic of the calamity, and catching his breath just long enough for us to lose interest and return our attention to the other orangutans in front of us. But just as we’d almost completely forgotten about him, again the trees would begin to wave and the forest would explode with another rustling tree, an horrific crack, a whoosh, a crash, and a thud. So spectacular were the noises, I keep waiting for the whimper at the end that I was sure was coming. But none ever came. I guess young orangutans developing gross motor skills aren’t quite as sensitive as humans. 😉

Aside from the orangutans and hanging around with my surrogate nephews, the visit to Amul’s village was one of the highlights of the trip. A few hours up from the mouth of the river there was a beaten up dock on the side of the river. This was a petrol station and also the entrance to a small village where Amul had lived when he was a boy (allegedly – he could certainly have been fibbing, but the folks in the village seemed to know him and it didn’t really matter to me). We walked gingerly over some partially submerged rotting wooden planks to a raised walkway (like an aqueduct) that led into the jungle.

After about 100 metres it split into a Y and the paths went off in two directions through the brown water and jungle, with shacks/houses on stilts on either side of the footpath with rickety wooden planks leading from the path to the houses. Off to one side right before the “Y” split was a rotting creepy old shack covered in moss and vines but belching the horrifically loud sputtering, clunking, and “keletok”-ing sound of a generator. It sounds so desperately on its last legs I was convinced it would be exploding or expiring at any moment. I am sure one could have done better with the motor from my mothers 35 year old lawnmower, but like my boat, it just kept clunking along.

Walking down the footpaths we encountered children, grownups, dogs, chickens, bicycles and even someone with a motorbike. This last bit cracked me up because the elevated footpath was barely wide enough for the two of us to walk abreast, but we squeezed to the side – nearly into the drink – to let the bloke on the bike pass. Even more hilarious was that the total length combined of all of the footpaths was maybe 500 metres. Not much room for acceleration.

One house was also a “store” and kept a few essential items. In the front window was an amazing artistic display of decorations made from the wrappers of packaging from some sort of treat. The artist was the 10 year old girl carrying her infant sister in a delightfully motherly way. She was simultaneously proud and shy about her creation. For me it was a wonderful reminder that you don’t need fancy paints and canvas to bring a little beauty into your world.

This house was also the site of an amusing scene when we came back the next day. As we turned walk from the footpath to the porch of the house/shop, a middle-aged woman came into view, waist deep in the brown water right next to the rotting wooden gangplank, in her brassiere and undies, vigorously soaping up in what qualifies as perhaps the most unusual bathing ritual I’ve been privy to in person. She wasn’t the least bit put out by the appearance of Amul and myself and greeted us both cheerful without a single hiccup in her soaping. She chatted and laughed and soaped her armpits and belly and chatted some more in such a familiar way I felt embarrassed by the fact that I’d been embarrassed to come upon her that way.

The quality of the homes and standard of living was undeniably grim. But the friendliness and joyfulness of the people was refreshing and inspiring. I’m fully aware that I was an interloper and a novelty. I’m quite sure that Amul and maybe other guides have brought other Westerners there. Perhaps in the hope that we would take pity on these people and make contributions to improve their lives. I wasn’t asked for anything, but indeed engaging with these people personally has had an impact on me.

On the last night, the boys taught me how to play chankulan – a crazy card game where the loser of each round has to wear a nearly full bottle on their ear for the duration of each round. The first round both the winner and loser must wear it. There’s a picture of Ippan and myself – he the winner, me the loser. 🙂

The next morning, after bathing in river water along with my boys, we headed back to Kumai. The homes and shops sharing the riverfront with barges and sloops and hollowed out tree trunks with tiny outboard motors on them (with sticks of bamboo strapped on with vines as rudders) was picturesque to me.

My time in Borneo was so brief but so unique and special it seemed like a week instead of days. And that’s my favorite kind of holiday.

Back to the air strip in Pangkulan Bun, and back to Banjarmasin, where I started writing this post. Then back to Jakarta and on to Melbourne. Oz is for another post. Goodbye Borneo… I will return.