Zadou - the Wild, Wild West

My first impression of Zadou two years ago is that I had been transported into the wild, wild west. I expected to see a gun slinger coming out of the tavern at any second. Zadou is still much like that, but it has grown, too. There are new buildings and cranes everywhere! We arrived late at night in a rain storm, so we were very glad when a passerby stopped to pick us up and deliver us to a hotel. The next morning I was greeted by the above view from my window.
Peng was great to travel with; I could not have made the trip without him! He found us breakfast and a cab for the day and even a cell phone charger. After a filling meal, we went out to the school run by the Rimpoche. Much was the same as when I left 2 years ago, the kids were still smiling, and the grass was still green. Some things have changed: there are more tents housing more foreigners than before, the buildings are all completed and wearing colorful paint, and the school building was decorated for the 5th aniversery celebration.

The well we completed two years ago is producing ample water, though I wish it was housed properly to prevent contamination. The green house is functioning, but the students need encouragement to eat green things which are not part of their diet normally. (What kid likes vegetables anyway?) There is now power to the complex, and this will relieve much of the difficulties for refrigeration and lighting. The basketball court is paved, not gravel, this year, and it appears to be very well used. Great to see!
The new hospital is about 90% done. It is very big! It was great to get a tour of it with the Rimpoche and everyone. From the road one would never know a building this big was being built! After the tour, we had a wonderful lunch at the Rimopche's house. Peng was very happy to meet him and to see all the great things he is doing for the people of the area. I was glad to see things moving forward and the town of Zadou moving from the wild, wild west into a more mainstream town.

Ringing True

Know also that wisdom is sweet to your soul; if you find it, there is a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. Prov. 24:14

My mothers words come rattling back to me at the oddest times. She would often say, “Every cloud has a silver lining,” and although I can’t say that this is always true in my experience, I figure that the least we can do is look for it. Rwanda was the blackest cloud I have ever experienced. I hate to keep mentioning the Rwanda trip in this blog, but, as you can guess by now, that trip was a very powerful experience for me. Although I won’t go in to the details now, I will just say that it took eight months of deep thinking, but I found the silver lining in that terribly black event.


Life is full of clouds in varying degrees of darkness. I just returned from the India/Burma border and the Tibetan high plateau, and God knows there are many clouds in the lives of the people living there. I am not suggesting that bad things happen to provide us with learning opportunities, but when bad things happen, the least we can do is try to learn something from them. Sometimes the best thing to come from a bad event is knowledge of what we can do to stop it from happening again.

So here is the jump (stay with me): I have never been one for jewelry. Many times jewelry is worn to improve our appearance, and, trust me, there is not a jeweller out there that could do much for me. Sometimes jewelry is worn as a sign of affluence; again, not something that interests me at all. Jewelry can also be worn as a sign, such as a wedding band or engagement ring. Not a bad idea, but there is another reason to wear jewelry, and that is as a reminder. I worked side by side for many years with an engineer who wore a small, discreet engineering ring made from the steel of a collapsed bridge. I learned that every engineer gets one as a reminder that no one is infallible. Although he taught for more than 30 years, he always wore that ring. I believe he wore it as a reminder.

In a little shop in Zadou, China there is a family who works forging silver into jewelry. In the middle of nowhere, this family make beautiful things to adorn the people of the valley. These people face clouds every day and keep on going. I promised myself that I would have them make me a simple silver ring as a reminder of what my mother said to me so long ago: "Every cloud has a silver lining." The older I get the more it rings true for me. In the face of adversity, I need to look at my ring, to look for the silver lining. I need to learn from the bad situation. I truly hope that the other members of the Rwanda trip who struggled so hard with what they saw can somehow find their silver lining.

Flashback to Guatemala

The bus trip in Guatemala was the scariest of my life. It involved a con man, a very seedy end of town and, scariest of all, the repeated gunfire as we drove by some of the poorer areas of town. Those of you who know the story will be worried at the title of this blog, but you should know at the outset that if I can write and publish this story, I’M OK!

My current bus trip should have been about 20 hrs--24 hours on the outside--but as I type this, we are pushing past the 28 hour mark with no end in sight. We are in the process of climbing the steepest part of the trip and will pass though 16,500 feet (if we make it up!)

It seems that much of what could go wrong has, but we are still moving, so there is still hope. On the upside, we may not have to find a hotel tonight; we may still be on the bus! We have had a bad tire hump from the start, and I think that has slowed us on the parts of the road where we could have made time. The police have stopped us more than once, because of some bigwigs on the road or something. This made me nervous as we are not in the most stable part of China right now, and I’ve found that the presence of bigwigs tends to increase political instability. There has been no bombing or violence that I know of, but, as I reminded myself, there is always a first.

It happened as we were stopped by the police just outside of Yushu. I was quietly reading a spy novel (thanks to a donation from Ray) when a blast went off! I might be getting slower physically, but I am amazed at what my mind could process in a fraction of a second.

Sidebar: I wish you could see the slope and switchback we have just come up--truly like nothing I have ever seen since the last time I climbed this hill. Unfortunately, it is too dark for a picture. I bet Gareth knows the view of which I speak. Oh, I bet you want me to get back to the story...

I heard the blast and the shrapnel hitting the bus at the same time which meant, I reasoned, that the explosion was very close. A fraction of a second later, there was the sound of glass shattering, but not our glass. There was no smoke on my side of the bus, and my window was open wide enough to dive out of if need be. I noted clouds of smoke fifty feet away on the other side of the bus. My mind flashed back to Guatemala: If this was a roadside bomb, would there be gunfire to follow? If I was a gunner aiming to kill, I would not want to be on the bomb side of the bus; I would be on the other side, the side people would be fleeing to. MY SIDE! I opted not to jump out the window.

The smoke cleared and no gunfire ensued. I learned that very large wheeled loader on the edge of the road had ruptured a rear tire on the side facing us. There was no bomb, just a very large tire. The shrapnel was rocks, and the breaking of glass was the rear window of a cab just ahead of us. I think I need to read a different type of book, Ray, or maybe…

Not All Seats Are Created Equal

I am, I think, on my sixth flight (on four different airlines) in three days, and I now feel qualified to assert that all airline seats are definitely not created equal! And I am not just talking about the dimensions of the seat, the construction of the headrest, or the entertainment system that may or may not be in the back of the seat ahead of you. There is so much more to consider when thinking of airplane comfort. There are the cabin layout/seat location/seat mate variables to include, too. Let's start with the physical seat itself. The seats on Kingfisher Air, even on the little prop plane on which we flew, were of supple leather and had ample lumbar support. There was no video entertainment, but the flight was only an hour and a half and the scenery was spectacular out the window, so who needs TV? Jet Airways also had great seats with ample support and a headrest that wrapped around and cradled your ears in soothing fashion. The in-seat entertainment worked flawlessly and contained many options from jazz radio to Hollywood movies. Air Canada, however, had seats too narrow for an anorexic headed to an intervention, the headrests forced your head to loll from side to side like a drunken sailor, the entertainment system wouldn’t run for more than twenty minutes, and the rows are so close together that my knees and chin are now void of hair from rubbing on each other.

The cabin layout is also important. On the widebodies you can have a 2-4-2 or a 3-3-3, or in the tail you may have the 2-3-2 layout. I have always tried for aisle seat, and on day flights I still prefer it, but I don’t pee often (so I am not climbing over seatmates) and I don’t get up and roam around much (they frown on that now), so on night flights I try for a window. I like the 2-3-2 option best, and try for the 2 part--either aisle or window.

Location in the cabin is also important. Near the front and you are the last on-first off--great if you have a short connection. You also breathe the freshest, but hottest!, air. I find I am always hot on a plane, even when I only wear my Speedo, (this gets me through security quickly) so I prefer the back. The air is cooler, especially if you are next to the bathroom, because every time someone flushes it suchs a huge amount of air out. The other big advantage to the back of the cabin seat choice is the gossip that the flight attendants tell each other as they stand in the galley not helping people. It has been my experience that in the areas of both quality and quantity of gossip, Air Casnada wins hands down. Part of the reason may be that they have the most experienced flight attendents in the industry; I recently overheard two of them discussing what great guys Orville and Wilbur were.


The seat mate/s you end up with are always the wildcard when traveling. I have to say I have had them all. Screaming baby, puking student (all the way to Beijing once), the sleeper, the talker, and when you travel with Ray, the snorer. On this trip to China, I was pleasantly surprised to have no seatmates at all! Even better, in the row just ahead of me sat a young doctor going to an agricultural finance conference in Beijing. She was from Poland, raised in Germany, and working at the university in San Fransisco. She spent the perfect amount of time turned around discussing the state of agriculture and the rest of the time letting me sleep. It was delightful to hear a young, naive, enthusiastic person's perspective for a change. I would tell you her name, but it was polish, and I couldn’t say it, let alone spell it!
...
Now I am in a whole different type of seat: a seat on a sleeper bus, my home for the next 24 hours. The “seat” is too flat to sit up and too slanted to lay down. But that is a whole other story yet to come. Keep me in your prayers!

Now You See Me; Now You Don't

Life is getting to be a bit of a blur, so I apologize if I mix up the order of things in this blog. I am sitting on a plane right now with no access to the internet, and I have cut back on my technology to my little laptop, so I can’t look at the blog off line. Ok, I will quit making excuses and start writing.


The last time I had an internet connection and any time to blog was Aizawl, city on the edge. I had no connection in Kolkutta, and by the time I hit London, I had internet but no brain. Hope the emails I sent out made sense. The 3 hours I spent conscious with my family last night, I did not want to spend on the computer, so no blog then, either....Ok, I promise I will start writing something useful-ish now. (Perhaps my editor will just cut all this preliminary rambling out).

Kolcutta. What can I say? We finished our work in the countryside a day early and hoped to get back home a day early. It was not to be, but at least we spent the day in Kolkutta, not Aizawl. One never knows if you will get out of Aizawl because of the mudslides on the way to the airport and the cloud at the airport. We had rain every afternoon, and if it socks in they don’t fly. At all. Period. Once I was over the disappointment of not getting home a day early, I was able to take in what Kolkutta has to offer: heat, humidity, garbage, and the crush of people all trying to make a living for their families. I don’t think there is much of a safety net, so it is be successful, or die.

We stayed in a small hotel (5 rooms) on the 4th floor of a shopping complex. You could get there by elevator--the smallest I have ever seen--or 4 flights of uneven stairs. I felt safer on the stairs. The up-side was that the rooms were clean and not bug infested like the rooms in Champhai. As a bonus, they had A/C of sorts! This is a good thing, because I think I would have evaporated without it. At one point during the taxi ride, I had to ask Dr. Ray if a person could die just sitting in the heat of the cab. He didn’t answer, but the smell indicated that perhaps a recent customer had.

We went shopping in the medical supply district. Getting there was a 1.5 hour negotiation followed by a 1 hour cab ride. I am not sure we would ever have made it had we not met an English speaking teacher who knew the area. He instructed the cab driver, then came most of the way with us. This was a great example of a symbiotic relationship. We got were we needed to go with pleasant conversation, and he got a free cab ride instead of having to take the bus.

Dr. Ray was like a kid in the candy store, and I was like my wife in a model airplane store. It was fun watching him barter. He may cheaper than I, but he could still use a few pointers. We found some great shops, including one that has an on-line store. On the streets outside, the human crush carries on. Venders selling food, coffee, or seeds. Beggars sitting on the sidewalk, and disabled people on the street trying to get something, anything, from passersby. It is quite a contrast to be in a store selling portable ultrasound machines and 4 feet further, on the street outside the door, see a woman sliding along the street on her bum, holding up her leg with her foot on backwards. That is Kulcutta in a nutshell, the definition of contrast.

Is that You Ray?

We had a little fun on the flight back to Canada. Dr. Ray wanted to learn how to do video editing. With nine hours to kill, and the Air Canada back-of -the-seat entertainment system not working -again – I thought, "Why not? School is in." We were not able to download his camera, but I had a few video clips of Corine playing soccer in Bolivia to work with. We were in the very last row, so the flight attendants were hanging around behind us. One asked what we were doing and I said that Ray was producing his first movie. Somehow they thought he was a real movie producer, and all of a sudden the service improved for us. Things got clarified later in the flight, but we had a good 5 hours of fun before. It does say something about societal values when you consider that the flight attendant was much more interested in meeting a first time movie producer than a doctor doing humanitarian work. Oh well, we weren’t in the backwaters of India to impress a flight attendant anyway.
Thanks to Dr. Ray for yet another amazing experience.

I was home for fewer hours than my London layover, but it was really good to see most of my family. It is amazing how much laundry you can get done between 6PM and 2:30 AM. I lightened my load a bit for the second half of this journey: fewer clothes, only one computer, you know, nothing but the essentials. (Yes, that is a joke!) It was very hard to say goodbye this morning, I feel very lonely sitting on this plane by myself, very lonely indeed.
I am looking forward to coming home and going to the coast with my son, his first trip to the ocean. This year off is not going as I had planned. New wrinkles, new challenges, new directions. As I look back over my life, though, I realize that it has never gone as I had planned. Perhaps it is a little too much like the road to Aizawl. I have always tended to steer away from the safe back roads like my birthplace, Saskatchewan, and tended to steer towards the road to Aizawl. It may never be dull for me, but it can be difficult to sit next to someone through the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the rough patches, the washed out bits and the reconstruction. I look forward to some of my kids buckling up beside me at some point this year. The road is best shared with others.

"Every valley shall be filled in, every
mountain and hill made low.

The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth." (Luke 3:5)

On the Road Again

Friday, Aug.7, 2009 - We left Aizawl at 4 am today to beat an impending taxi strike that was called off anyway. I think Ray had Rama make the story up just so we could beat the traffic, and we did. Aizawl at 4 am is a very different place than it is during the day--almost eerie. It was still very beautiful, a sight like none I have ever seen! As the sun started to come up, you could see the mist in the valleys and clouds wrapped around the mountaintops.

We passed through many little villages on the way. The villages get an early start on the day, and there is always something interesting going on. Can you imagine Sears delivering your fridge like this? We stopped a few times for food or to talk with the drivers coming the other way. At one market where we stopped, there was produce for sale but the people were in the field already so they just carved the price in the melon and left a jar on the table. Rama has been very kind in being our guide and cultural interpreter. I don’t know what we would have done without him.

The road itself is in not bad shape, for the most part. Sometimes landslides mess it up pretty badly, but we made it through. The issue is that the route chosen for the road is definitely the long way around! It continually goes up and down and left and right, and often it seems to do all four things simultaneously! I mean, people pay money for a ride like this at Disneyworld! It is a bit like riding Space Mountain for 7 hours straight!

The scenery makes the ride! Lush green jungle on unbelievably steep slopes; incredible waterfalls cascading through the jungle, erupting into a clearing, then crashing back into the jungle disappearing from sight. I was truly impressed with the views. I can think of few places that have such low population density. This is truly rugged, uncharted country.

I can’t imagine building this road in the first place let alone maintaining it, but they do. We met a patching paving crew that was resurfacing the road. The gravel is made by breaking rocks with a hammer, and the tar is heated and mixed with the gravel at the side of the road in wood fired containers. Many new bridges are under construction, which is good, because some of the old ones are bloody scary!

We made it to Champi to a very warm welcome, and then went straight to bed! Tomorrow will be a busy day!

Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009 – As I suspected, it was a very busy day! I haven’t been eating or sleeping much the last couple of days. The up side for Ray is that he has gotten to eat most of my meals. I decided last night that, although I didn’t know if my malaise was jet lag, motion sickness, or bad water, today was going to be a very busy day and that I needed a good night's sleep. Contrary to my lifestyle at home, my motto on the road is, “A better life through pharmaceuticals,” so I drugged up with anything I thought might help and got a solid 8 hours of sleep and an appetite by morning. Ray, on the other hand, didn’t have a solid anything all night. The up side for me was I got to eat his breakfast, too! It all evens out in the end. (Ray drugged up right away and was fine by the end of the day)

After breakfast, we met with No Kap, the engineer, and the contractor. The engineer is a young man (funny how there are so many more young people these days?) with great English and a solid working knowledge of the project. We discussed the budget (sharpened the pencil more than once), the time lines, but mostly we discussed my expectations of their roles and responsibilities. We looked at the contractor’s credentials and some of his work, including the guest lodge we were staying at. We altered some construction techniques specified by the engineer to make the contractor’s job easier in such a remote place. But most importantly, we made the decisions together, in the same room, at the same time, with all concerned present! The cheap Scotchman in me was very proud! Look out, Will Smit; I just about qualify to be Dutch!

We drove to Zowkathar, and I got my first look at the site. This is a very beautiful valley with the river and the steep hill. Burma is on the other side, and the crossing is quite busy. We met the entire membership of the various committees and then proceeded down to the site for a sod turning ceremony.

It was very hot, but not too hot to have speeches and photos. I got a much better sense of the size of the lot and the lay of the land. The site will be very beautiful when the building is up and there are some trees planted for shade. Maybe we should plant fruit trees and pineapples on the site so there is always fresh juice to drink?

After the sod turning, we went up to the current clinic for tea and a meeting with the building committee. I tried to be very clear about our expectations and their role. It was great to have the engineer and the contractor at the meeting so everyone could hear the same message. The building committee would like to have had final say on all decision, but I pointed out that they could make all the decisions they wanted to pay for, but if I was responsible for the money, I would be making the final decision based on their input. This puts me in the role of “bad guy” (Ray says I am very good at it) but takes a huge amount of pressure off a few committee members that were being lobbied hard by various factions in the community.

My only personal goal on this trip was to enter Burma. Today, I set foot in Burma and made it back again! I asked the engineer to take a picture of me coming back from Burma (no sense taking a picture of me just before I was shot!), so here I am successfully re-entering India, one foot in Burma, one foot In India--the first step to coming home.

Sunday, Aug. 9, 2009

I have a guest blogger today. So without any further ado, here is Dr. Ray Comeau

Hi out there in blogland.

Gord has graciously invited me to blog on his site so here goes. The most notable and bizarre thing that has happened to me in the past 24 hours occurred last night at about 1:30 AM.

As you know we are in a very remote area of Northeast India on the India-Burma border. We are staying in flea-bag hotels and often get up close and personal with various members of the insect family. You can image my surprise last night when I flicked on the bathroom light to find the toilet virtually crawling with ants. They were stacked so thick on the porcelain that the rim of the toilet was black. The entire basin was alive with seething masses of the crawling insects.

The first thing that flashed into my mind was that freaky movie about the white guy in Africa that gets attacked and eaten by the army ants. Not wanting to suffer the same fate, I frantically grabbed a bucket of water that was left over from my bucket shower and began dousing the toilet and bathroom with wave after wave of cold water. Preoccupied by the task at hand, I failed to notice the ants that were crawling up my leg until one of them sank his teeth into my calf. Suddenly I realized that I was personally under attack. Frantically I began dousing my legs and the rest of my body as well.

By the time the fiasco was over, the entire bathroom and I were both soaked but ant free.

Content that I had cheated a painful death, I returned to my bed for another fitful sleep.

Thanks Ray. Perhaps the moral of this story is “Always Flush”

My day was not as exciting, but very busy again. Rama met me this morning to take me to 3 potential projects. We started at his school halfway up the hill. The school building is leaning downhill precariously. The wooden posts that hold the building up are rotting. This building is beyond repair. This 21-year-old building needs to be pulled down and replaced.

The funny part about the day was the transportation. Rama picked me up on his Honda 225cc bike! We gave the suspension a huge work out, not to mention the little 225cc engine. Rama dubbed us John Wayne and Jackie Chan. I am sure we were quite a picture climbing the very steep hills of Champhai!

We visited a computer training school and then drove down the long hill to the flats. Although we made the bike work very hard to get up the hill, Rama never even turned the bike on until we got to the rice patties.

The third project site we visited was Pine Hill Academy, the school that Rama attended as a child. There is no shortage of need here, I can tell you!. The dorms are leaking. The floors are crumbled in the classrooms. The foundations are failing. I was hosted to a wonderful lunch including some great chapatis! We made it back to the hotel with out incident. Back on the roller coaster highway tomorrow morning

Completely off topic, does anybody know about a singer named Lily Allen?

Aizawal - City on the Edge

In preparation for this trip, I viewed the area on Google Earth. The airport is not near the city of Aizawl; it is about 1 hour away. Flights in and out are a bit sketchy as the airport is on top of a mountain surrounded by taller mountains, and the weather is variable at best. All the Google Earth preparations could not prepare me for the real experience. This is the most spectacular runway/airport location I have ever seen, and I am a plane junkie. This is the rainy season,so the jungle is lush and green, the mountains seem to defy gravity with their steep slopes, and the vegetation seems glued to the surface of the mountains. The pilot skillfully spiraled down into the airport and gently settled the aircraft onto the runway. Even at this high altitude, we hit the tarmac to a sweltering 31 degrees.

Rama met us, helped with the paperwork, and led us to our car. We started off for Aizawl on roads that are very narrow and twisted but in pretty good shape compared to Saskatchewan, for instance. It is important to have a good driver, and it seems that we do, thankfully. The traffic is like a ballet. I don't know who is doing the choreography, but all the dancers all seem to know their part. I thought I was getting pretty good at foreign traffic, but on my first time out of the car I got clipped by a mirror. It's a good thing that no one here drives faster than a brisk walk and that I am bigger than most cars on the road, but it was still a good reminder to me to watch my step.
As we rounded a bend, Ray pointed across the valley at Aizawl. My first impression was that it looked like someone poured Lego blocks on a rock pile, but, in fact, those blocks were houses stuck to the impossibly steep slopes. Roads are carved into the side of the mountain, then houses line the downhill side of the road. The houses are built on long concrete pilings that are anchored 30 or 40 feet below on the cliff's edge. I can honestly say I have never seem anything like it! The pictures just don't do it justice.
Other than the fact that everything is hanging on a cliff, Aizawl is like many other remote cities I have visited. I love the little shops lining the street, the markets, the vender's and the people. These people are very friendly but polite at the same time. The school children walk by in uniforms. The tiny taxis honk as they creep by loaded with an impossible number of passengers. Two young men run by carrying a 20 foot length of electrical conduit. Shop owners set buckets out to collect the water pouring off the roof as a cloud burst drenches the street. Smells of curry and open cooking fires fill the air.

I feel comfortable and safe, and I am really enjoying learning about yet another corner of our world. This is my first visit to the part of the world, but I bet it won't be my last! I might have to talk to Carole about extending my leave. I suspect you won't hear from me for a week or so now, so, until we connect again, enjoy what you have and love those close to you.

I Thought this Airport had A/C?

I have now officially lost not only my luggage but also my sense of time and place. As I sit here (where?) in the airport, I am pretty sure it is morning, but I don’t have a clue what morning. The reason I think it is morning is because we had a bed to sleep in last night and a shower upon waking! Of course, following my shower, I had to get back into the clothes I put on when I left Canada, but it is not so bad. Turn your underwear inside out, hang your shirt under the fan all night and everything is just about like new. Before you start to feel too sorry for me, I have to admit that I do have a change of clothes, but if they can't get my bag to me, I don’t want to use my clean clothes up just yet. It is a bit like the good plywood in a stack in the barn: I don’t want to use the good stuff on this project because what if I need it later?
We spent many hours in the terminal of the Delhi airport yesterday. When we first went inside, I thought that there was air conditioning, but as the day worn on I concluded that there was not. I admit, I was distracted because I got an internet signal and spent most of the day writing and facebooking (looking at pictures of the hail that tore through our yard shortly after I left. That was my fault by the way, I said on the way to the airport how we had not had a good storm yet this year. )
By the time we went to the gate to board the plane, I was sure there was no A/C in the terminal. This airport has you get on a bus that drives you across the tarmac to the plane. As I walked out the door of the airport to board the bus, a wall of superheated air hit me like a truck. I was wrong! The terminal was most definitely air conditioned! Willing myself to breathe, I made it to the bus and onto the plane. As we landed in Kolkata in the dark, the pilot announced that the temperature was 37 degrees. I said to myself, “impossible,” but again I was wrong.

I spent another hour this morning trying to determine if I will ever see my bag again. I must say that everyone I have dealt with has been very professional and pleasant--a comment I cannot make about the service sector in every country in which I have been . As I think back on this experience so far, I think it is the people that stand out so far. Very polite, friendly and courteous, even if the job they have to do seems completely unnecessary!