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!

We left London on time with a fairly full aircraft. Ray managed to find three empty seats in the middle, though, and I think he slept the whole way. Jet Airways has a great new fleet! We are on a Boeing 777 with very comfortable seats. I even got some good sleep on this flight!
I awoke this morning to find some very rugged, very dry scenery below us. No roads, no houses, no trees, just rocky peaks. I quickly found the GPS and determined that we were very near Kabul, Afghanistan. Pardon me for saying so, but there doesn’t seem like much to fight for. And worse yet, it doesn't look like there is anywhere to hide!

The scenery didn't change much until we reached Delhi. There the airport was hot and old, but most significantly and worst of all, the airport did not have my bag! Five hours later, it still did not have my bag, but the paperwork was done! For some reason, I had put more in my carry-on bag this trip than I ever had before, so I am in pretty good shape. Mostly missing clothes, it seems, but I can wear one outfit for a week, I am sure, especially if everyone else smells bad!

The domestic terminal we are flying out of is very new and has wireless!!! So that is why I can make this post. Ray coerced a free meal out of them for the inconvenience of losing my bag, so we had a great sandwich and, later, an Indian pizza. I switched into teacher mode again and gave a quick lesson to Ray about Facebook and linking. He will surely be sick of me by the time we get home! I keep forgetting that just because I love something, it doesn't mean everyone does! Well I better get ready for the next flight. Another sixhours and I may get to see a bed if the hotel isn't full.

Odour-ifically yours,

Gordon

Men and Machines

"Wisdom is better than weapons of war..."

Ecclesiastes 9:18

We had a 9 hour stop-over in London today--just long enough to take the tube into the city and have a great lunch with my sister. She took Ray and I to a very comfortable room, and we had very identifiable and delicious sandwiches for lunch. Identifiable is important, as this may be one of the last meals about which I can say that, at least for the next 5 weeks! After lunch, we walked through a bit of the city and then took the tube to the British war museum.


There were airplanes hanging from the ceiling as we walked through the door, so I was interested right away. The spitfire was front and center. If asked, I always say that this is my favorite WWII aircraft, but secrectly I like the Zero best. They only had a piece of the Zero at the museum.


The German Folkwolf was also hanging there as was a Mustang and many other weapons of human destruction. Ray knew very little about these aircraft, so I switched into teacher mode and was quite happy talking about these machines.


Near the end of the tour was a large exhibit about the holocaust. No machines in there; just row upon row of pictures of people, videos about the survivours, stories about those who did not servive (some six million in all), stats about who killed who and where, and maps...many maps that held no good memories for me. I could not make it through the exhibit. I had to leave. The story told there, unfortunatly, is not unique. Change the name and places, change the numbers and the maps, and that exhibit could be about too many other genocides of recent history. The thing that would not have to change would be the expressions on the faces of the men, women, and children in those pictures.
...
Well, we are back at the airport and about to board. Keep us in your thoughts.

Maps and Memories

"Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?

And don't you remember?" Mark 8:18

I love maps! I believe in maps! Maps give me comfort, but why? I am leaving for India today, so perhaps that is why when I woke up this morning and looked around my room I saw a common theme. I noticed, not for the first time, that my walls are covered with maps and memories. There are many more maps rolled up on my desk. Today, I started to wonder why some maps were rolled up and some were on the wall.


The map of Sri Lanka started it all for me. I found this map shortly after the tsunami, just before I travelled there for the first time. When I see the town of Pottuvil on the map, my minds sees the devastated beaches and the crushed homes, but I also see the smiling children and the adults rebuilding their lives. Other place names remind me of the trailer manufacturer, the elephants, the spicy road house, or the hydro dam we repaired the van fuel tank on. The map is a collection of triggers for my memory.

I have noticed, too, a strange mix of pieces on my walls (not that I know anything about feng shui or anything). There is a map of Rwanda next to my bed, and below it is a collection of butterflies from Bolivia. Rwanda showed me first hand the most evil that humans can be to each other. I still have nightmares about the genocide. I see babies smashed on the altar of a church, children thrown down the 30 ft deep latrines and stoned to death. I see rivers run red with the blood of thousands. It has been more than a year now, and the map is still there on my wall and the nightmares still come, but my Rwanda map is more than a map of bad memories. Rwanda is also about hope and rebirth. Rwanda taught me that we are all capable of unspeakable evil if we choose not to think for ourselves, if we allow other to think for us. Rwanda showed me that at the core of every human is humanity. We can choose between brutality or butterflies.

Not all memories need to be tied to a location. the little yellow star on my wall, colored as it was by a preschool child, could have been colored by my grandson, but it wasn't. It was colored by a Rwandan child, a child that hoped for exactly the same thing that the children of CERENID in Bolivia hope for. These are the same hopes and dreams that the Rhimpoche in Zadou is desperately trying to bring the children of the Tibetan high plateau. To quote a good friend of mine, "We are different, and yet we are all the same." My walls are not full yet, and I take that as a sign that I have much more to experience. I wonder what the map of India and Burma will have for me? I wonder what memories it will hold? I wonder when we will all learn to get along?

I will update this as often as I can but internet is sketchy at best, I hear.

Keep me in your prayers.