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.

Eyes Wide Open

Today started like many days: with a schedule of events that I knew we wouldn’t be able to follow. First up was a trip to the very large housewares market. This place makes West Edmonton mall look like a strip mall! We were in the market for about 2 hours and didn’t see half of it. A number of the group bought machetes while others were busy looking for DVDs.

We had hoped to visit the street kids, but it was looking like we would not have the chance. Apparently, there has been some recent aggression towards the street kids from the authorities, so there was some resistance to having a bunch of strangers meeting with them. During our time at the market, however, Maria Jose called to say that the board of Plataforma had agreed to let us go with the street workers to meet with some of the kids. This caused a quick but worthwhile schedule shift, so we ate lunch at a very American food court in the local Cineplex. What made it better was that I knew where to buy popcorn. I practiced my Spanish in order to make sure I got the largest size and with salt, not sugar. Brent came with me, and, as I approached the counter and made my order, the young lady giggled a bit. (I assumed it was because of Brent). Then she said, “Yes, sir. I speak English.” In the end, we got a huge box of movie theater grade salted popcorn to share with everyone. I made brownie points with Corinne if no one else.

After lunch, we met Maria Jose at the Plataforma office for a tour, then split into two groups to go into the streets. This experience was influential for all to say the least, but, for me, observing the reactions to the experience was more interesting than the experience itself. And this is where the travelogue ends; I am going to write about my observation of Brent’s reaction--partly because he said I could and partly because he was my student at the College, and I have watched him grow over the last two years.

When I was about Brent’s age, a friend of mine took me to the movie Apocalypse Now at the U of C. I was not used to war movies. They were not something my parents encouraged me to watch. I didn’t even like scary movies or horror shows. I was a bit worried about how I would react to the gore and violence, but I was not about to wuss-out in front of my friends. There certainly is no shortage of gore, violence and despair in the movie. It was quite an introduction to war movies for me! Although it was on a movie, I was seeing things that I had never seen before. By the time the water buffalo butchering scene rolled around, there was something odd going on in my head. I came to the realization that the horror was not in the gore and the violence presented on the screen in front of me. The true horror, I realized, was that people lived through all that. The true horror was not in those who died, but in those who did not die, in those who had to come back from the war and try to live with those who would never understand. Don’t get me wrong, all the lives lost during the war was a horrible thing, but this was the first time in my life that I had to consider the possibility that surviving may not be the best outcome, and that possibility flew in the face of all I had been taught and all that I believed. That experience forever changed my thought process, and it was only a movie! I believe that part of the reason the movie had such an impact on me is that I had little or no exposure to anything like that growing up. I had not been gradually desensitized to violence and gore, so what I saw did not fit the rules that my brain worked from. I had to choose either to disregard the experience or to change the rules I functioned from. Although I experienced sensory overload, I chose to rewire my thinking instead of shutting down or denying the event. This type of thing has happened to most of us at some point in our lives; some event causes us to reevaluate our beliefs or position.

For Brent this trip was full of new sights and experiences. One does not get to see parrots flying overhead when splashing about in the Bow river. Every time you looked at Brent, he had a grin on his face that you couldn’t knock of with a 2x4! I spent a lot of time observing his reactions and was very impressed with his ability to avoid snap judgments and to remain opened-minded (or at least quiet) about events until he had a chance to process them a bit. As the trip went on, he became more open with us about his observations, and I appreciated his perspective. I anticipated his reaction to the street kids, and I don’t think I was far off. Even though he had spent 6 days with the boys at CERENID and even though he had heard the stories of where they came from, nothing truly prepares you for the experience of standing in the drainage ditch they call home. The details of his experience are for him to tell, and perhaps he will comment on this blog and tell his side of the story, but his reaction to the event tells volumes about him as a person.

My role as a teacher is to create an environment for students to learn, not to dish out facts to memorize nor opinions to persuade. In the classroom, I set outcomes for students to work towards but do not prescribe a path they must follow. Some like to read. Some like to write. Most like to do. How they get there is not as important to me as getting there. I tried to create learning opportunities on this trip, but unlike in the classroom, I did not even set specific outcomes other than stimulating the mind. I would even be pleased if someone came back with the opinion that we should not be interfering with the people of Bolivia as long as that opinion was formed on solid thinking from a more educated perspective.

When Brent came back from the street, I could see a look in his eyes that I last saw in a mirror a year ago, a look I saw in the eyes of many of my travel companions in Rwanda. It was the look that said, “I just don’t know how to process what I just experienced.” The rules that Brent had built his life on were not able to explain the events he just witnessed. When we talked later that evening, I sensed that he had a willingness to rewrite his rules. It won’t happen overnight; it took me the better part of eight months to come to grips with Rwanda, and I am still not all the way there. But, I believe, that this event will reshape Brent forever. It was his willingness to see, not just look, that made this experience a life changing one. He travelled not only with his eyes open but with his eyes WIDE open. He seemed to know intuitively what I believe to be true: “An experience does not need to be a good experience to be a worthwhile experience.”

I don’t know what will become of this experience for Brent, but I am very proud of him (and others in our group) for allowing himself to let this trip change him.