Four More Work Days Till I Head Home......

I'm in the middle of a three-day layover and stuck inside the hotel--choice of my room or the lobby where there's wireless Internet. Surprisingly time has gone by pretty fast this job. There have been logistics and scheduling problems througout but the people have been great to work with--something that has always been the case in Africa. We finished up a refresher course with some students I worked with here and in Chad three years ago and I got a photograph out at the training site. Again, I'm the one in the middle.....

In the afternoons we drive out in the traffic practicing the techniques and I always get a good view of the city that most tourists will never see. Douala is a fairly large city and not prosperous, but not impoverished in the way Chad was. We spend quite a bit of time driving down along the coast of the Bay of Guinea and Douala is a very large shipping port--I believe it is the largest in Africa outside the North African countries like Egypt and Libya. To the northeast is Mount Cameroon but unfortunately I've not been able to see it this trip. I am posting a photo I took of the bay from my hotel window when I was here three years ago. It is beautiful and has amazing sunsets as you can see.

This part of Cameroon is tropical with palm trees, heat and humidity. Tropical, though, means lush green plants and trees and when we get into the outskirts of Douala the countryside is also very beautiful. Anyway, enough rambling, tommorow it's back to work for four days then the 20-hour trip back to Houston......

I’m About Half-Way Through the Cameroon Job……

I made the Houston/Paris/Douala flight ok and have been in Cameroon, West Africa since November 28. This is my second trip to Cameroon and not the nicest of assignments and I’ll be here 3 ½ weeks returning home on December 19—a week before Christmas. It is very hot here, humidity remains just short of rain, and the mosquitoes are everywhere. In other words, it’s just like home in Texas!

The hotel here is ok—one of only four hotels in the city that are approved for Westerners (in my case, “American”) to stay in. Security is very tight here and the company I’m working with, a contractor to ExxonMobil, requires that all employees stay fifth floor or higher in the event of car bomb. There have been no major incidents here in Cameroon but everybody is very cautious and the company headquarters is literally a fortress with controlled access—very much like some of the embassies I’ve worked with over here. Street violence against foreigners is very prevalent here and I’ve been advised not to even go across the street from the hotel to the grocery store alone. I was assigned a code name and travel only in company chauffeured cars and after exchanging code names with the driver before getting inside the vehicle. Photography is officially banned in public here so I won’t have a lot of photos this trip.

My hotel room is clean and safe but there are no grounds or an exercise room so I’m restricted to the room although there is free wireless Internet in the lobby but whether or not I can connect varies from day to day. The medical and malaria requirements here are also pretty intensive. I had to sign a statement that I’m taking anti-malarial medications and agreeing to random urine testing not to check for alcohol or drugs, but to verify I am taking the medication. I was issued a very strong mosquito spray and another spray for my clothing which I spray on the collar and cuffs very morning. I am required to wear long-sleeved shirts here because of the mosquitoes. I was also issued a “malaria survival kit” to give my doctor or any hospital after I return home should I show any of the symptoms of malaria up to six months after return. I am one of the few Americans here at the hotel—most seem to be French (and some British) oilfield workers and not the best bunch. There are no “no-smoking” zones in Cameroon and there is a white cloud of cigarette smoke literally hanging everywhere in the hotel but my room, thankfully, seems to be clean of smell and smoke. Most of the westerners here are rough looking, heavily tattooed, always drinking at the bar and loud—in other words, European rednecks

My first five-day class went very well and I then did a two-day refresher course with four students I trained three years ago. Two were from Cameroon and two were from Chad and it was good to see familiar faces again but I have trouble realizing I’ve been doing overseas training for three years now. While this is not the best of assignments—in fact, I would call it a “primitive” assignment—I keep reminding myself that I’ve been doing neat jobs in places like England and Thailand and staying in five-star hotels so I was probably overdue for a reality assignment and this has not really been all that bad.


Eating food in Africa is always cause for concern and I have a kit of medications for intestinal problems but so far everything has been ok. The hotel food is pretty safe but I’m still cautious of certain foods but generally I’ve decided to “dive in” and eat most everything. Three years ago I was so afraid of the food in Chad that I lost sixteen pounds and starved myself until I was miserable then ended up getting sick as a dog anyway. For lunches we eat at a local restaurant called the London Belle but which features typical Cameroon food. Cameroonians eat a lot of chicken and fish which basically matches my personal diet. They do a lot of grilling here not unlike Texan BBQ. I don’t eat fruits here but the pineapples are supposedly very good and the vegetables are really good so long as they are peeled and rinsed in a chlorine/water solution first. A very popular Cameroon dish over here is called “Endoula” and is served with almost every meal. As best as I can tell, it is a combination of greens such as spinach, collards and mustard greens, cooked with onion and spices and has meats like chicken, beef, and fish mixed into it. Pork is eaten and served here but I stay away from it and since a considerable percentage of the population is Muslim you don’t see too much of it on the menus. I noticed the hotel did put a Christmas tree in the lobby yesterday. Ironically it is one of those white, snow-flocked trees. I doubt if there has ever been a recorded snowflake ever fall in Cameroon.

I’m off for one day today then work five days and will be off two days next week. The company has offered to have me chauffeured out into the countryside and possibly down to the beach and I’m probably going to take them up on it. Maybe once I’m out of the city it will be ok to take some pictures. The job has gone better than I expected so far but basically my routine is work, return to the hotel, shower, check emails, eat, read, go to bed and do it all over again the next morning.

WARNING!!! If You Find Pictures of Smiling Children, Vivid Colors, Furry Animals and Breathteaking Vistas Offensive.....Read No Further.....

Friday evening after we closed the clinic we had a dinner with the interpreters and said goodbye then flew out early morning to Lima. Eleven of us stayed over and continued on by flight to Cusco--a historic and very picturesque city high in the Andes Mountains.

I really liked Cusco. Although in recent years the tourist swarm to Machu Picchu has resulted in an enormous tourist trade here the city has handled it well and retained its local color and traditions. It is a very old city and has what is often called one of South America's most beautiful plazas and cathedrals. From what I've seen I'd tend to agree.....

We spent Saturday afternoon prowling around the old narrow streets, exploring the numerous churches, and shopping in the little stores around the plazas. We stayed at the Royal Inca Hotel which was really nice but most noticeably for the artwork throughout the hotel. We all drank the famous coca tea which is allegedly a good cure for altitude sickness and we had just flown from sea level to 11,000 feet.

On Sunday we took a bus about an hour up into the Andes to a village known for its weekend crafts market. Pisac is a popular tourist destination and frankly the crafts weren't all that great so I ended up spending the last hour wandering around taking pictures of the children. They dress in native clothing and pose for photos with baby animals or llamas in return for coins.

Pisac is located above the Sacred Valley and as we drove up we
stopped at a commune that displays traditional weaving and sewing and has an alpaca farm.

For some reason I had known that llamas and alpacas were related to camels but until I saw them closeup I didn't realize just how similar they were. There are seven varieties of alpaca with the most sought after species having hair so thin it takes eight strands woven together to equal the size of one human hair--which is why alpaca sweaters are so soft.....and expensive. We spent a couple of hours with a guide as he took us through the commune and fed and petted the animals. Despite their reputation for spitting they were very docile and loved to be hand-fed. The commune also featured a trail where women were stationed at different locations demonstrating the ancient weaving techniques. Peru is famous for its beautiful and colorful rugs, fabrics and mats.

Saturday night we ate at a restaurant on the main plaza overlooking the cathedral with the hills of Cusco in the background lit up with lights. It was an amazing sight and we had the traditional Peruvian music and dancers (remember Zamphir and the Andes pipe music?) On the buffet I tried alpaca meat but frankly, it wasn't very good.

Sunday we were up early and took a bus to the Cusco train station and then a 3 1/2 hour train ride up to Machu Picchu. The train was very modern and very comfortable. The grade was very steep and the speed was usually very slow so the group just relaxed, joked around and had a good time until we reached the summit.

I don't remember when I saw my first photo of Machu Picchu but I remember telling myself it was a place I wanted to visit one day. Usually those goals turn out to be less than expected but not so here.....Machu Picchu exceeded all my expectations.

We had an excellent guide who walked us through the ruins and explained the known facts of the ancient culture here. Like Stonehenge in England, so much is unexplained here but modern science has confirmed the Incas here had an uncanny knowledge of the solar system and the movements of the sun and moon.

Machu Picchu is one of those world heritage sites that is being "loved to death" by tourists but unlike at Angkor Wat in Cambodia the Peruvian government is trying to regulate visitation. Other than the train, the only access is through the Inca Hiking Trail so regulating the number of trains each day has eased the crowding. It is very well planned--each guide follows a different route through the ruins so you meet up with a lot of other tourists as you are walking but the important places usually only have one group at a time.

We spent three hours on the tour which can be pretty challenging for a flatlander like myself then we had an hour to prowl on our own. Our group decided to stay together and we climbed up to the very top of the ruins to the stone building thought to be a guard house. It is here that all the "calendar" and "screensaver" photos are taken and I got some great pictures. It took us about an hour to do that so when we got back to the train station we grabbed a quick lunch and then rode the train back down the mountain to Cusco.

We caught an early morning flight back to Lima on Monday and spent several hours resting up. We stayed at a really nice youth hostel in the Lima suburb of Miraflores about three blocks from the Pacific ocean. Someone found an American-style mall on the ocean that had a Tony Roma's and we all had rib dinners overlooking the ocean. We then caught a midnight flight back to Houston and split up our different directions.

But as we were leaving the hostel for the airport a bus load of people in medical scrubs were unloading their luggage to check into the hostel. Turned out they were a group of 57 people on a medical mission going up into the mountains to provide services to some poor village.....

When I got back to Houston I read where a 7.7 earthquake had hit northern Chile. I guess the need for assistance will not end soon......

Peru Was the Highlight of a Banner Year So Far.....

I just finished the eleven-day trip to Peru and while visiting this area has long been a dream of mine, the actual trip exceeded even my highest expectations. To say it was life-changing would not be overly dramatic. Because there is so much to report, I'm going to divide it into two sections: most importantly the medical clinic work the first week and secondly, the side trip to Cusco, Pisac and Machu Picchu.

We flew into Lima on Saturday, November 3 arriving late and spending the night at the airport before an early morning flight on LAN Airlines north to the city of Piura. We had a group of seventeen including two MD's, one dentist who was joined by two Peruvian dentists, a pharmacist, two Registered Nurses and several aides. We didn't have an optometrist this trip and I ended up doing many of the eye functions including testing for distance, reading, prescribing lenses, and assembling the eyeglasses. We were helped by a number of local university students who served as excellent interpreters but did anything else we needed such as holding flashlights for the dentists to pull teeth and helping the doctors. We had three helping us with the eye clinic and they were quickly able to test as well as interpret.

When our medicines and supplies were late reaching us by truck from the Lima airport, we had Sunday free to explore Piura which is located in the extreme Northwest corner of Peru very near the border of Ecuador. It is the capital of this region and has a population of about 400,000 and it was here that Spanish Conqueror Francisco Pizarro founded the first Spanish city in South America, San Miguel de Piura, in 1532.

It is a clean city with good restaurants and we all felt safe walking around. Like all Peruvian cities it has a huge church and plaza. Although the region is barren and desolate--almost desert--we all came to really like the city and were sad to leave it. We did leave, however, every morning for a 1 hour 15 minute bumpy bus ride up into the countryside to an isolated, impoverished village named Viviate (you can't even Google it). There is sporadic electricity but it only operates a few hours a day if at all and on no regular schedule. The bus ride to Viviate was literally a ride back in time--people were traveling by foot or on donkey and pulling carts loaded with things to barter.

There is a small clinic with nurse here but the emphasis is mostly on first aid and childbirth and we were reportedly the first medical group to visit the village in nearly three years and as a result there was a large line waiting when we arrived Monday morning. We held the clinic in the local school which was walled with a metal fence and when we left each evening there were massive lines still waiting and they would wait out in the open all night with their children so as not to lose their places in line. It hurt to leave them there at night but was so rewarding to return in the morning when they would cheer, wave and try to touch us as we got off the bus.

Americans really have no concept as to how fortunate they are to have what we have in a world that is so decimated by poverty and disease.

I think the dental clinic was probably the most sought after service. The people have terrible teeth and to kill the pain they often chew coca leaves to deaden them while the problems continue to deteriorate. The three dentists set up office in one of the classrooms with one old pre-WWII dental chair, a fold-back beach chair, and a straight backed wooden chair. The clients had absolutely no privacy and would be seated, charted, given pain killer and then wait with a paper cup until the gums were dead enough for the teeth to be pulled. As assistant would hold a flashlight for the dentist (something I did several times) and the patient would spit blood into the paper cup. There was no running water available for drinking, cleaning or rinsing. Initially the dentists tried to pull only a couple of teeth at a session but the lines were so long the patients were begging for all their bad teeth to be extracted at one time. On Wednesday our Canadian dentist reported he was still receiving patients at 3:00 pm who had spent the previous night outside waiting in line!

We had a very effective method of cold sterilizing the equipment with disinfecting solutions but you can imagine by early morning there would be blood on everything and the place must have looked intimidating to the patients coming it but all they wanted was relief from their teeth pains. One of my most enduring memories of the dental clinic was around mid week when I went in and there was a little girl of about 7 or 8 in the brown leather chair. She had her bib chained around her neck and was holding her spit cup but hadn't been given a shot yet and was waiting for the dentist to see her. She looked so small and all alone but when I winked at her she broke into the biggest smile. No telling how long she had waited outside and no matter how intimidating the clinic must have looked to her, she was getting her teeth fixed and that was all that mattered. That night she almost certainly had to deal with the pain by taking Advil in a home with a dirt floor and no electricity but she had one of the prettiest smiles I've ever seen.

We had two MD's and they worked in separate classrooms and saw anybody with any kind of problem. There were a considerable number of pregnant mothers wanting prenatal checkups, lots of babies with assorted issues, and adults with a litany of medical problems. We found a high incidence of hypertension and couldn't treat it other than counseling since any medications we would hand out could not be renewed once we left. Both MD's were absolutely great, patient, and resourceful. One of the more unusual wounds we treated involved a man who was riding his donkey when a drunk motorcycle rider hit him and really messed up his leg.


We had an elderly man come in with a tumor right above his left eye that had grown to the size of a golf ball. The doctor deadened it and in the photo with the white sheet covering the man's face, the trumor was removed and the cut stitched. He looked a little rough afterward but was happy as could be because he could now open his left eye. His wife stood in the corner throughout the whole procedure crying, praying and crossing herself but when they removed the sheet from his face she knelt down and started praying silently.

For many of the children it was literally their first trip to the doctor and they reacted differently from child to child. Some were terrified while others were curious. One little girl in the adjacent picture was both--very cautious while also playing with the stethoscope. The treatment must not have been too painful because when it was over she leaned forward and kissed the doctor on the cheek. Even more telling, I think, is the mother's face. She's proud her daughter got to see the doctor and happy to find out she's healthy. These scenes happened all day long for five straight days. We left early, took no breaks and a short lunch and worked usually until 5:30 or 6:00 pm before the long bus ride back to Piura where we arrived exhausted but feeling very rewarded.
I worked in the eye clinic and we had the largest lines and served the most people because we didn't have the issues the medical doctors and dentists had. We tested for distance glasses but mostly we tested for and dispensed reading glasses. Without electricity the elderly in particular have the most problems seeing close up--usually reading or sewing. We tested one 94-year-old woman and gave her the strongest reading lenses we had to help her thread the needle when she was sewing. Another older woman came in and complained she couldn't read her Bible so we worked with her and when I gave

her a mid-strength set of reading glasses she literally sucked in her breath--she hadn't known just how bad her eyes were. You need to remember she had stood in line in the hot sun for probably at least ten hours to get these glasses and we ended up finding a pair of really strong lenses that she seemed most comfortable with and she left as happy as anyone I saw during the four days we dispensed eyeglasses. The following day there was a commotion outside and they thought she was jumping line (which we had to monitor VERY closely) but she had come back with her Bible and insisted on reading some verses to us to show us the glasses were working. We took a break, listened to her, and shared her happiness. Before we got her out of there she insisted on praying for all of us which, of course, was always welcome.

The children are so beautiful in Peru and one very small little girl with big black eyes came in with her mother. She was complaining of headaches at school and was holding her books too close to her face and squinting so we found her a low-strength lens that seemed to make reading easier for her. We had her read to us and the mother was obviously so happy for her. I had her go up to the blackboard and write her name and I thought the mother was going to explode with pride. I was very pleasantly surprised with the literacy rate in this poor village--the very young and the elderly all seemed to have fundamental basic reading abilities.

Cataracts were a big problem here and we couldn't do anything about them. Several had been diagnosed but couldn't afford the money to have them corrected. We had an old man with really bad case of cataracts and all we could do was let him try on glasses until he "thought" he could see a little better. We assembled the glasses for him and he stumbled over to the dental clinic and announced to his wife that "he could see the children on the playground!!!"

So we dispensed glasses, the nurses triaged, the doctors and dentists treated and the pharmacist dispensed medicine--in other words were were for one week a real medical clinic. The local school shut down for one week just so we could use the facility. In the end we dispensed over 1025 pair of glasses, the doctors saw and treated over 500 patients and the dentists treated over 300 people.

We had a long line waiting for us when we arrived Monday morning and they never went away. We used the wristband system of placement and made no exceptions about letting anybody cut to the front for any reason rather than obvious heart attack or childbirth. In an event I'll probably never forget, an elderly man who could hardly stand or walk showed up but the line was almost all the way around the school. We offered to give him a number and a chair he could use in line but wouldn't let him get in front of the others who had been waiting. One women with three children had been in line the afternoon before and hadn't made it inside so she waited with her three girls outside all night and was near the entrance gate when the old man came up. She said she wanted her children to go in first but she gave her spot to the man. That's a definition of "compassion" you don't encounter very often!!!

As the week neared Friday the lines got longer and longer but the people were so polite and appreciative. Friday morning we quit giving out wristbands and announced we were going to be closing the clinic. Those who were left out were obviously very upset and at one point we called the police in just to monitor the situation. As we did close, we loaded up the bus and those desperate to get in watched as we left. We were really dreading this moment but as we drove off, they all began applauding us even though they didn't get treated.

So say this experience was rewarding is an understatement........

Guess Who I Ran Into on the Beach Today......

I did walk along the beach today and just killed time relaxing. Around one curve in the beach, however, I came across an elephant. The owner wanted about 50 cents for a photograph and I obliged him. Thai elephants are descendents from Indian elephants and are generally much smaller and more docile than African species. This one was a tusk less female which probably means she is too old to work anymore so now she just wanders around the beach getting her picture taken. Elephants are common in this area, however, and it is a growing problem that when the owner can no longer take care of them they lead them into Bangkok and abandon them. Last time I was here one had been abandoned and had panicked running along the sidewalk tearing up vending stalls and scattering the locals. Sounds funny but the police had to shoot and kill that one.

The tsunami several years ago that devastated Thailand only caused very high tides here but further south it destroyed entire villages and I remember seeing photos of the elephants being used to walk out into the water and retrieve bodies. They are still used for heavy moving and were very useful after the tsunami in removing trees and collapsed buildings to retrieve survivors and even recover victims. This old girl today looked bored with it all but probably doesn’t have all that rough of a life.

These jobs with private transport companies are usually very rewarding and it’s sometimes kind of sad to wrap them up and this was particularly a good job so it was mixed feelings when we finished today. I had three transport drivers and one translator and all four went to great lengths to make my stay a good one.

I arrived on Saturday and on Sunday one of the students and the translator (I found out later she was his girl friend) picked me up and we drove to an island off the beach and visited a Buddhist temple. There was also a Chinese temple on the island and I’m including a picture of the two of them in front of it.

I am working the next two days for a company called Air Products and they picked me up after class today and drove me nearly two hours further south to Rayong which is also on the beach and it an industrial, not tourist, location. Like in Sriracha, the hotel here is first class and almost out of place in the city which is mostly run down and dirty—a typical industrial port town.

I do two days work here and it will be refresher work with the students I had in Pattaya a year and a half ago so I will know them and it should be fun to see them again. Then, Thursday night it’s back to Bangkok and Friday morning I fly back to the States…..

Traveled Two Hours South of Bangkok Today…

…..and will spend the weekend here and work two days before going even further south to Rayong. The week in Bangkok went well and the American Embassy job went reasonably well for working with the U.S. Government. I stayed at the Conrad Hilton about two blocks from the embassy and each morning I walked to work along sidewalks filled with Thais; street vendors with the hot, spicy smells; Asian music blaring from the taxis—and it was easy to really just get absorbed in the experience of being over here.

I had five students—three Thais, one from East Timor, and one from Hong Kong who spoke almost no English. We got along well and on Thursday took a break and visited one of the temples here. When the week was over everyone seemed to have become friends and it’s always a little sad to wrap it up.

I've just learned the job in Cameroon has been approved so I'll be leaving a couple of days after Thanksgiving and returning four days before Christmas. I've really got mixed feelings about this job--Cameroon is not a fun place to spend nearly a full month. I was thinking about this past year this afternoon and got to calculating--I will have spent 4 1/2 months overseas during 2007. From October 26 through November 26 alone I will have visited five Continents (Asia, North America, South America, Europe and Africa). And while I'm really looking forward to the trip to Peru next month, I'm also very tired physically but all this travel has really enriched my life in ways I never dreamed possible so I'm deternined to keep doing it as long as I can and I still enjoy it.

I took a taxi to Sriracha this morning and the hotel here is nice, but certainly not as luxurious as the Hilton in Bangkok. It is a fairly large town located right on the coast and this afternoon I walked around the beach. This is not a tourist area and is very industrial—I’m working with a trucking company here this week. It is much like Pasadena or Freeport in Texas but more seaport oriented—ship building, salvage, ferrying, etc. While it’s not scenic, it’s interesting because I’ve not seen another Westerner here all day. The hotel seems to have a lot of Japanese here and the Thais do not speak very much English—some don’t speak any which suggests this really is off the tourist path.

I ate supper at the hotel tonight and the food here is authentic Thai—nothing watered down but red hot with those deadly little Thai peppers. I love my food hot but I have to be very careful here but still, I ordered off the spicy menu and loved everything they brought me.

While I was walking around this afternoon I wandered over a bridge to a small island that has been turned into a park and it was filled with families—again with the music, food and smells. The small island is actually a rock protruding from the ocean and at the top of the rock, a small mountain, there is a Buddhist temple. I walked around the island but didn’t climb the mountain since I didn’t know if it was allowed due to being a religious temple. Still, it was a fun trip and this evening I went to a night bazaar across from the hotel. It’s evidently a weekend thing and is lit up like carnival. It was packed with people shopping but there wasn’t anything I was shopping for—there really doesn’t seem to be a tourist trade here at all.

Tomorrow I meet my contact here—an Australian and he should be able to give me some suggestions on things to visit and see the short time I’m here.

I'm including here a picture of the famous, or infamous, Thai taxi that's affectionately referred to as a tuk-tuk taxi. They are literally everywhere and Bangkok has them on every corner. This photo was taken here today and you can see they pack them full of fares. To wrap up this blog entry I'm attaching a short video of the infamous Bangkok traffic when the light turns green....

While We Were on the Road Today.....

.....we stopped at one of the many Buddhist temples here in Bangkok and walked around. I know, I was getting paid for it, but somebody has to do it. Anyway, here are some photos I shot of the figurines which I think the Thais are especially good at creating:

This is a Little More Luxury Than I’m Used To……

I made it back over here basically ok but somewhat worse for wear…the trip was 31 hours—air and airport layovers—and I’m still shaking off jet lag on Wednesday. The Conrad Hotel here is probably the best I’ve ever stayed at…..compliments of the U.S. State Department and the toilet seats may have actually cost $250 at this place. The class is going ok with some major language problems but good students. Three are from Thailand, one is from Hong Kong and the fifth is from East Timor and none really speak English very well.
I’m really comfortable riding the overhead transit system here and have been going out every evening to find a place to eat. This afternoon I went over to a nearby area and visited the Erawan Shrine which isn’t very large or impressive but is one of the oldest “spirit houses” in Bangkok. Located in the banking district and surrounded by towering chrome and glass skyscrapers, it looks so out of place but is very important to the Thai people. A Hindu shrine, it is also worshiped by Buddhists and tradition has it that the shrine should be respected by dancers and worshipers around the clock so there will always be a small dancing group there. In the early morning hours it might only be a single dancer but somebody will always be there. These are not professional dancers or musicians—they are volunteers and while the quality may not be that great the tradition of 24/7 is something very unusual and today I shot a short video clip. Click twice on the triangle in the lower left corner—the volume may be high but can be adjusted on the right lower corner. I haven’t figured out yet how to reduce the volume on my camera.
The Thais are normally a very laid back, peaceful people but they take their king and their religion very seriously. A couple of years a man thought to have been mentally deranged attacked the shrine with a hammer and the crowd stomped him to death before the police could get there.
I also visited the Victory Monument located in the middle of a huge traffic circle right at rush hour so I didn’t get very close but it represents a past victory over Cambodia and is obviously very important to the Thais.
This weekend I travel to Chon Buri to the south of Bangkon on the seacoast for two days work with a transport company then travel even further south to a village called Rayong to work with Bangkok Industrial Gas. So far it’s been a typically great Thailand trip……

Looks Like the Year is Going to Finish With the Throttle Wide Open…...

I've been home from Scotland nearly six weeks now so it must be time to hit the road again and I leave October 12 for a two week trip to Thailand. I'll be working one week for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok then moving to the southeast at a coastal town named Sriracha to do a two-day job with a transport company and finishing up with a two-day job even further inland at a village named Rayong. As it's panning out, this will be a two-week job.

The medical mission trip to Peru is ticketed and the itinerary is set--very subject to change. We are basically a Texas-based group this trip and will meet at Houston for a flight to Lima on November 3. There are seventeen of us and I understand I'm not the only first-timer so we will basically be meeting at the airport for the first time. From Lima we will be flying north to the city of Piura near the Bolivian border and will be spending the week at a hotel there then commuting each day to the small village of Vivate. At Vivate they will convert the local school into a medical clinic for five days and we will be providing medical, dental and optical services for the villagers. I don't know what I'll be doing but it may involve assembling eye glasses, cleaning dental instruments, maintaining crowd control or any number of other things. I really anticipate this will be a meaningful week and am looking forward to it.

After we close the clinic we will be flying back to Lima where about half of us will stay over and catch a plane to Cusco, high in the Andes Mountains. From there we will take a train to Pisac, a Peruvian village in the Sacred Valley on the Urubamba River with a famous craft market. From there we will spend a day at the Machu Picchu world heritage site before returning to Lima and Houston.

In December, I am tentatively scheduled for a 3 1/2 week job in West Africa in Cameroon to work with the Cameroon-Chad Oil Transport Company (COTCO)--a company I've worked with in the past both in Cameroon and Chad. I will be located in Douala and from my past experience, it’s a hardship location, but at least I'll know what to expect this time. As it's scheduled right now, I would be leaving immediately after Thanksgiving and returning three days before Christmas. There's an outside chance the job might be postponed until January but either way, it will be the end of a very unusual year work wise…..

OK, Looking Back, I Guess Lancaster Isn't the Only Thing That's Changed......

Here's a copy of my 1972 Lancaster University student card and a copy of the photo on my International Driver's License today.

I made it home safely last night and it was a very good trip. Looking back the four weeks went very quickly and I can honestly say there wasn't one single negative person or event that took place--something that's unusual for an extended job overseas. From the time I arrived in Southampton to the very south with it's driving wind and rains until I left Edinburgh in the north four hours late because of driving wind and rains, I had amazingly beautiful weather in between.

Internet access was very expensive over there--as much as $20/hour so I didn't post as many photos as I'd hoped but I did get to see and do a lot. At Southampton I came across the oldest bowling green in Britain--dated 1299. They bowl small leather balls across beautifully manicured grass fields and I stepped inside and was quickly escorted out by security so I guess they don't like photos being taken (or maybe they don't like Yanks!). The memorials to the Mayflower and Titanic were impressive but I think I remember most the numerous memorials around the town dedicated to American soldiers who left here on D-Day. Later, at Weston, I would take a ride on one of the small craft that took part in that invasion and, believe me, it couldn't have been a pleasant ride. In Chelmsford, I talked with some WWII paratroopers who also took place in the D-Day Invasion but not by sea, rather by air when they parachuted into Holland.

But back in Southampton, they have a beautifully-preserved medieval wall and a pathway along it from the center of town to the sea and I walked along it several times despite the weather. I also visited the Maritime Museum with its tribute to the Titanic and stopped by the meeting hall where the pilgrims met and prayed before departing here in the Mayflower. They had to lay in again at Portsmith after departing and that city is often listed as the point of departure but Southampton is the true port from which our forefathers made that foolhardy trip.

Leaving Southampton, I was still getting used to the Volkswagen mini-bus and also to driving on the left-hand side of the road but I found my way up through Amesbury and to the Stonehenge site. Most people express disappointment with Stonehenge because it's well protected but not developed as a historical site. Frankly that's what I liked most about it.

From Stonehenge I drove east and caught the M-25 motorway (their version of Interstate) around London and then even further east to the old city of Chelmsford. I was beginning to get the hang of British roads and highway markers and found the hotel easily. It was an old hotel, but a very pleasant one. It had been built in the 1800s when Britain had a "closet tax" in which homes and hotels were taxed by the number of closets in the bedrooms ( guess their way of maintaining a population census count). As a result, hotels didn't have closets but used beautiful old wooden wardrobes, or "clothes cabinets." When the "closet tax" was abolished by Parliament most homes and hotels built in closets and that's why antique stores in America seem to have an abundance of old English wardrobes for sale.

Chelmsford was hosting the International Boy Scout Jamboree while I was there and there were literally thousands of Scouts from around the world roaming around town. I was surprised at some of the places they were from--China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan--places you wouldn't normally think would be open to Scouting. According to the BBC reports that week there were no boundaries within the campsite--camps blended into each other regardless of the nationalities and everybody was getting along fine. They also reported that Palestinian scouts couldn't afford to attend so the Israeli troops had included several of them in their contingents. Everywhere you went they were laughing, joking and taking pictures of each other. Kinda makes you wonder if they shouldn't be running the world instead of the current bunch of idiots.

It was also at Chelmsford that I had the very unusual experience with the military veterans. Each year they hold a memorial ceremony behind the local museum in the rose garden and I happened to be there this year. It was a brief ceremony and the number of attendees gets smaller each year. Afterwards I talked with them and they gave me a unit brochure and invited me inside the museum for their reception. These guys had parachuted into Holland in the midst of heavy anti-aircraft fire at a time when parachutes were still an experimental technology. As we talked, I started searching through the old photos on my digital camera and still had some from the British cemetery at the River Kwai in Thailand. It was really something to see them pass the camera around to each other looking at the photos and talking about someone they had known who hadn't returned from the Burma Campaign.

The Chelmsford job was especially good, the weather beautiful, and I was a little sad to wrap it up but I made the trip back around London on the motorway and headed back west--as far west as you can go at that point past Bath and Bristol to Weston-super-Mare. At first I didn't like the place--too commercial, touristy, and expensive. But here, too, I had a great group in the training program and we began venturing away from the beachfront and found neat little villages--very, very old villages--and I began warming up to the area. One of those villages was Uphill Village south of Weston and we drove by the old church one day and I was fascinated.

On Tuesday of that week two other instructors from my company who were training in Bristol drove over and we had supper. We drove back to Uphill and climbed the rock to visit the church there and then ate in one of the pubs below. I ended up going back there two more times by myself later that week. I've posted photos of the church and documented my search for Captain Morgan's grave, but the area above the village was so beautiful I've included one more. I remember one subsequent evening I climbed up there and walked through the grass and sheep to the bluff overlooking the ocean and sat for probably half an hour with the wind blowing. If I turned my head one way, the wind roared like a train engine across my ears but if I turned my head sideways to the wind it was almost complete silence. Reportedly over the years many a herdsman on the bogs and moors went crazy because of the incessant wind but for the half hour or so I was there it was a welcome relief from the rest of the world.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to visit Bath or Bristol and, like at Southampton and Chelmsford, I was a little sad to leave at the end of the week but I was also excited about the prospect of returning to the university campus where I had lived for a year in the early 70s. Unfortunately my blog entry seems to have given the impression the trip to Lancaster was extremely depressing and it wasn't--it just wasn't what I remembered. It was good to walk around the campus again but a little distressing to recall that when I was there, there were no laptop computers, cell phones, Internet or e-mails. Then I remembered that while I was there this trip I didn't have any of those either and guess what, I made it just fine.

Like I said earlier, I found my old graduate dissertation in the library--it was the original copy since I did it on a manual typewriter with three carbon copies (they didn't have photocopying machines back then either. It was kind of gratifying to find the library still had the copy on file after all these years but, looking in the card catalogue (computerized, which they didn't have back then) I noticed it wasn't exactly shelved beside Shakespeare or Bronte. Looking back though, it had a lot to do with my later desire to write.....

Like in the old days, I went into the "underground" below Alexandria Square and caught a double-decker bus into Lancaster. Since I was working for the national bus company this trip I had a free pass anywhere in Britain and this was the first time I used it. Lancaster is an old, historic city and for the first time, I walked up above the city and visited the cathedral. I do remember the Lancaster Canal--English cities for hundreds of years have relied on a series of small, narrow canals (usually lined with stone walls on the sides) in which small "punts" could

travel from village to village to trade goods. They've been preserved and today private charters can take you on them at various locations. I remember renting a punt years ago and "poleing" down to Heysham village through the farmlands. The Lancaster Canal runs along the cathedral and while I was there I could hear an extended tolling of the cathedral bells. They were beautiful but I noticed how long they were being played. I ended up taking a short video clip of the cathedral and the canal with the music in the background. It was beautiful......double-click on the triangle in the lower left corner to listen.

On a side note, I was told that when the Lancaster citizens complained about the Muslim community using loud speakers six times a day to call worship services, the response was that if the broadcasts to worship were banned the cathedral bells would also have to be silenced since they were also calls to worship. So I guess it's in litigation right now and the twelve giant bells might become illegal to ring. Personally, I think they should let the Boy Scouts sort it out--of course they'd probably blare rock music from the belfry six times a day. And I think they ought to let the old paratroopers enforce the rules--they'd probably tear those computer labs out of the university and put the pubs back in!!! How did the world get this messed up?

The bells kept ringing so long I finally walked over to an into the cathedral and noticed somebody going through a small stone doorway and up a spiral staircase. Since the door wasn't blocked, I went up it too and climbed a long time up a very narrow staircase to what ended up being the belfry of the cathedral. There, twelve people were pulling the ropes that rang the twelve giant bells and they were having a practice session which is why the ringing seemed to go on forever. Several other people were watching so I didn't feel out of place but the light was very low in the room and I didn't feel comfortable taking a flash photograph. Still, it was very interesting to watch twelve synchronized bells being rung.

Back in Lancaster I wandered around town looking for old landmarks but didn't find any and took a bus to the seashore town of Morecambe where we lived in a row house for three months in 1972 until the university had a vacancy in one of the colleges on campus. Morecambe has been a seaside resort for the British in mid-England for centuries but today the old multicolored brick promenade has been torn up and amusement parks built along the seawall. The old, old row houses where so many students lived in the 70s have mostly been torn down and more expensive tourist accommodations built. For some reason, and I really don't know why, I remembered the address where we lived and with a little effort I found it. That particular row house is still there and was one of the few old landmarks I could recall.

From Lancaster on Sunday morning I headed north to Glasgow and then over to Livingston, about 13 miles west of Edinburgh. It had started drizzling at Lancaster and continued into the early week then the weather turned beautiful but very cold--even the Scots were complaining about the "early winter." Like Weston, Livingston was a basically uninteresting, boring "new" town developed after WWII. But here, too, I had a good group and we got out of town into the villages and countryside and if you haven't seen Scotland--it's everything the calendar pictures suggest it is. They kept telling me that this isn't "real" Scotland and that I needed to see the highlands but I was very impressed with the scenery here. One day we drove up north to the Firth of Forth bay with it's old historic bridge and quaint fishing villages. Another day we drove into Edinburgh and along the base of the rock outcrop on which the castle is built. We drove around the Scottish Parliament which had a yellow flag flying above it meaning a member of the Royal Family was there. On Friday we finished early and since I was leaving the next morning, I used my bus pass to go into Edinburgh and walked up the "Royal Mile"--a street of historic shops and buildings and leading into the castle.

The castle is really something....it's not a true "castle" in the classical sense of drawbridges, ramparts and towers...but more of a fortress on top of a really imposing rock bluff overlooking the city. Of course it's very, very old and much today is rebuilt but I spent nearly four hours prowling around the nooks and corners and winding narrow staircases. This place predates the Crusades and they aren't apologetic about it....statues of knights are everywhere. I'm particularly interested in ancient cannons and this place has a treasury of them so I spent a lot of time prowling around courtyards looking for them. There is also a beautiful War Memorial for Scottish soldiers who have fallen in battles over the centuries and the beautiful St. Margaret's Chapel--the oldest building in the castle complex and all of Edinburgh. Built around 1124 in Norman architectural style it is very small but impressive.

Saturday morning I flew out four hours late because of the rain and wind...but made a later connection in Newark and arrived in Houston late Saturday night.

It was an excellent trip and adventure......