The Man With the Air Conditioner on his Head, Shot at Us

One fine day. Uganda. 1997.
‘Just for your information’, says Lionel on his mobile phone from Brazzaville.. On the other side of the line, in Kampala, Uganda, I smile. I love Lionel. His French accent seeps through his English.

“Just for your information, I drove back from the airport a few minutes ago. Dropped off one of our staff. On the way back, I saw some troops on the street. There was machine gunfire here and there. Not much, but it does not seem normal. I am going back to the hotel, and will let you know what’s happening.”

As I put the phone down, I look at Mats, sitting at his desk on my left. We have an open space office. No walls, so everyone can see everyone else. And hear everyone else. Mats puts his chin up, and smiles as if saying “And… what news from Lionel?”.
“Dunno… Gunfire in Brazzaville town. He’s going back to his hotel.”

Through the years in this ‘humanitarian business’, Lionel developed a sixth sense for danger. Like many of us. I don’t doubt his judgment. He is often right. Even though the circumstances do not really confirm his sensing: Congo – to avoid confusion with the Democratic Republic of Congo, we call it Congo Brazzaville -, has been quite stable since many years. Even through the democratic elections five years ago, where the new president, Lissouba, was elected after 28 years of one-party rule of strongman Sassou-Nguesso.

French paratroupers evacuating civilians from BrazzavilleLionel calls me every day. He is blocked in the hotel. What initially looked like sporadic gunfire developed into a full scale civil war. Brazzaville was up in flames as the former dictator Sassou-Nguesso and his Cobra militia, backed up by mercenaries and the Angola army, tried to oust the government. The French paratroopers stationed on the outskirts of the city had secured the hotel which was now the camping place for all expatriates who fled their homes and businesses. A week or so later, all drive to the airport in a convoy and again under the protection of the French paratroopers, get evacuated.

Since then, we heard little news other than what we see on CNN and BBC World.. Brazzaville burns. Angolan MIG fighter planes fly over the city and seem to drop bombs randomly over the city center. Several competing militia control different parts of Brazzaville, looting, burning and raping. What seemed a stable country one day, is burnt to ashes in a civil war, the next day. How many times have we not seen this, especially in Africa? The victims in the end, are still the ‘ordinary people’. When there is an armed conflict, the –often already weak- economy comes to a standstill. Schools close. Hospitals are burnt down. Shops are looted. Fields, lush with abundant green crops, are left unattended and rot, leaving behind a starving population.

Four weeks later, in a ferry crossing the Congo River.
The ferryboat is cramped with Congolese, who fled the fighting a few weeks ago and now try to go back home. We find a spot on the upper deck, looking at Kinshasa on one side of the Congo river, and Brazzaville on the other. We were safe in Kinshasa, but crossing a river, just a few miles wide, will bring us in a totally different world. Kinshasa behind us was buzzing with activity, as it always is. But looking ahead, we don’t see much movement in Brazzaville, apart from the plumes of smoke raising slowly.
We received security clearance for twelve hours to go to our -probably looted- office, save whatever equipment we can save, and set up a new office within the compound of Unicef, in the center of town. Mats and I are one of the first foreigners to enter the city after the civil war. God knows what we will find… Missions like these are always interesting, get the adrenaline pumping, but at the same time, we are aware of the dangers. The swollen cadavers floating by on the water, certainly remind us of it.

At the ferry docks, one crowd tries to get onto the ferry before the other crowd could step off, resulting in a massive whirl of people, wooden crates with chickens, huge stacks of clothes, suitcases and bags. Kids loose their mums and start crying, women start shouting. Here and there some guys get punched on the nose. When we finally get off, a guy comes to us, wearing a blue UN helmet, a flack jacket with “UN Security” in big letters and on old Kalashnikov in his hand. He indicates us to follow him, but does not say a word. A car is waiting, with a local driver. Big UN marks on the side and a while flag in front.
As we drive on the road to town, we pass the crowd which just got off the ferry, and then… not a living soul anymore.

A ghost town. And a guy with an air conditioner on his head.
There are no other words to describe what we see as we drive slowly through the streets of Brazzaville, other than “A ghost town”. The streets are empty of anything alive. Trash everywhere. Bricks, steel pipes, burnt machinery, carcasses of cars. The doors of the buildings are forced open. Most windows are broken, marked with black traces of soot. All buildings are empty. Completely empty. It looks like the looting was pretty thorough. Everything that could be removed, seemed to be removed.. The car stops at a big crossroad in the center of town. This is typically a spot where militia would fight for the control, so they can ask bribes from the drivers trying to get through or block the movement of other fighting parties. A tall building stands in silence in front of us. I guess it was a hotel up to a few weeks ago. The outside surface is covered with mirror glass, most of it broken. Curtains swing out of the windows and move slightly in the wind. There are bullet holes and traces of impacts from grenades all over the walls of what once was a fancy hotel entrance.
We open the car windows a bit to listen for gunfire. There is none close by, but we clearly hear some shots being fired from an automatic rifle quite a bit further away. It is answered by a rakarakaraka of a machine gun. Only for a few seconds, and then silence again.
We drive forward slowly, and branch into one of the main avenues. Silence. Nothing but the soft crackling sound of our tires crashing broken glass scattered on the road. I hope we don’t get a flat tire. Would not want to get out of the car at this moment.

All of a sudden, a guy comes running from a small side street. He wears ragged camouflage pants. His naked upper body gleams with sweat. He carries a big air conditioner on his head, wires dangling off his back. We hit the brakes and stop. For a second, he looks at us with wild eyes. We look at him. In a flash, one of his hands lets go of the aircon, and we see him grab a machine gun slung over his shoulder. The driver hits the gas pedal as the looter turns towards us, raising his gun with one hand, still holding on to the air conditioner with the other. We speed into a side street, while we hear the crackling gun fire of the Kalashnikov. We don’t look back, and keep on driving. The bullets did not hit us. Maybe he just shot in the air to scare us.

After half an hour, we arrive in our office. Well, what remains of it. In the building, we have to climb over heaps of papers, smashed furniture and curtain rags spread over the ground. Everything of value is gone. No trace anymore of the equipment Lionel has installed a few weeks ago. Through a hatch, Mats and I climb onto the roof. The antennae and the mast is still there. We carefully shuffle over the corrugated panels and take the mast down. Single gunshots in a distance. Each time, instinctively, I pull my head down. It is an awkward sound. Absolute silence, and then a gunshot. And then nothing anymore.

I can not hear you, the shooting is too loud!
In the afternoon, we install the equipment we brought from Kinshasa in the UNICEF office compound. As by a miracle, their compound was left intact. It even has electricity from a generator. We brief the staff on the use of the newly kitted equipment and go back to the car, parked inside the compound, next to the fence made of 3 meter high rusted thin corrugated plates. We call our Kinshasa office over the car’s radio, to tell them we are about to wrap up, and will be making our way back to the ferry soon. Suddenly, we hear voices on the street, right outside of the fence, just two meters away from where we are sitting in the car, talking on the radio. We turn down the volume of the radio, as the voices of several men on the other side of the fence gets louder. We hear the crickcrack of a gun being loaded. There is banging on the corrugated fence. Someone is being smashed against it. It is as if we are sitting right next to the skirmish. And we are, just separated by the thin fence. One voice starts crying fanatically, as in panic. Pleading. The other voices keep pounding. Someone laughs. Several machine guns crackle, and then there is silence again. Some mumbling. The sound of something being dragged away. And then.. nothing anymore…
It all happened in less than a minute. Mats and I are still sitting in the car. We have not moved an inch. Mats still holds the microphone close to his mouth, as when he interrupted his radio conversation, just a minute ago. During that minute, a corrugated fence of just a few millimeters thick, had separated life from death. Those that were fortunate enough to continue living, and those who were not.
This time, we were lucky. We were at the right side of the fence. Once again. I wonder ‘when our luck is going to run out?’. When are we going to be at the wrong side of the fence?

Postscriptum: six years later.
We –Tine, the kids, me - are driving back to Belgium from our skiing holiday in Italy. We just pulled off the highway, on the outskirts of Luxembourg, to get gas. As I put the nozzle into the tank, my mobile phone rings. It is Arthur. On mission in Brazzaville together with Karen.
“I know you are on holiday, but Mats in Dubai is busy on the phone with the guys in Iran. Just to let you know the mobile phone network over here in Brazzaville goes up and down. And there is some shooting in town. We were supposed to fly out tonight, but we’re not risking to drive to the airport. We are staying put in the hotel. Just for your information…”
Somewhere history repeats itself. And it will continue repeating itself, probably until the world learns from its mistakes.

Top picture: copyright Reuters, picture evacuation courtesy L.Marre


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Rumble: The Intelligence of a Human Being - Part #3


Probably the subtitle of this blog should be:
'How a 30,000 ton icebreaker turned into a flowerpot'.
Or:
'How our lifes are ruled by machines...'


I keep all my blog pictures on Flickr. I have hundreds of pictures stored there, mostly for my Dutch eBook. Last week something went wrong. I noticed it first when the front page picture of the eBook had turned the Akademik Federov - a huge Antarctic research/cargo vessel into a vase with flowers. Pretty strong trick. I mean it is a 30,000 ton ship!

I logged onto Flickr, and could not believe my eyes. Probably one third of my pictures had been replaced by completely different ones. There were flowers, beach parties, animals,... instead of my expedition pictures from the Antarctic and the Pacific. On the Flickr forum, a stream of complaints started. Everyone had the same problem: 'their pictures were switched with those from others':

  • A lady wrote: "I like the new Flickr pictures. On all my self portraits, I seem to have lost 40 pounds, and 30 years. I now have legs reaching up to my armpits!!"
  • To which a retired army colonel replied: "Yeah, me too, and I look real cool in a bikini-string set !"
  • One guy from Africa complained: "Help, all of my friends have turned into Japanese!"
  • A not so funny one was from 'Mister Desperate': "I use my Flickr pictures for my commercial locksmith website, promoting my business. Half of the pictures of door handles and locks we sell, have been replaced by porn pictures! I never had so many hits on my website before, though! I had two new requests to open a business account."
  • "The thumbnail of my friends on their wedding day has been replaced with one of a dead pigeon", complained another.
  • "There is some naked girl on the roof instead of my bowling record picture", said 'Mr X'
  • "Nothing like a picture of a drunken party of strangers in the middle of your holiday thumbnails", claimed one.
  • "I am finding pornography over the photos I have shared with numerous members of my Congregation.", sighed a minister.

In the end, FLICKR reset some system, flushed the network cache memory and 'abracadabra' after a couple of hours, I got 'my ice breaker' back. How happy I was...

And that is the weirdest thing, I am thinking now: I should have been angry because of the technical hiccup in a service I pay for. But no, I was in heaven when I got all my pictures back... The power of the machine. It taketh yours and it giveth yours back, when it feels like it! And we, we are grateful! Just as I am always grateful to find all my files back after my laptop's Windows crashes. Ten times a day. "I, Robot!"

PS: I hereby certify this blog is generated by a human being. I... generate.. human being, Krrt..&^^%% being. being. boing... ^%%)(*^££


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Picture with courtesy of AARI.

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Rumble: Others Do It So Much Better Than Me # 3: .. The World's Most Dangerous Places

The World's Most Dangerous Places by Robert Young Pelton (Harper Collins) is a book I wished I could have written. All 1,022 pages of it.
One of the best books, and by far the best travel book, I have ever read. My copy is the 4th edition, released in 2000, but the 5th hit the market in 2003.

It is a travel guide about 'those places no-one in his right mind' would want to travel to. It is not only a travel guide. It is a handbook for the 'extreme traveller', a 'data bible' cramped with interesting facts and background material. All about the countries considered as the "World's Most Dangerous" and about how to take precautions for about any kind of situation you could encounter.

For each of the countries listed, R.Y.Pelton gives an introduction, a travel story, maps, describes who the 'players' -those in power- are, how you get there (in and out), what the dangers are, and other factual data. Full of reference material, book titles, websites, historical facts, etc...

It is easy to make a book like this dull, but Pelton writes about them in such a witty, funny, sometimes cynical, open-hearted way, this travel guide almost reads like a novel.

I mean who could resist chapter titles like:

  • How to travel free, meet interesting people and then kill them
  • Happiness is a warm gun
  • Happiness is a dead Infidel
  • The "Men Who Would Be King"-club
  • The "Unemployed Warlords for Hire Department", or "It ain't over until the Fat Man swings"
  • Getting Arrested: "Oh Won't You Stay... Just a Little Bit Longer"

It might all sound very 'hung-ho' and 'macho', but it is not really. Well, it is a bit. But it definitively not a 'Rambo'-book. Full of excellent tips on 'how to stay out of trouble if you really have to visit these places'.

I can not stop raving about it, really. I wished I could write like this. Here is one extract, about Dostum, one of Afghanistan's famous warlords -eh I guess in the mean time National Government Ministers-..

General Rashid Dostum
Roly-poly Rashid got caught up in his own web of intrigue when his second in command defected to the Taliban on May 25, 1997, and had to hightail it to Ankara. Dostum used to control eight provinces in the north and ran his little kingdom out of his hometown and western military headquarters of Shebergan, Jozjan province, 80 miles from Mazar. Detractors will tell you that Rashid is an old-time commie warlord who is propped up by Uzbekistan and drug transportation from the hash- and poppy-rich fields around Mazar-i-Sharif. He was a man with a grade school education surrounded by gangsters. He packed his bags, family and flunkies and flew out to Ankara, Turkey, where he bravely proclaimed, "The war is not over." He promised to return "when the conditions are right." The conditions were right on September 12, when Dostum blasted his way into Mazar and sent Malik packing. Then of course the Talibs blasted him out of Mazar and he had to check if he could keep his lease on his bulletproof Beemer and swank pad.
Dostum, the former military commander under Najibullah, is now looking after the Uzbeki's interest in northern Afghanistan. The sight of his boss swinging in the breeze has not made him a fan of the Taliban or homesick for Afghanistan.

Connected to the book is the Come back alive website, which is just as interesting, and just as cramped with data as the book. It has a Wikipedia-based knowledge section, a forum, a place to post links and stories. A lot of the data from the book is published on this (free) website.
Also here, the data is a great read, provides a unique perspective of "the world's most dangerous places", making it a "don't go without it" website. I can spend weeks reading in it, and days writing about it.

If you are one of those, like me, blessed to live in or to travel through 'The World's Most Dangerous Places", this is your book. If you are not one of those happy few, but you are interested in more eXtreme travel, this is your book too. If you want to read well written non-fiction, I guess this book is it too. OK, OK, OK, I *will* stop raving about it.

Oh, and by the way, on a detailed count, it seems I lived in, or travelled through, 26 of the 38 countries Pelton lists as 'The World's Most Dangerous'... I enjoyed every single one of them.




Enjoy this book. More of my favourites, you can find in my online library.
More recommended books from The Road.

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Rumble: Others Do It So Much Better Than Me # 2 : Carl De Keyzer

Carl De Keyzer, a Belgian professional photographer, once sent me this picture (click on it to enlarge). It is still one of the best I have ever seen of Afghanistan. One picture so full of different stories. The scars of war, the kids, the mountains, the isolation, the poverty, a past with barely a future.. all in one shot.

Carl did several missions shooting in war-torn and isolated places. He has a gift, I would pay dearly to have myself :-) His website is here. Just magnificent.

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Rumble: Others Do It So Much Better Than Me #1: Pernille in Uganda

While writing for my blog, and doing research for some of the stories in the eBook, I came across some interesting material. So interesting, it actually made me a bit jealous. "There are a lot of people out there that Do It Much Better Than Me", I'm thinking.

That is why I am starting a new Blog-thread called just that: "Others Do It So Much Better Than Me." This is the first one in a series pointing to travel-jewels I found.

I lived in Uganda for four years. I wrote a few shortstories for the eBook about it: The Ugly Duckling, Kadee and Abby One and Abby Two. There are some more in the making.
However, I found a blog-site reflecting exactly how I always wanted to write about daily life in Uganda: I've left Copenhagen for Uganda.
It is written by Pernille, a Danish lady working for the MS (the Danish Association for International Co-operation) in North Uganda.
It is the ONLY blogsite I visit daily, being curious for updates.

Pernille writes fluently, witty, inventive, sometimes cynical, mad, disillusioned, happy... about both daily life in Uganda, her work as development worker, and the issues of development and Africa in general. And she does it in an appealing well-presented blog.
She often inserts amazing pictures in her blog, pictures you can find back in the Flickr directory she links to. The images are often very simple, but -especially the shots of people- have a lot of weight and depth. Just superb. My 2nd-hand-printed-then-scanned-it-on-my-old-nineties-scannerthingie-pictures have no comparison with her magnificent stuff.. Really.
And I wished I could write like she does.

She Does It So Much Better Than Me. I've left Copenhagen for Uganda. If you like stories of daily life in Africa, visit her blogsite and bookmark it. I did.

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Islamabad Stories#2: The US Special Forces Have Arrived!


Islamabad, Pakistan. Sept 14 2001

Yawn!
Another interagency coordination meeting. Since 9/11 three days ago, we had one every morning. And it goes on and on and on and on… Stuff which is important, no doubt, but not really interesting for me. I don’t have a real say in those meetings, as my unit merely plays a logistics support role. So I sit in the back, in a corner, trying to blend in with the furniture.

I knew exactly how this was going to evolve. Two planes crash into the NY World Trade Center, and all hell was to break loose in Central Asia. The morning after 9/11, it seemed however that few people sitting in this room now, realized how it was going to influence their work, their lives for the coming years… They all had a typical denial reaction. Until it started to hit them in the face. Now, three days later.

And there was no denying the facts anymore today! Pakistan and Afghanistan are now continuously in the news, with the world’s big news networks flying in with plane loads of equipment.

Islamabad Marriott HotelJust as 9/11 happened, we were giving a training for our Afghan staff here in Islamabad. Last night, we took some out for dinner. We picked them up from their hotel, and took them as a treat to one of the fanciest restaurant in town, in the Marriott hotel. As we drove up through the entrance of the Marriott parking lot, there was actually a traffic jam of the small local taxis, each with a huge satellite dish strapped onto their roof rack. Stickers on them for the big news networks. CNN, BBC, Sky, AFP, Fox, Al Jazeera, ITN, ITV, RAI… The hotel’s roof was engulfed in bright floodlights as the anchor speakers were ‘Reporting Live From Islamabad’, with the city lights in the background..

No more denial that our lives were going to take a sharp turn for the worse.. We were going to be in the midst of all the action… And the reactions of the people in the meeting was taking a twist today: from denial to a slight state of panic. The tone of the meeting is definitively much more nervous than the previous days.

Yawn...
My thoughts are running off. I am thinking of the Afghan staff at dinner last night. They were worried about their families left back home in Mazar, Kabul, Faizabad, Jalalabad… Would the Taliban go nuts, and start murdering and plundering? Or empose an ever stricter regime? They wondered how each of them was going to get back home, as we evacuated all international staff from Afghanistan the day after 9/11. We also suspended the UN flights from Islamabad into Afghanistan…

Somewhere, a change of tone in the conversation draws my attention. A lady from one of the agencies starts talking in a low voice. I concentrate again.
She is leaning forward and whispers slowly:

- ‘Yes, I know we will have problems. The US special forces, the spooks, have already arrived. I saw them last night’.
Hey, that was news to me.
- ‘Yes, I am sure. I saw them. Last night I was in the Crown Plaza hotel around the corner’, she continues.
I start thinking.. The hotel she spoke about was where we picked up our Afghan guests last night.
- ‘Four of them arrived, driving a small white, unmarked 4x4.’
Hey, that is funny, we were driving the old office car last night. The organisation’s emblem sticker had peeled of, so there were no more markings on it.
- ‘There was one normal looking guy with three big –I mean huge- guys behind him. One was an Afro-American. They were all dressed the same. Kaki trousers, safari jackets, handhelds on their belts.
Hmmm.. Robert, Martin and Terah were with me. Terah is Ugandan. They are all pretty big guys, now that I think of it. We were all wearing our safari jackets, and yeah, we wore our mission clothes.
- ‘They did not say anything. They just walked into the hotel lobby, picked up some local guys, and drove off again. US special forces. Spooks, no doubt.’
Hmmm…We picked up our Afghan staff last night…

I stand up, cough, raise my hand. The lady stops talking and looks at me as if she sees a ghost. She starts pointing her trembling finger at me. She does not say anything.. Just points at me and after a few seconds, starts blushing.

Everyone turns their heads. They look at me, and then at her. I don’t know what to say. I smile. There I stand with my safari jacket, kaki pants, and with my handheld radio on my belt… Everyone starts laughing.

Since then, rumour had it the ‘Belgian Special Forces’ had arrived. :-)


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Rumble: The Intelligence of a Human Being - Part #2

I re-state:
A machine can never replace the intelligence of a human being.
(even though the picture might make you think otherwise)

Most of the Google advertisements on this page are generated automatically, based on the contents of the blog. I do have to monitor it though. Sometimes I have to block some ads which seem weird or inappropriate within the context of the story. Like the short story about the Taliban in Afghanistan (In Pace) was generating an ad about 'Meeting Afghan Woman Online"...

The funniest is that my post about The Day I got Deported from the US generated an ad:
"
Visit the US visa-free for 90 days. Download application guide.
www.usimmigrationsupport.org
"
Do you think "They" are monitoring? You know, "Them" ? :-) Do you think "They" are trying to send me a message that "they" have forgiven me?

"They"
must be, as even within the time of writing this blog, the deportation story generated three more similar ads on one page claiming "they" can get me a US visa 'trouble free'. Wow! Too clever for a machine. "They" must have been a human watching over my shoulder. Eh?! What was that noise? Who was that? Anyone there? Hellooooooo?!?!?! Anyone therrrreeeeeee?)
(And yes, the picture above was taken in the US. Can anyone guess where? Put it in the 'Comments' underneath this post. Just don't have your computer generate the comment! ;-)

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Rumble: Islamabad stories #1 - TV censorship

I am still working on the Dutch eBook about the expeditions. I should be finished inserting the last pictures today. Once that is done, I will get more time to continue writing short stories for 'The Road to the Horizon'.. Meanwhile, just thought of a story today... Actually several. Will publish them as separate blogs, and maybe later combine them to one short story about Pakistan. Here's one:

TV Censorship, the Pakistani Way

When I arrived in Pakistan, there was not much to do in the evenings, but to sit in the guesthouse, read a bit or watch TV. It struck me I would regularly get a test picture on the TV screen, you know, the colour patterns. Like there was some kind of technical problem at the TV station.

Sometimes, hours would go by, and all was fine, and other times, the test picture would appear every couple of minutes. It would happen seemingly at random, no matter if it was a movie, a TV series or a documentary they showed.. It was a mystery to me.

After a while, I figured out that the test pictures appeared each time there was a 'sensitive' scene, where a bit of 'flesh' or some male/female intimacy was shown. Be it a lady in a short skirt, a person undressing (even taking off a shirt), people kissing,... I thought that could not be a coincidence! It was real funny, and really frustrating in some TV shows like 'Silk Stalkings'. You know, those pseudo detective series where all the 'good guys' are longlegged shortskirted young ladies. There was so much 'fleshy' stuff going on, the test screen would be shown every 10 seconds or so. Even during the intro-scene:
One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys got out of a car and BLOOP. One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys leaned forward a bit and showed a hint of bra, BLOOP. One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys kissed their boyfriend and BLOOP.

Each time during the BLOOP, the test screen was shown on TV, and the sound was cut for a couple of seconds, sometimes for minutes. Irritating! Made me loose track of the story.

It was a mystery how this was done. I thought they must have a sophisticated digital code somewhere in the TV signal that said 'BLOOP NOW'... I got intrigued by it all, and watched more carefully.
Hmm, there seemed to be some variations... Sometimes french kisses were not blooped. Or sometimes even kisses on the cheek were blooped. Other times, just showing a bit of an unbuttoned shirt was enough to bloop, and other times, people could get away walking around in their underwear and not get blooped.

One time, I think it was when they showed 'Pretty Woman', some pretty interesting scenes, were not blooped at all. Shocking! Shocking! I mean, I was outraged! A scandal!

Anyway, I did not understand. Until one day, one of my friends went to the TV studio for some work, and unraveled the secret:
In the TV studio, there is one room with some ladies sitting in a row. Each lady was monitoring one TV channel only. Each had two screens and one big button in front of her. One screen showed the TV-signal as they picked it up from satellite or from a tape, that was the input. The lady would push her big red button when 'bad scene' happened. This is when the 'BLOOP' would appear on the output. They monitored the second screen for the TV-signal they were actually broadcasting, to ensure a BLOOP was actually transmitted.

It was clear that some ladies were very strict, and did not allow for any 'flesh', while others were more relaxed about it all. My friend told me that some ladies pushed the 'red button' rather hesitantly, while others were really banging the thing with a big smack. 'Nah, bad, bad, bad, bad! Here, take this. Blaff!'.
As there was no replacement for the 'censor'-girls when they needed to go to the bathroom, either their button was blocked, transmitting a continuous BLOOP, or they just left it 'as it was'.

I guess that time 'Pretty Woman' got aired, either the lady fell asleep, got sick in the bathroom, or maybe got paid to transmit it all. :-)

There are rumours that a technician once patched the red buttons in the studio, and wired a VCR to it, so that all 'blooped' scenes were automatically taped. Afterwards, the juicy scenes were sold on the black market for big bucks... Just rumours of course !


(I got the flying donkey picture from my brother-in-arms, Mark. More of his travel pictures, you can find on http://www.on4ww.be )



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Rumble: The Intelligence of a Human Being


Statement: A machine can never replace the intelligence of a human being.
(even though the picture might make you think otherwise)

I was impressed with the translation software I found on Altavista's Babelfish and used for the online translations of this blog (see icon in the right column). I tried to find one which could use Dutch as a source language, to translate my Dutch eBook. In the end, I found one, so I did a random test with something I wrote about Clipperton Island. Tine and I could not stop laughing with the translation into English:
Friday 6 March 13h local time:
"clip by barrel on the radar, clip by barrel on the radar", calls someone vanop the bridge.
Everyone leaves falls what falls, and sprint to the brug."Waar, where?
"here to see you that not, which stipjes"
That dingetjes here? Bah, which are golves, man
"no, no not where, we are scarcely on ten mile of clip by barrel, and according to Mike is that the moment that we must see clip by barrel on the baffle".
But dot that come and verdwijnen""Jamaar cannot you see that that form a circle slowly to start? That is the country counterfoil. And that dark macula in the middle is the lagoon!

:-) And in case you wandered: 'Clip by barrel' is the translation for 'Clipperton'... 'Stipjes' is Dutch for 'small dots', 'Golves' are supposed to be 'waves' and 'dingetjes' are 'small things', ...
Guess I ticked the option 'Pidgin English'

PS:
Just saw in the French translation
"This is not a commercial ad. Click and help!!"
Is translated by the software as:
"Ce n'est pas un Clic et une aide de film publicitaire après Jésus Christ !!"
Which means as much as:
"This is not a click and a help of a publicity movie by Jesus Christ !!".

Go figure.. ;-)



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Rumble: A Lot of Crab -eh Crap?- !

1. A lot of Crab!
While editing my Dutch eBook, Addicted to the horizon , a lot of memories are coming back. Tine and I were scanning through some old pictures when she reminded me how intriguing some of this stuff was. [there is a lesson here: one gets easily used to the extra-ordinary].
I guess I got used to all of it, having gone over these pictures so many times already. And having been there. Things like the shot above, taken during our expedition to Clipperton, a deserted island in the Pacific. The land crabs were piling up trying to devour the bone of a spare rib. That is a lot of crab! They would eat anything. Plastic, cardboard, sleeping bags, ropes,... This made the island pretty clean!
Human waste was considered a delicacy. While squatting 'au naturel' on the island, shorts around our ankles, we had to scuffle forward as dozens of crabs would be fighting for your waste, piled on top of each other. If you were not scuffling fast enough, they would grab hold of your private parts... Tell ya, there are more pleasant things in life.

2. A lot of Crap!
Read an article today about the amount of garbage the world produces.. As an example, every day, the US [not trying to pick on the US, but it was the only figure I found!] produces enough non-recycable waste to fill the New Orleans Superdome twice. That is 230 million tons of solid waste per year. The amount of pollution and toxic leaching produced by a landfill receiving 1,000 tons per day of waste is 22,000 lbs. After a landfill closes, it is estimated that emissions could remain constant for as long as 30 years.

3. Let's launch "Crabs for Crap"!
I think I will run for prime minister, with only one single programme item: I will introduce the use of Clipperton land crabs in the processing of our waste in 'developed countries'. Think I stand a chance?

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The Day I Got Deported From the US

Spring 2003. Pretty soon after the Iraq war started.
Dulles International Airport, Washington.


Scene at immigration counter.

him: So where do you come from now, sir? (flips through my passport, filled with stamps in Arab writing)
me: Right now, from London Heathrow, but that was just a transit. I flew in from Cairo, Egypt.
him: How long did you stay in Cairo?
me: One day.
him: Where were you before that?
me: In Jordan
him: And how long did you stay there?
me: Also one day.
him: Where did you come before that?
me: Iraq
him: ?!?!
me: Baghdad, Iraq. I work for the UN, you see.
him: Do you have any tickets to prove that?
me: No, I flew on a UN plane.
him: I do not see Iraq immigration stamps in your passport.
me: No, there is no Iraq immigration anymore since the war. The US military checks inbound passengers, but they do not stamp passports.
him: OK, how long where you there for?
me: A week.
him: So where were you longer than a week? Where do you actually live?
me: Well, my legal residency is in Belgium, but I spend most of my time in the UAE. In Dubai.
him: What do you do there?
me: I head the office of one of the UN agencies there. I have the status of an ambassador.
him: Do you have proof of that?
me: Sure. {I show him my UAE diplomatic card)
him: How long have you been living in Dubai?
me: Two years.
him: And before that?
me: I shuttled between Pakistan and Afghanistan
him:
him: (after two minutes of typing on his computer) Could you step aside for a moment, sir, and come with me?
me: ?!

Thirty minutes later, in a separate room with clearly a number of other ‘doubtful cases’:
him#2: Mr Keyscher (?) (it is difficult to pronounce my name in English)
me: Yes, sir, good evening.
him#2: Evening, what is the purpose of your visit to the US?
me: I was asked by the UN security office to chair a meeting at the World Bank’s office in Washington.
him#2: Are you on an official mission?
me: Yes I am. On UN official business.
him#2: Do you have proof of that?
me: Sure. (I start up my computer and show him the invitation Email)
him#2: What is the meeting about?
me: It is about the UN relief efforts in Iraq. Mostly about the coordination of technical issues between different humanitarian agencies.
him#2: How long do you intend to stay?
me: I fly back tomorrow.
him#2: Where to?
me: To Dubai
him#2: Do you have any other travel documentation than this passport, your Belgian national passport?
me: Yes, I have two UN passports
him#2: Blue or red ones? (the red one is a full diplomatic passport)
me: I have both. (I hand them over)
him#2: Why do you travel on your Belgian passport, if you have a UN passport?
me: It is easier, as I do not need a visa to enter the US with my Belgian one.
him#2: Have a seat sir, someone will be with you in a minute

Thirty minutes later:
him#3: Mr Keyscher?
me: That is me
him#3: I am sorry sir, but we can not allow you to enter the US.
me: ?!?! Why is that?
him#3: You tried to enter on your Belgian passport, but this one is not valid to enter the US.
me: Why not? I was in New York two weeks ago. I fly to the US three-four times a year. I always use my Belgian passport.
him#3: Sorry, but the rules changed. As of last week, Belgian passports have to be machine readable.
me: ?!?!
him#3: They need a strip on the ID-page which is machine readable. Yours does not have that.
me: But two weeks ago, nobody said anything about that at the New York’s immigration office.
him#3: Sorry, but I do not make the rules. And they changed since last week. We can not let you enter the US.
me: But I am on a diplomatic mission. I have a diplomatic status. You have my diplomatic passports.
him#3: Sorry, but that does not matter. Just last week, we stopped a foreign minister from a Middle Eastern country entering the US also. Not the right paperwork neither.
me: Is it possible to speak to your supervisor please?
him#3: I am the supervisor, sir.
me: Can I still speak to your superior, please?
him#3: I will call him on the phone. One moment please.

After fifteen minutes with his supervisor on the phone:
him#3: I am sorry. But we can not let you enter the US. I will call the British Airways representative, and see if you can get a seat back on the same plane you came in with.
me: You do understand that I flew for three days for this meeting, straight out of Iraq? Is there any way anyone could vouch for me? I can call the UN head office in New York?
him#3: No, sir, I am sorry, that decision is final.
me: Can I call someone to let them know I can not make it to my meeting? After all, twenty people will attend, and I was to chair that meeting.
him#3: Sure, here is a phone. But you can are only allowed one local phone call.
me: Can I use my mobile phone to call? The person I need to talk to is from our HQ in Rome. He has an Italian mobile number.
him#3: Sorry, you are not allowed to use your mobile phone here.

I try to call Gianluca in his hotel downtown Washington, but there is no response.
me: (sigh) So, what will happen now?
him#3: We will need to take your photograph and finger prints, sir.
me: ?!?!

Four mug shots, ten finger prints and thirty minutes later:
me: Can I use the bathroom, please?
him#2 (again): Sure.

An armed guard escorts me to a bathroom. Stays outside of the door. I take out my mobile phone, call Gianluca, and explain what happened. I whisper I will not make it to the meeting. I give him a 60 seconds briefing on what my message was going to be in that meeting. The guard bangs on the toilet door saying “It is time, let’s go”.

Back in the immigration screening office, the British Airways representative is talking to him#2.
she: I picked up his luggage, but we have a pretty full plane
him#2:
me: What would happen if I can not get on this return flight?
him#2: We will have to detain you until you can get a return flight. You have a ticket for tomorrow, so I guess that would mean detention until tomorrow.
me: ?! Detention?
him#2: Yes.
she: I will do my best.
him#2: Can I have your tickets please?
him#2 puts my three passports and all travel papers in a sealed envelop.

Thirty minutes later, the BA representative comes back.
she: I have a seat for you.
me: Thank you
him#2: We will escort you to the plane now
me: Can I have my passports and tickets, please?
him#2: No. You will get them back at Heathrow. Do know that the next time you want to enter the US, you will not be able to enter on the visa waiver program for Belgian nationals. You will need a visa. Each time you enter the US, you will be taken for questioning. Front desk immigration officers will not be allowed to let you enter. I need you to sign a paper stating you understood that, and agree to it.
me: Do I have a choice?
him: No sir, there is no appeal for this.
me: For how long do I need to get a visa. When will I be able to use the visa waiver program again? (I sign the papers)
him#2: This is valid for ever. Once refused entry into the US, you can not enter with the visa waiver program anymore. This gentlemen will escort you to the plane.

Two armed men take me outside the building, onto the tarmac. It is night already. It rains. A blinded truck is waiting for me. More armed men. I see cigarette butts on the ground, just outside of the door as we step outside.
me: I am sorry, but can I ask you one favour? I flew in from Cairo, non-smoking. Four hours. Had no time in Heathrow for a cigarette. Then flew trans-Atlantic for six hours, spent two hours here, and now will fly again. Can I have at least one cigarette please?
him#4: (looks at him#5) OK.. A quick one then.
me: That is the only good news I had since I landed here. Thank you.

They escort me back onto the plain. There are no passengers yet. Him#4 and him#5 whisper to the captain and the flight attendant. They look at me. I feel like a criminal.

Six hours later, I step out of the plane in Heathrow and get my papers back. My flight to Dubai leaves in two hours. I need to find a place to smoke a cigarette and call Gianluca again.


Continue reading The Road to the Horizon's Ebook, jump to the Reader's Digest of The Road.

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What is The Road?

Peter negotiating with an Indian air crew and a Northern Alliance soldier in Afghanistan (2001)

The Short Version:

Consider 'The Road to the Horizon' as a interactive and dynamic eBook with a weird mix of topics, written as "things happen".
In content, the only commonality between all posts is the writer. Being an international aid worker, addicted traveller, radio amateur, adventurer and sailor, you can imagine the topics on "the Road" vary widely: humanitarian issues, the environment, travel, ham radio, sailing, news, and anything occuring in my daily life.

Or if you prefer, here is the long version:

The Long Version:
The idea of this website started with the short stories: stories of remote, sometimes exotic places. Either where 'few men have ever gone to', but more often where 'nobody with a sane mind would ever want to go to'.
The stories are about the people I met and the situations I encountered during my travels. All non-fiction stories, even though the names of people are sometimes changed to protect their privacy.

Some stories are inspired by the work I do as a relief worker for an international humanitarian organisation. These are the stories about war-torn countries, areas devastated by natural disasters, or engulfed by political turmoil with an impoverished population.
Another inspiration is what I do in my spare time: expeditions to places even more remote than those I work in, searching 'the end of the known world' (or 'just for the kick of it', as my wife would say).
Yet other stories are just picked up while sailing and travelling with the family.


The Road's tag cloud according to Wordl

Over time, The Road to the Horizon grew a bit in scope. It now has five parts: the eBook, the Rumblings, News, Pictures of the Day, Picks of the Week and Blogging tips:
  1. The eBook:
    This website, "The Road to the Horizon", is originally an eBook with travel stories. Some have been published before in magazines, are extracted from Emails sent to my loved ones, but most of them are newly written.
    The table of contents of the eBook, you can find in the right column under the header 'My eBook Short Stories'. Or check out the reader's digest.
    The stories are all individual pieces, which you can pick and choose from the index or the digest. The sequence in which you read them does not matter as each story stands by itself.

  2. The Rumbles,...
    While writing and publishing the eBook short stories on this site I found that:
    - The short stories are several pages long. Too long for an average 'blog audience'.
    - The stories take typically a few weeks to rehash. This is too much an interval to publish stuff on a typical blogsite, which should have something new every one or two days.
    - While writing the short stories, I came across many small but funny/interesting anecdotes that will probably never make it to a real eBook short story but were still worth telling.
    So, Once Upon a Fine Morning, I decided to add small blog-entries (anecdotes, tips ["rumblings", Tine calls them]) on top of the short stories. They still fall within the spirit of this site. They too are about travelling and remote spots, or comments on things that happen around me, and my life.

  3. News
    While writing (and rumbling), I come across news about stuff I care about: items about the 'humanitarian cause', developing countries, the environment, individual's rights, travelling, the war in Iraq... I list these regularly in 'News' postings.

  4. Pictures of the Day
    Scanning the news, I often come across pictures which catch my eye, worth posting. Often I put a short caption text with them.

  5. Picks of the Week
    Links to those sites or posts I found interesting.

  6. Tips and tricks
    This part is rather stand-alone and independent from the rest of the posts: I am a total newbie to 'Internet Publishing' or 'blogging'. When I started, I did not know the first thing about HTML, CSS, RSS or any of that stuff. I learned the hard way with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I always think 'you need to give the world back as much as it gives you', so I started to list some of the blogging tricks I discovered in posts with the prefix 'Tips & Tricks'. I hope they help other newbies like myself... Update: this section now moved off to a blog of its own: BlogTips.

I love to hear from you. Be with compliments, or with critical remarks. About a passage you did not like, which was confusing, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, or something you *did* like... All of it helps me to improve this site, with its short stories and rumblings, and to write better.

And all of it in the hope it may serve as an inspiration to others. Enjoy walking with me on this Road to the Horizon. Who knows where it may lead us! :-) [straight into despair, Tine says!]


Peter,
peter(at)theroadtothehorizon(dot)org


Read also:Introduction to the Road to the Horizon, the eBook

Interested in aid work? Contemplating of making a change in your life? This posting might be of interest to you.

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Rumble: Snow and Memories of Kosovo


Some of you are asking me 'Where are you now'? Well, I am home in Belgium at this moment. These are the last months of my sabbatical year before I go back to work. And this morning, it started snowing. As I was driving Hannah to school, the roads choked up and cars started banging into each other. What just 5 cm of snow can do... Agreed, it does not snow often in Belgium, and we're not used to it.

As I sat in a traffic jam, the snow made me think back of the time I worked in Kosovo. I wrote several short stories about my time there (see Italians , the Art of Flying and the Laws of Probability , Scene of War and The Pizza Place on the Corner ), but I have not yet described our 'adventures' during the Kosovar winter time. Of the many times we had to use the snow scooter to get up to the mountain tops to service our radio stations, and got completely stuck. About living in a place so dependent on electricity, but where the electricity just did not work...

It was the first time I worked in real cold place as my previous duty stations had always been in Africa. It took some effort to adjust. Adjusting in having to sleep in thermal underwear. Having to put the bottles of Coke inside the fridge otherwise they would freeze up if we left them on the cupboards. Having to put snow chains on our cars, and still getting stuck. And the challenges driving around zig-zagging through the massive traffic jams, as people did not have money to buy winter tires and slid against anything on or near the road. Part of the traffic problems were also caused because so many at that time were driving without driving license and just could not drive. Many cars did not even have number plates, or were stolen during the war. It was anarchy.

The soldiers from KFOR and the UNMIK-police officers trying to bring some order to the chaos had their hands full. Especially the foreign police officers trying to direct traffic at cross roads. Imagine you are a cop in rural Wisconsin, and you were detached to UNMIK in Kosovo. The recognition of your authority was slightly different, to say the least. It took them a long time to adjust to the facts of life in Kosovo. Our office in Pristina was located on a busy crossroads and looking through the windows, we had loads of fun watching the US police officer standing in the middle of crossing, directing traffic. Most people just ignored him. At one time, a car almost ran him over. He got so upset he actually drew his gun and chased after the car on foot. Ha, memories! I wish I had more than 24 hours per day to write all those memories down. But they are in the making!

Anyway, at this moment, here in Belgium, it is not that bad. We do have the habit of stopping when a cop tells us to, and we do have proper paperwork for our cars :-). Here is a view through my window as I am writing this.

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Rumble: My Head Fell Off the Cabinet


Things I have to say, part 1:
I got this hat in 2002 as a good-bye present from the staff in our Afghanistan and Pakistan offices. It is an Afghani Chief's hat.
A colleague of mine kept on referring to it as my 'ead. I understood 'head', and had no clue what he was talking about. "Nice 'ead!". "Gee, well, thanks, I had it all my life!". "No, the 'ead, not your 'ead!" Anyway, since then, I referred to my hat as my 'head'. This morning, it fell off the bookshelf, where it had been sitting quietly for the past few years. My 'ead fell down.. (and was nicely dented).

Anyway, that is besides the point, also besides the point is that I got this 'ead at a party the Islamabad staff threw for me the evening before I was to fly to my new duty station. That was just before Martin and Robert thought it would be a good idea to have a 'last one' in the Islamabad UN club, and they introduced me to a bottle of "Skone Aquavit". I could not remember much anymore after that. I do remember, I missed my plane the next morning, and had the worse hangover ever! I went back to the office. Martin and Robert looked at me with a real wide grin, and C. turned her head away... I must have had a look with question marks on my face, as Robert said "You don't remember anything anymore, do you?". Well I did not. Apparently, we got pretty jolly, started to dial everyone who was so unlucky to have their number stored on my mobile phone. 'Last numbers dialed' revealed we called all over the world. Once again my public apologies to all!!! I know it must have been late in Sydney, and early in California! And sorry if I said anything to offend you!
During that 'dark' period, we seemed to have run into C. plus husband who had a late dinner in the club. I must have made a disgrace of myself, as since then, C.'s husband does not want to talk to me anymore.
Martin also told me that the traffic cop did not think it was funny when we stood at the crossroad on the way back home, and I pulled out a whistle from my pocket too as I claimed to do a better job than him.
I think that was the last time I got drunk.

Anyway, that is besides the point! Besides the point! THE POINT IS: I took "my 'ead falling off the bookshelf" as a sign. Now we are getting serious here: I started this 'The Road to the Horizon"-blogsite as a way to publish the short stories I wrote in the past years, months. I started the blogsite three weeks ago. It was the first time I published a blog, or published anything -for that matter- on the Internet myself. Little did I know that I was going to get so much response and readers... In just the last two days, I had 436 visitors from 24 countries. (thanks NeoCounter and Clustrmaps for the figures!). Scary!

While writing and publishing the articles, I also found that 'merely publishing' the eBook (that is what I like to call 'The Road to the Horizon': a dynamic eBook - dynamic as I publish the stories as I am writing and editing them), was not really taking advantage of the blog features:

  • I started to add pictures, video and music links, links to other websites
  • I could get interactive feedback on the articles
  • Could connect to 'equally minded' bloggers
  • Writing a short story takes a week from start to finish. That is too long for blogs which need more regular updates.
  • The short-stories are typically too much of a long-story for a blog-reader. Several of you indicated you wanted shorter stories

On top of all of this, while writing the eBook short-stories, I also discovered that in the grey corners of my memories, many small-stories or anecdotes started to pop up, which were too short to publish as an eBook story. But still interesting enough to publish. So where better than in this blog to publish them?

SO: As my 'ead fell off the bookshelf, I got the idea to separate the blogs and the eBook stories. The latter would get into the eBook directory (appropriately called 'My eBook Chapters' - see top half of the right column on this page), The 'Most Recent Posts' will then show all publications as I am posting them. Most recent first. The non-articles would get a title prefix-ed with the word "Rumble". A nice distinction, no? I tell you, I have my moments of enlightenment!

In all of that, I probably confused you. If so, forget about what I just told you, and continue reading, and giving me feedback.

Things I have to say - Part 2:

I am writing a couple of new short stories, but it might take a while before they are publish-able. The main reason is that I am busy editing another eBook: Verslaafd aan de Horizon or 'Addicted to the Horizon'. I wrote it thirteen years ago as a logbook of my first three expeditions to the Pacific and Antarctica. It is published (in Dutch) in a blog format, and looks pretty cool. I am adding pictures at this moment. So even if you do not speak Dutch, go and have a look at the pictures! Here is a screen shot of the title page:

So you will have to excuse me now, as I have more work to do. Enjoy the reading and continue feeding me with comments on the eBooks-stories. Or this blog. And fill in the survey in the right column please....

For the latest eBook story, click here to read " How We Conquered the Mountain "

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TV Censorship, the Pakistani Way

When I arrived in Pakistan, there was not much to do in the evenings, but to sit in the guesthouse, read a bit or watch TV. It struck me I would regularly get a test picture on the TV screen, you know, the colour patterns. Like there was some kind of technical problem at the TV station.

Sometimes, hours would go by, and all was fine, and other times, the test picture would appear every couple of minutes. It would happen seemingly at random, no matter if it was a movie, a TV series or a documentary they showed.. It was a mystery to me.

After a while, I figured out that the test pictures appeared each time there was a 'sensitive' scene, where a bit of 'flesh' or some male/female intimacy was shown. Be it a lady in a short skirt, a person undressing (even taking off a shirt), people kissing,... I thought that could not be a coincidence! It was real funny, and really frustrating in some TV shows like 'Silk Stalkings'. You know, those pseudo detective series where all the 'good guys' are longlegged shortskirted young ladies. There was so much 'fleshy' stuff going on, the test screen would be shown every 10 seconds or so. Even during the intro-scene:
One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys got out of a car and BLOOP. One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys leaned forward a bit and showed a hint of bra, BLOOP. One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys kissed their boyfriend and BLOOP.

Each time during the BLOOP, the test screen was shown on TV, and the sound was cut for a couple of seconds, sometimes for minutes. Irritating! Made me loose track of the story.

It was a mystery how this was done. I thought they must have a sophisticated digital code somewhere in the TV signal that said 'BLOOP NOW'... I got intrigued by it all, and watched more carefully.
Hmm, there seemed to be some variations... Sometimes french kisses were not blooped. Or sometimes even kisses on the cheek were blooped. Other times, just showing a bit of an unbuttoned shirt was enough to bloop, and other times, people could get away walking around in their underwear and not get blooped.

One time, I think it was when they showed 'Pretty Woman', some pretty interesting scenes, were not blooped at all. Shocking! Shocking! I mean, I was outraged! A scandal!

Anyway, I did not understand. Until one day, one of my friends went to the TV studio for some work, and unraveled the secret:
In the TV studio, there is one room with some ladies sitting in a row. Each lady was monitoring one TV channel only. Each had two screens and one big button in front of her. One screen showed the TV-signal as they picked it up from satellite or from a tape, that was the input. The lady would push her big red button when 'bad scene' happened. This is when the 'BLOOP' would appear on the output. They monitored the second screen for the TV-signal they were actually broadcasting, to ensure a BLOOP was actually transmitted.

It was clear that some ladies were very strict, and did not allow for any 'flesh', while others were more relaxed about it all. My friend told me that some ladies pushed the 'red button' rather hesitantly, while others were really banging the thing with a big smack. 'Nah, bad, bad, bad, bad! Here, take this. Blaff!'.
As there was no replacement for the 'censor'-girls when they needed to go to the bathroom, either their button was blocked, transmitting a continuous BLOOP, or they just left it 'as it was'.

I guess that time 'Pretty Woman' got aired, either the lady fell asleep, got sick in the bathroom, or maybe got paid to transmit it all. :-)

There are rumours that a technician once patched the red buttons in the studio, and wired a VCR to it, so that all 'blooped' scenes were automatically taped. Afterwards, the juicy scenes were sold on the black market for big bucks... Just rumours of course !


Continue reading The Road to the Horizon's Ebook, jump to the Reader's Digest of The Road.

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How We Conquered the Mountain

Afghanistan, three days after the defeat of the Taliban.
The UN twin engine plane was banking at 45 degrees, diving in circles as it dropped sharply from 30,000ft towards the landing strip of Bagram airport, 40 kms north of Kabul. We dropped at a speed that pushed my stomach up my throat.

The pilot had warned us that this would happen. We had to fly over Afghanistan at a high altitude to stay outside the range of Stinger missiles. Only the airspace right above the airport was secured, so we had to descent within a circle of safety with one kilometer diameter. It felt like a roller coaster ride. And I do NOT like roller coasters. I kept my eyes shut, holding on firmly to the seat.

Fayyaz and I were the two WFP staff amongst the handful of people flying in today. This was only the third UN-flight allowed into Bagram airport since the Taliban fled Kabul, three days before. Three days since the event that marked the unofficial ‘Taliban defeat’ in Afghanistan. The first flight carried our security officers, followed by one with some senior officials. There would not be another flight allowed for two weeks, until we could assure the security of our staff.
I was asked to participate in this mission as the head of FITTEST, the UN humanitarian fast intervention team. I had to review the UN telecommunications systems in Kabul, and call in any resources needed to resurrect the installations. Until the next flight, I had to do with my two hands and any equipment I could find on the ground. Weight restrictions on the flight had not allowed me to take any tools or spares with me. One thing I knew already for sure: all public communication systems in Kabul were out. No telephone, fax, telex. The whole infrastructure was bombed to pieces or sabotage-d. For many months, the only communications would be done through equipment we brought in ourselves.

We landed around noon, amid the wreckage of old artillery and aircraft of all kinds. Two guys in local attire, riding four-wheel motorbikes, guided the plane to its parking space on the tarmac. When we got out, onto the tarmac, we went over to say hi. “Where are you guys from”, someone asked, as their short blond hair showed they were no locals. “I cen’t tell ya’, said one, in an obvious Texan accent, with a radio labeled ‘USAF’ (US Air Force) strapped onto his belt.. Hmm..

We drove off in convoy to Kabul, crossing an area which up to three days ago was the front line in a war witnessed by the whole world through the cameras of CNN and the likes. It was a sunny autumn day with an absolutely clear blue sky above naked mountains topped with snow, which presided over a bright yellow desert valley. The litter of the relics of years of war were the only signs of civilisation amongst the void of sand and dust: old Russian-made tanks and artillery, shot to pieces and half-buried in the ground. In several places, the road was bombed or a big hole in the asphalt, with a wreck in the ditch alongside, reminded us that this was a heavily contested piece of land, fought over for twenty-odd years amongst countless warring fractions. The last battle took place only three days ago, between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance troops.

Fayyaz and I were anxious to see our Afghan colleagues in Kabul who continued to run the food distributions during the war. They were all standing in the office compound as we drove in. We hugged them. We had not seen them since September 12, when all international staff was ordered to evacuate after 9/11. “Welcome back,” they smiled, “Welcome back!”. We all had tears in their eyes. We knew this was not just a welcome-back, but our return might also be the turning of a page in the history of Afghanistan. The last page in a chapter of twenty years civil war. This could be the first day of a new beginning for this lovely land and its great people, after decades of civil war.

We told them it was good to be back, how worried we had been about them and their families. It had not been an easy time, these two months since 9/11. Our national staff were the real heroes of this emergency operation. Against all odds, and under the continuous threat of bombing and military reprisals, they had kept moving and distributing massive amounts of food for the needy. A short visit to the WFP warehouse proved the point of how real the risks had been to all of them. The staff there described with pride how they had loaded food as the military installations all around the warehouse were bombed. They showed us bags of shrapnel collected after the bombings. Many pieces of metal and debris had come through the tin roof and walls.

It has been a while since I really touched radio equipment. You know how it goes: the more you get into the ‘manager’ role, the less you actually are involved in the real core of what you manage. For me, it was radios, computers, antennas, generators, networks, telephone systems. For two weeks, I would be the only international technician there… Time to brush up on long forgotten routines and manuals..

With some of our Afghan staff, we drove to the Intercontinental Hotel where our radio repeaters were installed. They all went off-air weeks ago. We found that, for safety reasons, the hotel staff had dismantled the radios, masts and antennae. All the bits and pieces were still there. But now came the next problem: as the UN flight to Kabul had had limited luggage capacity, I had not been able to bring my toolboxes. With some ingenuity and a Leatherman, we put all the pieces together again and flicked the switch: the two repeaters came alive with a soft hum.

As the days went by, bit by bit all comms systems were revived. As I was the only UN technician, the staff from the different organizations asked for all kinds of support. I drove around town with my improvised ‘intervention’ team, and a Leatherman. Amazing what those combinations could resolve.. Generators were revived, satellites phones re-programmed, Email systems started spitting out messages again. The most exotic thing they asked me to do was to configure a computer so the head of the UNHCR office could pick up his email. Nothing exotic about that – except that the computer had a Japanese version of MS Windows! Euh.. What’s the Japanese for ‘modem’ and ‘control panel’ again?

The trouble with all of these support trips was they were all followed a visitor’s protocol to first drink tea with the hosts. Unfortunately, the tap water in Kabul was real bad, and soon my stomach gave in to the constant attack of bacteria, and I got food poisoning (well ‘water poisoning’ more likely). One day, I just could not get out of bed anymore, except to go to the bathroom to throw up, or to do a liquid number two.

One of my more exotic tasks was to secure a good new site for the repeaters and mobile phone system we were bringing in. For years we had tried to get access to “TV hill”, a mountain smack in the middle of Kabul. It would be an excellent place for the antennae for our radio relay stations, but during the Taliban regime we were never allowed access to it.

I had asked the UN security officer to get permission to go up the hill, but he had not succeeded. I was hard headed (Tine, my wife has other words for it, though), the more as other UN staff in the guesthouse had started to tease me: “Hey, has WFP conquered the mountain yet?”. In the end, I went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They all said that only the –newly appointed- minister could give me this kind of approval. But he was not in. So I sat on the steps of his building for hours waiting until he arrived. I knew him from television. Dr Abdullah was a well known figure in the ranks of the Northern Alliance. As his convoy drove into the compound, and he got out of the car, I got a hold of him. He looked me up and down. Perhaps I did not look like someone who could conquer mountains, in my grimy sweatshirt and a torn and ragged WFP safari jacket (as I said, the check-in luggage allowance on the Bagram flight was extremely restricted!)…

In fact, conquer the mountain is just what we did. The minister gave the green light and signed a paper stating so. A day later, we were in a car with a guy called ‘Maruk’, who turned out to be the Minister’s personal bodyguard. Hey, I must have given a good impression!

“TV Mountain” has two peaks. The first had been heavily bombed and still had loads of live ammunition all over it. That was a disappointment: in between the anti-aircraft shells and thousands of rounds of heavy machinegun bullets, the uneven ground of the shelled bunkers and areas which looked mined, there was no space to put up any equipment. The locally hired UN de-miners also shook their head: ‘Too dangerous, it will take months to clear all this live ammo and to defuse any booby-traps’.

The local military commander in charge of the hill, came over. Maruk and Wahab, my local counterpart, started discussing with him in Pashtu. They kept on pointing at me, at the sky, the town, and a handheld radio.. The commander finally got into our car and we drove to the second peak of “TV mountain”. I gasped for a moment, as we stepped out into a magnificent scenery. We stood, at an altitude of 2200 meters, under a clear blue sky, with B52 bombers still circling overhead, leaving white trails behind them. Kabul with its buzzing activity lays hundreds of meters below us. We looked at the horizon and at eachother as walked onto the roof of a building with a round concrete roof. It used to be an air traffic beacon, and now featured a hole from a massive bomb in the exact center of it. I remembered the video shots of the precision bombing from fighter planes, I had seen on CNN.

‘The commander has a request’, said Wahab. He took us into the ruins of radar installation. A local military guy lay on a make shift bed. He had two radios in his hands. He listened on one, and repeated what he heard on the other… A manual retransmission of messages.. ‘The commander says their radios have interference, can you solve it?’, translated Wahab. I looked on the roof at their antennas. They were too close. It took me fifteen minutes to shorten the bamboo poles supporting the antennas and to separate them. Interference solved. The commander smiled satisfied, and slapped my back and we shook hands in agreement. “This is the place.”, I smiled at Wahab.

A week later, we brought in the first containers with equipment and the installations started.. The mountain was conquered. Still to today, “TV mountain” is the main communications site in Kabul.

This is a re-edit from an article previously written with by C.Hurford
Pictures courtesy of O.Hadziemin, L.Marre, R.Kasca

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From Sand to a City

Dubai Humanitarian City in construction - click for full size view
Gianluca, (“Can you build it?”), the project coordinator, wrote:
"Gianluca, do you want to come to Dubai for a few months to help us build a city?" is how it all began for me, in a call from Peter in Dubai.
"Well, where do I start?", "Can you send me a copy of the job description?" was the immediate response, like someone had already planned the whole thing. The answer sounded so simple I even felt silly asking.
The job meant working with the Government on the conceptual and practical design of the city, the buildings, the security measures, the warehousing facilities, the interior design, the services to be provided, and, last but not least, the presentation of the facilities and services to other UN agencies – and introduction of Government Executives to humanitarian agencies’ representatives.

Now let’s run through the check-list: this requires logistic experience (I have very little), architectural background (none), strong security know-how (very little), good knowledge of the UN (-ish), experience in establishing and running UN common premises (uh?) and, most importantly, know-how in dealing with high-level government bodies (ouch). My initial reluctance (why me?) was dismissed when I was persuaded that nobody would have all these skills together, therefore I was just as good (or useless) as anybody else. "Ah, that’s fine then (I guess).", was my answer.

A month later I was in Dubai, looking at a few sand dunes where the city was to be built, with Peter whispering in my ear: "One day, all of this will be yours, my son." (Why me?)

In the Dubai office, everyone kept laughing at "my HQ tie". They all run around in T-shirts and sandals, many of them in shorts. I managed to keep my tie on for two weeks, and then gave up. I stopped wearing shoes after a month. And they made fun of my red face when I tried to lift one of the FITTEST telecoms engineers’ toolboxes (which they carry nonchalantly from their Dubai base around the world). My red face also had something to do with the fact it was over 40 degrees in the shade.

Things in Dubai move fast, soon we had to answer some critical questions:
• How flat should the warehouse floor be? (bo!)
• How steep should the warehouse entry be for forklifts? (eh.. like this?)
• What fire-extinguishing system for a computer room? (obviously not water..)
• What security measures at the entrances to control staff and visitors’ access? (body search?)
• How about explosives detection at the entrance? (a light bulb?)
• How do you verify the installation of the blast-proof film? (a hammer?)
• What kind of walls to install in the office, taking into account a possible change in layout in 24 hours? (Yellow ones?)
If you know the answer to all these questions, that proves my point: why me?

Luckily, we had sufficient in-house expertise in our organisation, and I don’t think I spared anyone from the Security, Procurement, Administration and Logistics sections in Dubai and Rome. With their help, we got the answers:
• "How flat? – triple 0."
• "Explosives detection? – dogs".
• "Fire extinguisher? – use the C02 ‘bomb’".
• "Walls? – demountable wooden framed panels on anodized aluminum support
grid," or something like that.

Three months after I arrived, the desert started shifting - pillars pointing out of the sand, walls Constructing the Dubai Humanitarian City with Dubai's Sheikh Zayed skyline in the background - click for full size viewand buildings taking shape. One warehouse, two warehouses, one office, two offices, guard houses, electricity complex, water complex, fences, roads, security systems. Even the long awaited fountain arrived. Then trees, grass, flagpoles.

I have always felt I was achieving something through my work, helping people, particularly in the field, in their day-to-day work. But I never actually saw the practical result, because it happened elsewhere. But here, I saw my words change a piece of land, our discussion become a new City, our vision become UN agencies working together.

My best memory? Just before leaving Dubai for Rome, I stopped at the Humanitarian City. I thought of all the people that helped me figure out why me?

Peter (“Can you build it faster?”), the boss (kind of), wrote:
It is all true. When we met H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, then the Dubai Crown Prince, he said: "If you want anything from me, talk to this man," and pointed to Mohammed Al Gergawi, Chairman of the Dubai Development and Investment Authority. So I went to see H.E. Al Gergawi, whom I got to call ‘Mohammed’ after two meetings.

During our second meeting, he said: "Peter, I know you never wear a suit, so don’t put one on for me. Now, give me three things you want from Dubai!". I named one. He said "not interested". I named another. He said: "not interested". Then I described building a compound for the humanitarian organisations geared towards humanitarian emergency response. Mohammed leaned forward and said: "Tell me more." It was easy to explain our vision: Put humanitarians together and they will start to work together. And the work will be easier, faster and cheaper. So, what’s in it for Dubai? Well, Dubai makes money, it’s a regional business centre, a regional commerce and logistics hub. Let’s add: "Dubai, the city that cares", let’s add a humanitarian vision to Dubai…

Mohammed said: "Give me a few days."
Two days later, he called: "Let’s meet. I want to show you something." He drove us around an old military base: many warehouses, small offices. "Would this do?" he asked. I was not enthusiastic. Too spread out, too old, too small.
Mohammed said: "Give me two weeks."
After two weeks, he called: "Refurbishment of an old facility would cost too much; we will build from scratch. Give me a few weeks."
In August 2003, someone in his office sent me an email: "Have money, will build. But bigger than a humanitarian base. Let’s build a humanitarian city!" They found a stretch of 300,000 m2, prime real estate close to the Dubai centre, and had a serious budget.
"Let’s build," Mohammed said. “Let’s build!”, I said, and called Gianluca.

So we built it. We locked ourselves up with about twenty people from the government – budget, finance, engineering, marketing, project gurus, IT, architects, Dubai Humanitarian City plan - click for full size viewlegal, etc. After half a day, we had a project concept, the basic design and cost estimate for our city. On January 1 2004 we started from a patch of land with nothing but sand. On March 1 (yes, the same year!), we had two fully functional warehouses. On 1 June (yes, the same year!), we had the office building ready, and our staff moved in by the end of August (yes, the same year!).

Official opening of WFP's office at the Dubai Humanitarian CityDuring the official opening ceremony, the visitors described it as the nicest, best thought-out facilities every built for our organisation. Equipped for 150 people, with training and meeting rooms, a storage area of 40,000 m2, including 10,000 m2 warehouses, it is the now largest humanitarian rapid response facility in the world. Meanwhile several other buildings and warehouses were constructed to make it a true Humanitarian city. It was built from sand to city in six months time. ‘With the compliments of the Dubai Government.’ Only possible in Dubai !

Text source courtesy of Gianluca Bruni and Caroline Hurford
Pictures courtesy of Gianluca Bruni
Check out more posts about Dubai on this blog!




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