The Road to the Horizon: Angola

Angola 1994.
The pilot in the seat in front of me, pulls his headset off one ear and looks at me: "What do you think? Shall we try?". I'm staring at the ground below us.
Our single engine plane from the World Food Programme (WFP) circles around Ambriz, a small town a 100 miles north of Luanda, Angola's capital. I'm working here for the IFRC, the ‘International Red Cross' for short. They gave me one month to install or refurbish radio equipment in as many outposts of the Angolan Red Cross as possible. More than thirty years of civil war has isolated quite some areas from the outside world, making some Red Cross relief points only accessible by plane or boat. In some places, like Ambriz, the city below us, we are the only 'tolerated' relief organisation. The city is surrounded by the rebel troops of Unitad, who shot down a UN plane around here last year. Since then, no relief organisation dares to risk sending planes to Ambriz anymore, without getting a 'clear to land' by radio, even BEFORE taking off in Luanda. But... there are no radios in Ambriz because these need to be flown in. You see the vicious circle: no plane without radio, and no radio without plane...

After long negotiations with the WFP people, we agreed that they would fly me and two local helpers into Ambriz, and allowing me a 24 hours time period to install an HF radio. But.. this would include a 'blind' landing: having no radio contact with the ground, we would be the first to land on the earthen airstrip in a year, without knowing if we were going to be shot at by any party. And then we would have twenty four hours to install a complete HF station, including emergency power facilities...

"What do you think, shall we try?", asks the pilot again. We fly in sharper and sharper circles above the city's peninsula. I can clearly see the wide lanes with villas, the old oil refinary, and the red landing strip below. "Let's fly over at low altitude first", I suggest, “let’s see how it looks like from close by”.
The pilot pushes the plane's nose down and dives towards the landing strip. A hundred meters above ground, he pulls back up, like a Stuka in the second World War: "Iiiiiiiieeeeeeeaaaaaawww". Everyone in the plane looks tensely at the movements on the ground below. Soldiers come out of the bushes. "Did you see anyone shoot", asks the pilot? "No, let's try again!", I answer, thinking back on our landing, a few months ago, during our expedition to the Antarctic. That landing surely was a bit easier than this one.

Iiiiiiieeeeaaaaaaawwwwww". Now we fly over real low. Groups of soldiers run towards the landing strip, but all looks clear. The pilot indicates he'll land, and we touch ground on the red earth runway, before even realizing it. We taxi to the end of the strip and get out of the plane. The soldiers look surprised, but friendly. They smile and wave at us. With their arms, not their AK47s. "Sigh".

After a traditional "picture_of_all_of_us_near_the_plane", we load my metal boxes with radio gear into a truck -the only vehicle in town- and drive to the Red Cross “headquarters”. Our local contact person sits next to me and tells the story of Ambriz, which must be typical for so many other places in Africa at a time of war. Almost everybody has fled the city during the recent conflicts between Unitad and the government army. Since the latter took the city over again, a few months ago, Ambriz has been isolated from the outside world. For the thousand people still living here, there is no food, no fresh water supplies, never mind gas or electricity.

We drive through the wide avenues with large villas in soft pastel colours, reminding me of those in Southern France or California. But, here everything is deserted, the villas are empty, windows and doors have disappeared, and traces of the war can be seen everywhere. Once a luxurious Portuguese holiday resort with 60.000 inhabitants, Ambriz is now a ghost town. While driving through, I can only see a few people here and there. Most of them are soldiers. Birds are singing in the high trees. A lonesome skinny dog looks up as the truck drives by.

The Angolan Red Cross HQ is set up in one of the many deserted villas. It's 5 pm, and while the sun slowly descents, we scout the area around the house for some way to get the radio antenna up. Trees will do nicely. Half an hour later, I'm hanging in the top of one, 15 meters high, thinking to myself "What the hell am I doing here?". We work through the night and in the early morning, we're ready: the radio connected to a dipole antenna, hanging way up and clear of obstacles, powered by a heavy battery and a small generator which I brought along. I do a radio check with Luanda. The reception is loud and clear at both ends, and the local Red Cross staff standing around me laughs and shouts of joy. They look at the wonder of radio, and the magical powers of 'Loco Peter de Belgica' - 'Crazy Peter from Belgium'. From now on, this small radio will enable the big relief planes to land. Planes bringing in regular water, food and medical supplies. In my best Portugese (not!) I train the local staff on the use of the radio, batteries, charger, generator and dive onto an improvised bed to take a nap for a couple of hours. Above my head, on the wall, graffiti letters stare back at me: "Unitad was here - Oct'93".

The next day, I have an hour to spare before the plane picks me up again. I ask one of the local Red Cross volunteers if it is safe to walk around town. She says ‘Sure, there’s nobody left anymore’. And that is how it looks. Deserted.. Empty lanes. Empty houses. Empty everything. Almost no traces of life anymore. Not even garbage. I come across a low building. ‘Ambriz Tennis Club’, it says on the sign. The iron gate hangs off the bottom hinge. I push it open and walk in. Careful, just to make sure there is no hidden trip wires from booby traps anywhere. All doors are open. The clubhouse is empty. Everything that could be removed is stripped and looted. The pool is empty. The bottom is filled with dead leaves. The tennis courts still look intact. The orange-red dirt once was well maintained and probably the life-work of one of the old caretakers. I can imagine it clearly. The nets still hang as they hung probably during the last match two people played there, a couple of years ago. And above all, there is silence..
The WFP plane comes to pick me up in the afternoon, and a few hours later, we're back ‘home’, in the capital Luanda. As I walk through the door of the office, I hear the radio operator talking to the people in Ambriz. It feels good. My task is fulfilled. For Ambriz at least, as there are dozens other similar outposts waiting for equipment, and I will at least visit a few of them before flying to Malawi.

Antonio, my local driver/helper who went with me to Ambriz, walks me back to my apartment. The streets of Luanda are dusty and busy. Old cars of all makes, rally in between the newest models of Mercedes-es and BMW's. People are selling all kinds of things on the sidewalk. You can buy everything here: from guns to ties, from light bulbs to cigarettes per piece, from car tires to gas per liter, sold in recycled plastic Coke bottles. I think of the contrast with the silence and emptiness of Ambriz just a few hours ago. The smiles of the local people are the same. Friendly and light hearted, despite their 30 years of ongoing misery. The sun sets, as I walk up the stairs to my flat. "Ola, Senor Peter, Senor Peter!", the kids of my neighbours call out. 'Hey guys, everything OK?", I answer in my best Portuguese. They smile at me, and continue with their football match on the stairs of the building. The streets are too unsafe.

The sun stands big and reddish just above the horizon. The smell of baked fish and fried noodles hangs around me. Exotic music plays through all doors and windows. Kids shout to eachother in the heat of their game, while their mothers sit in the doorway, talking to the ladies across the hallway. This is Africa. It starts to feel like home already. I guess, for me, this is already my home, for as much as the world as a whole feels more and more like home. The horizon seems only a few steps away... As I open the door of my apartment, I know this has been a good day. This is a good life.

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I come from no country, from no city, from no tribe.
I am the son of the road,
my country is the caravan,
my life is the most unexpected of voyages.

(From Leo the African by Amin Maalouf)

“I’m mad like hell and I am not going to take this anymore”
I remember it very well. Must have been somewhere mid 1991. I arrived home late from work one evening. I had a well paid management function in a respectable firm. I lived with Tine, my loving girl friend. We had two cars, two dogs, a flock of sheep, chickens and geese, on our villa-farm on the Belgian country side. The future looked bright. Nevertheless, that evening, as I sat in the car on the drive way, I did not feel happy. Some things were missing. It felt like at the age of 30, I had just finished my life. The plans for the future were all laid out so well. Autopilot from now on. But deep down inside, I hated corporate life and corporate politics that go with it. I hated wasting two hours of my life in traffic jams every day. And getting up every day at the same time, seeing the same faces every day, and dancing to the tunes of the people at work. Working my butt off until I could retire. I hated the limitations my job and life put on me.

African music played on the tape recorder, that night, as I sat in the car for what seemed like hours. I remember it very well. Just looking into the dark night. Listening to the exotic sounds, dreaming of exotic places. It suddenly darned on me: “This is not my life. Actually it is not a life at all”. Life is supposed to be creative. Variable. Free. Filled with the laughter of children, working with people one likes, working when one likes, doing what one likes. Going to places one likes. I wanted to do things so once, old and ready to die, I could take my grand children on my knee, and close my eyes, and look back on a life I could be proud of. A life that was filled with landmarks of what I had achieved, things I had done and seen. Things that would have an impact on the people around me, a positive impact.

As I got out of the car, I had made up my mind. “Something’s got to change around here”. I felt like on the movie “Network”, where a journalist encouraged people to throw open their windows and to shout “I am mad like hell, and I am not going to take this anymore!”. Well, I was not going to take this crap anymore!

Breaking the chains.

The first sign of madness was my spontaneous decision to participate in an expedition to Clipperton, a deserted island in the Pacific. Decided one day, gone on expedition three weeks later. It was a spiritual experience. For the first time since very very long, I felt deeply happy. I sat laid back, in the middle of the night, looking at the Milky Way in the middle of the Pacific, with palm trees waving in the moon light, listening to the music of Enya playing in my head over and over again. Completely sun burned to the second degree, dizzy because of the lack of sleep. But happy. I was doing what I wanted to do. I found part of my destiny, it seemed.

Once I got back to Belgium after the expedition, my job looked even more dull than ever. I

needed another shot of adrenaline. The shot came one year later. Another expedition to the Pacific. This time, it was to an island called Howland. Guess you never heard of that one. Well, I did not neither. And what an adrenaline shot it was. A team of great people, each one still being a close friend today. A trip where I almost drowned in a stormy see. A trip during which I learned to love the Pacific. A trip where we lived on survival mode, using the very limited food and water provisions we had for almost a week waiting out the storm which made it impossible for us to leave the island with the small rubber dinghies we had. What more can one do to lead an intense life?

As we had trouble getting off the island, I arrived back at work one week too late. My boss schmuttered some remarks like “that is typical you again, is it not? Always trying to do the unconventional.”. Well he was right. And almost on the spot, I asked for 2 months leave without pay, for the next year, as I wanted to go to the Antarctic. He said no. I did the only sensible thing to do: I quit my job. That was June 1993. Since then, things have only been improving. Ha!
For one year, I did not have a paid job. But I enjoyed working home. I wrote a book. About past expeditions. Mostly for myself. And worked on the preparations for our expedition to an Antarctic island called Peter I (rather appropriate name, don’t you think?). Only then, I started to feel what the word ‘freedom’ meant.
We did the “Peter I expedition”. When I left home for the Falklands, where a Russian icebreaker would pick us up, I told Tine: ‘I do not know when I will be back. Might be in two or three months, but do not worry!”.

I still carry the memories of the Falklands and the Antarctic deep inside me. You had to be there to believe it. Life on Peter I was so intense you could almost touch it. The beauty of bright white icebergs floating in a dark blue see, with colours so intense that you have to wear sun glasses. And storms that wipe you off your feet. Talking about living your life!

Making a living
Many a time, life is determined by coincidences. The art of living, I think, is often to catch those coincidences, those signs and to use them as opportunities. One time such a coincidence happened. I am a ham, a radio amateur. At that time, I was a fanatic ham. One weekend, we were operating a ham radio competition from a friend’s home. Paul, one of the other radio operators, was a friend from the Howland expedition. During the contest, he received a phone call from someone offering him a job working for the United Nations as telecom specialist. I had never even heard the UN took civilian telecom people. I thought it was all military. Little did I know. I talked to Paul about it, that weekend. It looked interesting. Was this the road to take? I could put my skills as radio amateur and professional IT expert, to a good use. Travelling, working with people, and at the same time work for the humanitarian cause sparked off a lot of day dreaming in me.

So a few weeks later, I also applied for a telecom job in the relief work. That was April 1994. Three months after our Antarctic expedition, one year after I quit my corporate job, the Red Cross sent me to Angola. I started the ideal job: doing radio stuff, travelling and working with and for people, was all I ever wanted to do. Earning a living out of it made me feel I turned my hobby into my job. It never felt like a job, though. Not even up to today. It became a passion.

Angola was my first trip to Africa. And it was an eye opener. I had expected a hot and humid savannah, with loads of wild life, and villages made of clay huts. Quiet nights with stars overhead. Instead of all that romantic stuff, I got an flat in the middle of Luanda, with plenty of noise from hundreds of television sets and radios, each one tuned to shout over the other. And machine gunshots blasting in the city the whole night.

But the job was exactly as I expected it to be. Telecommunications. Loads of freedom to plan my job as I wanted. Loads of independent work, with improvisations every day. Meeting lovely people. One day, I was driving off to a town in the middle of the bush, another day I was flown into a shelled and deserted town given a few hours to install a complete radio station from scratch, training people in Portuguese how to operate a radio. And no, I do not speak Portuguese. Talking about challenges... I remember one night I was climbing a tree in the pitch dark to hang up a dipole antenna, thinking how much I enjoyed this work.

Fifteen years later

We are now fifteen years following that one night when I took my decision to quit my well protected life and to go on a totally different route, Since then, I have done several missions for the IFRC - International Red Cross: twice in Angola, twice in Malawi and one in Ivory Coast. Later on, I took over Paul’s job in Goma, Zaire –now DRC-, working for UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The first two years I worked as a consultant, spending half of my time in Belgium, with Tine and Lana, our first born.

Early 1996 I was offered a job by one of the UN humanitarian agencies in Kampala, Uganda. Kampala became my base for four years. First I worked as a telecommunications officer in the regional office of our organisation. Later I was promoted as the head of the regional Technical Support Unit. We looked after a vaste area covering Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Congo-Brazzaville.
After a second expedition to the Antarctic in 1997, Tine and Lana joined me in Uganda. Hannah, our second daughter joined us too. Two weeks old and already in Africa, probably marked her as a life long traveller.

Mats, another fellow radio amateur, joined our team, and together we founded FITTEST, which over the years grew to be the UN’s fast intervention support team. Side by side we have assisted in most of the humanitarian crisises in the world since 1997.

In 1999, I moved to Kosovo, and then to Islamabad, Pakistan. Tine said ‘she would rather be alone in Belgium than alone in some remote country’ and moved back to our home base. I started to work two months on and one month off, shuttling between home and work. A good decision it seemed afterwards, as with its global coverage, the work with FITTEST took me to well over a hundred countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Pacific, South and Central America. The funny thing was that once I got home, my ‘girls’ wanted to travel, so I was never really ‘home’ in Belgium for the past ten odd years.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we started our office in Dubai, where I worked until 2006.

The office grew into one of the main UN humanitarian fast response facilities. Be in the midst of the Balkan’s crisis, the 9/11 fall out in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the tsunami, the refugee crisis in Darfur, or the Pakistan earthquake, we were always on the frontline of the activities, calling ourselves the ‘special forces’ of the humanitarians. ‘Fast is good, First is better’, was our motto. Work was always presenting new challenges and had many sudden twists and turns giving us sleepless nights and exciting days, to say the least.

In 2006, I decided to take a thirteen months' sabbatical, so I could spend more time with my family, and do a bit of sailing. Taking that distance, I realized that as years flew by, my path crossed that of many people. Many situations came up unexpectedly, leading to funny, sad, moving or weird stories. I started to write them down. Some were published in magazines, some I wrote as Emails to friends, some I just jotted down for myself and some stuck in my memory.
During my sabbatical, I started this blog as an eBook, as a string of these stories.

Mid 2007, I started my new job, still as a humanitarian, but this time working in our Rome headquarters. But the blog continued. I added some stories of the travels I did with the family, sailing stories, and later on expanded with news items. All of them form "the tales while travelling The Road", my "Road of Life", my "Road to the Horizon".

Early 2010, after almost three years in Rome, I went to the Dominican Republic to head the support office for the Haiti Earthquake for six month. It was my first emergency deployment since three years, and I felt like a fish in the water. A great team, a massive workload, and an opportunity to put things into perspective.

In June 2010, I decided to take another sabbatical. Needed to spend more time with the family, and wanted to try out projects I had in mind since a long time: expanding on my experience in social media I ventured into a new world stimulating the use of social media for different non-profit organisations. All while shuttling between the family in Belgium, my base in Rome and several field based assignments.
Eventually, I quit the UN, and for eight years, became a full-time freelance online media consultant for a wide range of non-profit organisations.

And then, in 2018, I got bored. I missed the thrill of working in the deeper field, missed running projects which were more critical. So I came back to the UN, starting up a new project to re-standardize the telecommunications safety/security tools used by UN and NGO staff world wide. What initially started as an adhoc try-out, rapidly grew to a solid (but small) hardcore team of specialists which, within a year or so, moved from "a try-out" to a permanent institutionalized service (and a "critical life-saving service", if I may say so myself).

It was a nice way to wrap up my professional path (some call it "career"): We had created a great team, ran a great project, with excellent support and buy-in from our partners,... But in July 2023, it was time to retire from professional life...

By then, I had been sailing for 20 years. Had already 40,000 nautical miles under my keel, with 8 open ocean passages, and for years, I had been training/instructing/mentoring people (for free), into the art of sailing and cruising... And a new door opened

Since the day I retired (well actually, I started a bit before that, as with any previous "career" moves, the changes came gradually, and I kinda slided into a new era in my life). I had sailed on many different boats. With many different crews. In many places across the globe. I have been lucky, to crew on some of the world's fastest competition boats at speeds any sailor can only dream of. But I have also been able to share my experience with new boat owners: people new to yachting, or cruising, or skippers who have never done open-ocean passages before, either as mentor, or even just as "experienced crew".

If I were 10 years younger, I probably would have turned this hobby -yet again- into a job - as I did with "IT" in the 1980'ies, "telecoms" in the 1990ies, and "social media" around 2010. But.. this time, it will not become "my job". Now is time "to give back" to society: I provide all my services, training and time, for free. As a way to pay back for the good fortune life has given me. But also because I fully believe that this will bring good karma my way: helping people discovering the true joy, art and science of sailing. The smile on their faces, after a rough passage, or a fast sail, being my true reward.