Kaka Bloc

Hey everybody,

I know I'm supposed to talk about the trip to Haiti but let me first start this post with a bit of advice.  If you decide to take a sleeping pill in order to make sure that you can get some rest on a redeye... WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE ON THE PLANE.  Don't take it one hour before boarding.  Ever.

If you do, you end up writing things in your notebook like this:

What it says doesn't really matter (actually, it's strangely pithy.  I now understand Ken Kesey a bit better).  It's more the fact that I couldn't manage to stay within a loose vertical column, then I took a right turn and decided to write up the side of the same page rather than, say, write on the next page.  I also caused a minor incident by stumbling and shoving my way directly to the front of the line when my boarding group was called, experienced a hallucination involving a pulsating gate ramp as well as several awkward minutes of difficulty as my arithmetically challenged mind wrestled with the task of discovering my seat location.

That little pill definitely put me to sleep though.  I woke up on the descent to Miami, then another flight to Port-Au-Prince (packed with the requisite missionaries in matching t-shirts) where I was picked up at the airport by Tammy, Cari and Richard.  With Help Tammy Help Haiti's (HTHH) medical clinic in Cite Soleil nearing completion we traveled down to finish up whatever work needed to be done in order to make the clinic fully functional.  Once that's done then HTHH plans to find a medical organization to make use of the space and provide services to the populace in the Boston area.

Keep away from small children

On my first day there we picked up a doctor from Medi-Share to bring her around to the clinic and see if they had any interest in making use of it.  She had kind of a tough time wrapping her head around the concept of a clinic being built and ready for their use.  She'd ask questions like "so you want us to pay rent?" No.  "Ok, so you want us to buy the clinic from you?"  No, we just want you to use it.  "For free?"  Yeah, well you have to support yourself and pay for electricity, but yeah.  Though initially perplexed and a bit skeptical, Tammy and Cari were able to convince her that the whole thing was legit and that we're not psychos.  Well, except for this guy.

The clinic itself looks great.  Two stories, a pharmacy, two doctor's offices and plenty of space out front for triage.  The work that remained to be done were things like filling cracks in the walls, reinforcing shelving in the offices, building benches, putting up razorwire on the security wall, and painting.  We ended up tearing out all the shelving and rebuilding it since the previous carpenter thought it was ok for a shelf to be hanging off one screw about 2 inches off the wall.

The HTHH clinic

The first time I saw Robinson was when we were hanging out at Jamaica Base catching up with some of the folks there and playing with the kids.  He zooms up on his scooter, says hello to everybody, sees me and yells out "Kaka bloc!"  Well fuck me.  Guess what all the kids were calling me over the next two weeks?  This is what happens when you try to get too cute with a language you don't know.  Last year I thought it'd be funny when we were pouring concrete to figure out how to say if you eat cement, you poop concrete (mange ciment, kaka beton).  Well, somehow this got transmogrified into "mange ciment, kaka bloc" and then just to "kaka bloc" but it wasn't until Rob made his dramatic scooter entrance that it turned into my new alias.  So now the kids call me Kaka Bloc, and when I try to say my name is not Kaka Bloc (mwen pa rele kaka bloc) they think that's even funnier, and there's nothing worse for your ego than having a pack of six-year-old kids (some of whom aren't wearing shoes... or pants) running around calling you Kaka Bloc.  Well ha ha ha you little shits... next time you come into the clinic I'm going to put stool softener in your vitamins.

My Kreyol actually got pretty good over the couple of weeks.  I got to the point where I could carry on a stilted conversation with most four-year-olds, though their condescension was palpable.  Robinson was particularly patient with me and he was justly rewarded while trapped in the back of the car on the way to dinner with a stirring double rendition of Whitesnake's "Is This Love" by me and Rich.

Was David Coverdale touring through Bornemouth in early 1975?  Maybe we should ask Mrs. Colbourne.

As far as the work on the clinic you can see what was completed in the pictures.  All that's left to do is for someone to finish up the electrical and it's ready to go.  We did take part of one day to distribute water in the neighboring area of Soutay.  Tammy rented a water truck and we walked over with our local guys (Milot, Elton, Jean-Claude, Owl and Jean-Cheri) as security and crowd control.  As Rich said, Boston is posh upper-class when compared to Soutay.  Most of the dwellings are made of wood, tin, or corrugated iron rather than concrete and cinder blocks.  I'm not sure what kind of access they have to water other than the tank one of the locals owns, and that requires payment.  They certainly don't have access to a large tower like the one HTHH built in Boston.

Well once the truck came rumbling down the street and the hose was unfurled all hell broke loose.  Most of us worked on the line filling up the buckets that people were bringing for the water while Milot and Elton  tried in vain to get the locals to form some kind of a line.  Eventually some semblance of order was achieved and we spent the best part of the next hour hauling buckets and pouring water.  In retrospect I think that the crowd was mostly composed of women and kids.  Why that is, I don't know.  Cari did manage to take some fantastic pictures of the distribution, though.

Overall there was less excitement than last year, and I mean that in a good way... as in no guns.  You never really want to get comfortable in Cite Soleil, though.  We got a rock thrown into the windshield of our car while it was parked at Jamaica Base.  That move was not particularly well thought-out by the perpetrator since it was right at that time that the UN was meeting with Tammy at the clinic to discuss funding.  The next the UN had pictures of this kid so he spent the next week or so hiding out.  The most bizarre incident occurred when we arrived one morning at Jamaica Base in the middle of an argument as Mario was kicking some woman out of the Mission Ranch clinic.  Things got heated, she ended up getting shoved into some razor wire, then she got up, grabbed her three-year-old boy and tried to use him as a club to hit Mario and Milot.  That was definitely something I've never witnessed before... literally using a child as a weapon.

People ask me if things are better in Haiti and I don't know quite how to answer that.  First of all, I'm far from an expert having only spent about a month there, only in Port-Au-Prince and working strictly in Cite Soleil.  Tammy, Cari, and even Rich have spent much more time there than I have.  Larry and his wife Jean came down for a week while we were there and I think it's something like his 12th trip since the earthquake so you should ask him.  I'm sure his answer would begin with a diatribe on "missionary tourists," include scores of f-bombs and talk about how improvements in Haiti would require lifestyle changes on our part.  Larry's actually a pretty thoughtful guy, don't let the sexy red wife-beater deceive you.  

When you drive through Port-Au-Prince, you drive on paved roads along streets that are lined with buildings made from concrete and rebar...  we're not talking about dirt roads and mud shacks here.  There must've been a point sometime in the past where there was the capital and resources to build this level of infrastructure, but now it's gone to shit.  Crumbled, abandoned buildings (some due to the earthquake, many predating it) and streets that are on the verge of being undriveable due to the depth and number of potholes are the norm.  There is no maintenance.  Where did all the capital and resources go?

When talking about third-world countries the instinctive reaction most people in the first world have is corrupt government.  It would be foolish to say that it has not been an issue in Haiti since there has been plenty of evidence to show that this has been the case (see Duvalier).   That's just one aspect of this complex situation.  I asked Robinson about Haitian economics when we were out to dinner one night.  He told us about what his father said, that twenty or thirty years ago people were poor but they could still find jobs.  Now it seems like a large part of the work has dried up.  All it takes are a few Google searches to find out that, as part of the conditions for IMF loans back in the 80s and 90s, Haiti was forced to lower or eliminate its import tariffs.  As a result the (subsidized) US agriculture industry was able to export rice and beans to Haiti at a lower cost than their farmers could produce them, essentially making rice and bean farming untenable as an industry.  So today the poorest country in the western hemisphere is one of the United States' largest importers of rice.

I'm not a policy expert, however, and I'm sure if you spend a few minutes looking things up yourself that you'll be able to discover a multitude of reasons and theories on Haiti's economic situation and how/if it can be improved.  What I know is what I see, and what I see are guys like Robinson who works tirelessly with multiple charities on various projects to improve the quality of life in Cite Soleil.  Or a guy like Elton who told me that he would love to move his kids out of Cite Soleil if he had the money, but that he would stay even if he could afford to move out because he wants to work to make it a better place to live.  And luckily there are people like Tammy, Cari, and Rich who besides working on projects like the clinic and the water tower use their own money to put kids in school and pay for medicine and medical procedures for those who can't afford it.

Anyhow, there's still a lot of work to be done.  People have been asking me if it was a good trip or if I felt like I accomplished anything.  To be honest, it sometimes feels like you're pissing on a forest fire.  Lucky for me, I have the bladder of a 90 year old man so once the seal is broken it's off to the races.  So we'll just keep pissing I guess.  Besides, all the Prestige that Rich and I drink when we're down there has to come out somewhere.  Maybe we should push for full Haitian employment at Brasserie D'Haiti... then they could export Prestige to the U.S. and England.

Without further ado, here are the pictures...

Kaka Bloc

Take 'er easy,

Dave

A Week in Pictures

Hey everybody,

One of my checklist items for the year was to take my camera with me during a typical week and take a bunch of random pictures of miscellaneous crap. I thought it'd be a good way to record a snippet of this period of my life but it also turns out it's a great way to realize and appreciate what you've got. San Francisco's a fantastic place to live and it's never lacking for things to do. Just a bunch of random shit in a random week... Kendall's open mic, street food festival, poker, fire trucks, low-riders, homebrew tastings... the usual. The only downside of re-living the week was the number of pictures that involve the office. Ghastly.

Here's the link...

A Week In Pictures

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Ridin' the Trans Mongolian

Hey everybody,

I finally had some time to clip together videos from the epic Beijing-Moscow journey Mae, Jeremy, Rich and I took back in April.  Feel the power of the Panda!!!



Take 'er easy,
Dave

The Paris of Siberia

Hey everybody,

Last time I left you we had just crossed the border from Mongolia into Russia on our way to our next stop:  Irkutsk.  The only reason we planned on stopping in Irkutsk is because it's a territory from the board game Risk, but we later found out that it's known as the "Paris of Siberia" according to Mae's guidebook.  I'm not sure how much that means... you could say that Cleveland is the "Paris of Lake Erie" considering that it's competing against Buffalo and Detroit.  Regardless, Irkutsk is the most popular stop along the Trans-Siberian railroad mostly because it's the jumping-off point for Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake.

The train chaos continued well into Russia because this it's there that the Mongolian smugglers finally get to unload their wares.  It's at the first stop where we almost lost Mae.  Now, I should explain a bit about how the stops work.  The train is on a set schedule where it only stops at certain cities along the route.  The stops can vary anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes.  The duration of the stop is posted on the train, but it's always a good idea to check with the conductor to see how much time you have if you want to jump off and buy supplies or whatever.

Cross-border commerce in full effect

So we get to the first stop in Russia which I think was called "Slyudyanka 1" and Rich, Jeremy and I decide to get out to stretch our legs.  The Mongolian conductor lady tells us we only have two minutes and we exit the train to witness what can only be described as a flurry of commerce between the locals and the smugglers.  There were probably about 50 people involved in this two minute scrum that saw a significant offloading of Mongolian merchandise.  We hopped back on the train, back to our compartment and... no Mae.  This is when the train started moving.

The first thing that came to my mind was that I have to buy one of those elastic body harnesses that they strap on to hyperactive kids and from now on use it to tie Mae to a fixed object whenever she's going to be out of sight.  I turn around and the conductor is standing right behind us, realizing what happened, and she starts yelling at us in Mongolian.  Then one of the chubby smuggler ladies comes storming down the aisle, pointing and laying into us as well.  Since Mongolian wasn't a language that was offered at my high school, the best I can make out is that the smuggler lady saw Mae get out but wasn't going to stop her because she was busy selling pants or something.  The one thing that was clear was that both of them held the three of us personally responsible for losing a member of our party.  This is when we see Mae making her way down the aisle.

The smuggler lady sees her, starts pointing and barking, then grabs Mae, spins her around and starts spanking her.  Then she walks off to her compartment in a huff.  Apparently Mae had gotten off to buy some water and realized too late that the train was moving.  She then proceeded to fight her way through the crowd and jump onto a moving train a few cars down from ours... she does her own stunts ladies and gentlemen!  Luckily, the next stop was actually one where we were supposed to leave.

We spent a day walking around "The Paris of Siberia" mostly looking at old buildings and Russian women.  Well, at least us three guys did.  The most striking architectural feature of Irkutsk is that the downtown area is filled with old 19th and early 20th century buildings that look like something out of a Western, and it seems as though at least half of them are abandoned.  The weather wasn't that cold actually, at least nowhere near the Siberian stereotype.  The toughest part of the day was ordering food, though Rich, Jeremy and I will eat just about anything.  The challenge was for Mae, who over the course of nine days managed to butcher the Russian phrase for "I'm a vegetarian" about 457 different ways, none of them successful at communicating her dietary restrictions.  The one time it did work in Listvyanka the guy behind the counter just looked at her, put his hands over his eyes and made gesture of putting food in his mouth basically saying "close your eyes and eat it."  The locals turned out to be pretty friendly, especially after a few beers, and especially the ones that can speak some English.  We ended up at the famous Liverpool Bar until 3AM, where we met a flair bartender, the bass player for a cover band, some German guy working in the oil business, a student, and a tattooed guy wearing a wife beater who told me my ink was shit.  He was kind enough to refer me to Irkutsk's premier tattoo artist in case I wanted to get my egregious deformities corrected.  Good times.

The next day we headed to Listvyanka which is a small town on the edge of Lake Baikal.  The lake itself is spectacular; the part where we stayed was completely frozen over and, being there on a Sunday afternoon, we saw families walking around on the lake, hovercraft, snowmobiles, and cars driving on the lake dragging kids in innertubes behind them.  Honestly, I can't do the lake justice; I could've easily sat and stared at it for hours.  We ended up at a shack/cafe in a parking lot facing the lake and eating smoked fish.  The lady who ran our guesthouse hooked us up with a banya, which is a Russian sauna of an extremely high temperature during which you're supposed to whack each other on the back with wet pine branches.  I don't ask questions in these situations, plus I'm pretty sure it's not considered S&M if the pine branches are fresh.  I do know that we got to wear some awesome wool hats.

The following day marked the beginning of our longest stretch on the train:  3 1/2 days.  I know what you're thinking... surely after the migrant laborers and the smugglers, this next bit must be where the romance of the Trans-Siberian really begins!  Well, if your idea of romance features a dozen shirtless Russian guys roaming the aisles of your 100 degree train car then you would be in heaven.  Combine that with no showers for over three days and the nocturnal sound sensation known as Jeremy "The Chainsaw" Gilmore and you have the perfect recipe for a pleasure ride.

To be honest, the time passes by more quickly than you expect.  You're in a train compartment with three close friends chatting, drinking, and playing cards.  Jeremy had a dream where he was directing a telenovela so every once in a while he'd look at Rich and say "Ricardo... mas emocion!"  You make friends with the provodnista (conductor) because she can get you beer more cheaply than on the train platforms.  You watch Rich as he frets over the next text message he's going to send to/receive from his girlfriend, and then you laugh at him when he loses signal.  You watch the Siberian scenery going by, which embodies what must be meant by the phrase "stark beauty."  From Irkutsk almost all the way to Moscow the path was lined with endless forests of beautiful white birch trees broken up by the odd village here and there.  Looking at the construction of some of those shacks you wonder how anybody could survive a cold Siberian winter living in those things.  Even though the scenery is repetitive, it isn't boring in any way, in fact it's strangely mesmerizing.  By the way, if you were wondering what the perfect train journey music is, it's any early John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters.  Trust me on this.

We mostly bought food at the various train stops from these tiny shops on the platforms typically manned by old Russian ladies.  You can also buy beer from them, but vodka is illegal to sell on the platforms... apparently Russia has a problem with alcoholism!  Shhh... don't tell anybody.  Anyway, if you do end up eating on the train rather than getting food from the platforms, make sure you actually *go* to the dining car instead of letting the sexy librarian dining attendant talk you into receiving dinner in your compartment.   How can she talk you into it if you don't speak any Russian, you may ask?  Good question... the strategy is, when she sees that you don't understand, to speak Russian louder and faster than before, as if the sheer volume and intensity of her command of the language will force its knowledge into your brain.  What actually happens is that you just nod at everything she says and the three of you end up spending a hundred bucks on pork chops.

We did manage to meet a couple of people along the way.  Leila was on her way to London to work front of the house at one of Joel Robuchon's restaurants and she taught us more about caviar than we would've thought possible.  Mae, desperate for a fourth to play Shanghai Rummy, roped in a guy named Ivan who turned out to be a soldier stationed on the Russia/China border that was going home to get married.  He spent most of his time hanging out in our compartment trying to hide from the provodnik who was flirting with him.  Like I said, three days went by quickly, and my greatest personal achievement was putting one of the train car's toilets permanently out of order.

I feel confident in saying
this photo isn't taken very often

Once we finally reached Moscow, also known as "The Paris of Europe," we were badly in need of a strong dose of the three S's.  We split up since Mae went to meet her friend Sef who had flown in from London and only ended up seeing each other sparingly for the rest of the weekend.  We had four days in Moscow and spent most of our time simply walking around and getting to know the city.  The Kremlin was by far the most impressive thing we saw in our time in Moscow.  It's much larger than I anticipated and it's obvious that a lot of resources go into maintaining the structure and it's surroundings.  To be honest, I expected Moscow to be a little more... I dunno... Soviet.  Maybe I thought I'd see a bunch of factories with no windows billowing smoke, or big boxy gray apartment buildings, or monolithic government buildings with giant imposing statues of communist leaders filling the city.  From what we saw, though, the town center looks pretty much like a modern metropolis.  It's obvious that there is a lot of money in Moscow.  The city is plastered with either new construction or buildings undergoing renovation.  Seeing any of the old Soviet-era Lada cars is a rarity since most of what you'll see driving down the street are late-model SUVs, BMWs or Mercedes.  Jeremy said he'd never seen so many Bentleys in one day.  Moscow was ranked 15th most expensive city in the world last year, ahead of Paris and New York, which explains why we couldn't find a beer for under $6.  On the bright side, the city does contain 13 TGI Friday's restaurants.  The best part was how everyone we met, including the Russians, told us we should've gone to St. Petersburg instead.

We did luck out by meeting a couple of university students, Lisa from Belarus and Alice from Moldova, that volunteered to take us around the city and show us a couple of spots where tourists typically don't end up.  They took us to a huge square commemorating the fallen of World War II that's punctuated by an obelisk that looks about 10 stories high.  Russians are big on the WWII memorials and it's common for newlyweds to visit a memorial on their wedding day and place flowers there.  We visited an exhibition park that included exhibit halls from different parts of the former Soviet Union and then on to an amusement park where we rode some go-karts that the local Russian guys treat as their version of Death Race 2000.  We ended up eating dinner at Elki-Palki, which was great only because I enjoy saying Elki-Palki and listening to Alice try to explain what it means.  It was nice to have a couple of natives there to translate the menu since it normally took me half an hour to slowly mouth the literal sounds from the Cyrillic alphabet before realizing that I still don't know what "mrsa" means.

Russian ladies' casual wear

Before I go, I'd like to make a special mention of the Russian ladies, from Irkutsk to Moscow, which Jeremy, Rich and I agreed have to rank in the top five worldwide.  If you enjoy six-inch stripper heels, which apparently are a required accessory, then bump them up a couple of ranks.  That being said, where are the women over 45?  They are nowhere to be found.  It's like a real-life version of Logan's Run.  Also... let's talk about Russian guys for a second.  A large percentage of them look like their face was caught in a bear trap somewhere around age 7.  They accentuate their natural looks with a haircut that is a combination of Moe from The Three Stooges in the front and a ferocious mullet in the back:  The Moeullet.  Along with the track pants, it's understandable how this combination would be irresistible to Russian women.  Seriously... we don't understand, someone please explain.  We had to come up with a term for it, pulling a Sputnik, when we saw a particularly egregious example of a mismatch, mostly because the word Sputnik is cool (yes, that's the best we could do after 9 days).  To be fair, not all of them suffered from these conditions, but it was enough to notice.  Also, I expected Russian guys to be bigger.  Not that they were small, they were normal, but I guess when you grow up with Ivan Drago and Nikolai Volkoff, you expect more.

Well, that's it for now.  I won't be going anywhere for a while, so hopefully you enjoy these pics (just click the image below).  Again, they were mostly poached from the rest of the crew since whenever I try to take a beautiful still shot something like an electrical pole or other such object inevitably jumps into my frame.

The Paris of Siberia

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Everyone Loves a Panda

Hey everybody,

I wrote this bit on the train about a day and a half out from Moscow on the journey across Siberia.  We’d been on that portion of the ride two days since we left Irkutsk and no one had tried to throw us off the train, though Mae really did her best to make this happen.  My travel beard had grown ferocious and wild... it could not be contained and visibly frightened children and small animals.  I wish I could say the same about my travel hairline. 

This all started because Rich has been on the road for the last year or so but is due back in England in April for the annual scan to make sure he still has a brain.  Though anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise, the NHS insists on thoroughness.  Rich wanted to mark the Trans-Siberian (I guess Trans-Mongolian technically) off his life checklist.  The call went out... who would be dumb enough to join Rich in this quest spanning 6 days and 7000 Km in one train compartment? 

Mae, Jeremy and I flew to Beijing where we met Rich for three days in the Chinese capitol; a city where where Mae is considered tall and if the air were a crayon it would be burnt sienna.  Apparently our visit coincided with a holiday and everywhere we went was packed with Chinese tourists.  As we wandered through the narrow hutongs where our hostel was located we were reassured that we were indeed among civilized people by the sight of a conveniently placed Starbucks across the street from Tiananmen Square.

Coming soon to the Folsom Street Fair

The square itself is fairly vast and surrounded by imposing government buildings and museums.  With all the Chinese tourists around there was one thing in particular that stood out:  The popularity of asscrack pants for kids.  I don't know what else to call them... they're regular pants with the part over the crack completely open, and the deluxe model even has an opening in the front.  They look like tiny chaps except they're made from cotton and worn by a Chinese toddler. 

Tiananmen Square faces directly on to the Forbidden Palace which, judging by the amount of time we had to wait in line to get in, uses a very liberal definition of the word "forbidden."  Once inside we noticed that, while the first few buildings were nicely restored, the further you walk into the grounds, the more run-down it gets.  Honestly, the two things that stood out about the Forbidden Palace were that it has a basketball court (no joke) and the garden on the north end is fairly well-kept.  Oh yeah, and while waiting in line we bought these mystery flavored popsicles that were made out of some kind of space-age substance that wouldn’t melt even after a half hour in the sun.

Panda Reservoir Dogs

We wandered north through a series of hutongs on our way to the lake district, during which Rich had the genius idea of buying a panda hat at one of Beijing’s many panda-themed stores. Three white guys wearing panda hats instantly became the most popular attraction around Beihai Park.  People kept stopping us to take pictures, or asking us to take pictures with them, or simply pointing and laughing.  The only logical step at this point was to rent a three-man bicycle and ride a lap around the two lakes which, I have to admit, was one of the most fun things I've ever done.  Apparently the sight of a triple-threat panda bike is quite rare.  We were celebrities for a day; I have no idea how many pictures were taken of us since the ones that we took are only a fraction.  We even crashed a modeling photo shoot.  It was like “Anchorman”… I don’t know if you know this, but we’re kind of a big deal in Beijing.  Not to overestimate the impact, but the three of us may be responsible for the single greatest achievement in Sino-Western international relations of the last 20 years.  Which… apparently didn't extend as far as the cab drivers because at the end of the night no one would stop to pick up three giant pandas and a bunny.

The next day Jeremy and Rich had... uh... a little trouble waking up (they’ll say otherwise but they are liars, drunks, and probably sodomites) so Mae and I ended up taking a trip to the Great Wall on our own.  The bus ride was over three hours during which we were treated to a hearty breakfast featuring the Chinese staples of Sausage McMuffins and coffee, then handed identification tags to wear around our necks because our guide candidly admitted to the group that all foreigners look alike to her and if we wanted lunch we’d better wear our tags. 

The portion of the wall that we visited was at Jinshianling which luckily was not very crowded.  The Great Wall itself is a remarkable achievement in construction and they've performed some diligent work to restore a good portion of it.  I have to admit though that I didn't feel the same sense of history walking along the wall that I've felt at other ancient sites I've visited.  Maybe what dampened my enthusiasm was the fact that the surrounding landscape at the end of winter is brown and the air is hazy so that the wall itself seems to blend into its environment.  I'm glad we saw the wall but I'm not sure I'd sit through another 7+ hours of bus rides for a return trip.

At 7:30 AM the next morning began the first leg of our train journey which spanned a day and a half from Beijing to Ulan Bator.  The allure of the train journey has long been a topic of writers over the years, wistfully dreaming about the possibilities such a trip may afford.  Well any romantic ideas about the ride tend to disappear when you enter a train car filled with migrant laborers that smells like cigarette smoke and b.o.  This marked the beginning of Mae’s multinational one-woman campaign to rid Chinese and Mongolian trains of unauthorized smoking, or, as the rest of us liked to call it, the campaign to get our asses kicked in a foreign country.  Actually, Mae had multiple one-woman campaigns along our journey that fit under the same umbrella, but this was the one that came closest to success (not for the smoking, for the ass-kicking).

Creepy Chinese Waldo

Sure we made friends, like the creepy guy who looked like a Chinese version of Where's Waldo blessed/cursed with Kathleen Turner's “Jessica Rabbit” voice.  He wandered around our train car, opening the door to our compartment and asking the same questions over and over like "Are you American?" and "Do you like China?" and “Do you like spicy food?” then walking off.  The highlight was when he opened up our compartment door and asked "Do you sleep at night?" then rubbed his hands and walked away.  We started locking our door after that.

There's not much countryside to speak of from Beijing all the way to the border… it's all cities and factories that are difficult to distinguish through the smoky air.  We saw some power plants, which was exciting.  The laborers exited the train at a town about 50 miles from the Mongolian border.

You are only allowed to import items
valued at less than 100 dollars!

Let me ask this question… why do border guards have to dress like they were officers from The Empire in Star Wars?  When did this become the official outfit?  You’re half asleep, filling out forms that are either in a foreign language or written in third-grade English, this guy walks in and you’re somehow expecting Darth Vader to follow him through the door asking you what you’ve done with the plans for the Death Star.  Between midnight and 2AM someone stormed into our compartment approximately 847 times.  The only one of us that was immune to the hassle was Jeremy, passed out on the upper bunk, wearing a panda hat.

We awoke to the sights of the Mongolian plains outside our windows, endless stretches of rolling hills occasionally dotted with villages of round huts called gers or with packs of wild horses running free.  Occasionally the solemnity of the Gobi desert would be broken by a factory or some kind of refinery but the landscape remained fairly barren until we began to reach the outskirts of Ulan Bator.  We went from seeing one car every hundred miles to full-fledged traffic jams as we motored toward the center of the city.  UB immediately strikes you as a place that doesn't fit with the rest of the Mongolia that we saw through the compartment window.  There are newly constructed highrises and office buildings through the center of town, and the roads are jammed with late model cars and SUVs.

After spending a day in the city I wouldn't say that Ulan Bator should be a destination in itself.  I think most travelers who visit Mongolia go there to experience a trip to a village to live in a ger for a few days, using UB as a stopping point on the way there and back.  It has the requisite giant main square surrounded by government buildings and museums with statues of great Mongolians.  The people are tall, they seem to take great care to dress stylishly, and the consensus among the three guys was that Mongolian women are surprisingly hot.  We had a couple of great meals where I ate some of the best lamb in my life and the Mongolian yogurt was fantastic.  The one reminder of the nearby desert is the constant grit in your teeth from the dust blown into the city.

The next leg of the rail trip can only be referred to as... chaos.  As soon as we boarded there was a flurry of activity all up and down not only our car but the entire length of the train.  Mongolians with bags full of clothes, bags, shoes and other stuff were running up and down into each others' compartments then coming out with a whole different set of stuff.  A couple of people popped their heads through our door speaking Mongolian and wanting to hand us bags and clothes to store in the bins under our seats or overhead.  One guy who stank of vodka and was clearly off his face barged in and tried to force a couple of his bags in the bin under where Mae was sitting, so we had to physically kick the dude out.  He showed up again a few hours later, stumbled into our compartment, grabbed his junk, pointed at me and yelled "peesta!" then left.

I felt like we were somehow stowaways on a 10-car smuggling vessel.  The motion up and down the aisles was almost constant for the hours until we reached the Mongolian border with Russia.  This is when things started to get really interesting.  Once the Mongolians figured out that they couldn't get some items through the border, they'd bundle them up and throw them out the window to some friends they had waiting outside the train for just such an emergency.  The Mongolian border guards went easy on us, but we could hear all sorts of ruckus going on in the compartments nearby as they turned them upside down.  They were nothing though compared to the Russians, who went as far as to open up the light fixtures in the compartments and the aisles to make sure nobody was trying to smuggle drugs.  In spite of all this a large chunk of merchandise made it through, though I don't know how you could not spot it when a guy is wearing 10 sweaters.  There's no way that happens without the conductors and some of the officials getting a cut of the action.  Remarkably, we got through cleanly with no one wearing a panda hat.

Next time... Russia.  For now, enjoy these pics from China and Mongolia, most of which I blatantly poached off my travel mates...

https://picasaweb.google.com/thetravelsofdave/EveryoneLovesAPanda?feat=directlink

Take 'er easy,

Dave

Giant celebration in the Mission district

Hey everybody,

In case you missed it... the SF Giants won the World Series last night. In a related story, there were riots. I didn't see any rioting, just a bunch of people going apeshit up and down 24th street. I felt like Martin Sheen going upriver in Apocalypse Now. I believe I saw Dennis Hopper somewhere on 24th and Treat.

Anyhow, here are a couple of videos that capture a bit of the moment. Enjoy...

Helping Tammy

Hey everybody,

In order to best appreciate Haiti, or at least Port-Au-Prince, one must have the ability to embrace chaos.  Over the course of two weeks the best I was able to do was accept chaos, which I think is pretty good for my first time there.  I'm not simply talking about traffic or human chaos, though there's a lot of that, but I'm also talking about social and political chaos.  There are many assumptions that someone from the "first world" has about society in general that need to be either forgotten or ignored in order to successfully navigate through an environment like the one in Haiti.  For anyone considering traveling to Haiti, I'd suggest trying a middle-of-the-road country before plunging in... maybe something in southeast Asia or South America?  What would you call that, a "gateway country"?

Port-Au-Prince is pleasantly innocuous-smelling, other than when you drive by an open sewer or a pile of burning tires and/or garbage.  Traffic laws, if they do exist, are loosely followed except (mercifully) at stoplights, but that gives the twelve kids hanging out on the center divider have enough time to try and hustle you for some money.  A smoothly paved road is a distant dream, as is pretty much any sort of public sanitation.  Crumbled buildings line the streets, blackouts are commonplace, and power lines coalesce into rat's nests that sometimes lie barely overhead.

Tammy booked us in at a hotel called the Visa Lodge, which with its immaculate bungalows and pristine pool doesn't look like it belongs even on the same planet as the rest of PAP.  It was at times jarring to travel from a slum to a pool in less than 15 minutes, especially in a place where water is such a precious commodity.  In order to make up for that, as some sort of mind-numbing torture they would keep the television set to ESPN news 24/7.  It's hard to wrap your mind around working in one of the poorest slums in Haiti then seeing a channel dedicated entirely to speculation about whether or not Brett Favre is going to play football this year.  We would have to seclude ourselves in the safety of the Man Cave, our dungeon-like room underneath the dining hall which quickly assumed the lovely aroma of stale beer, gummy vitamins, and balls.

From Helping Tammy

Over the course of the two weeks there were anywhere from three to nine of us working together because of our staggered arrival times.  Max, Rich, Jeremy, Tammy and I all knew each other from Thailand.  Cari (a director with Tam's charity) and Jamie are Tammy's friends from Kingston.  Nelson is an ex-Army engineer that Tammy hired to come help with the construction and design of the medical clinic.  Last but not least was Dr. Larry (aka Boot Pep) who is not really a doctor but plays one in Haiti.  He also likes to take pictures of people's asses.  This was Larry's seventh trip to Haiti since the earthquake.

HTHH (Help Tammy Help Haiti) focuses its work in a small area of Cite Soleil known as Boston.  For a bit of background you might want to check out the short Wikipedia article on Cite Soleil located HERE, though what it describes is only the tip of the iceberg.  Here's a video of us driving through Cite Soleil:



As we were driving in on my first day the car was surrounded by a bunch of half-naked kids chanting "Ta-mi!  Ta-mi!" which I assumed she had set up by bribing them with candy but actually turned out to be a recurring event.  Every time we got out of the car we'd be assaulted by a group of at least six kids who wanted us to hold their hands or carry them and, of course, hardly any of them were wearing pants.

My first couple of days involved some work in the existing clinic that was built by a missionary group called Mission Ranch.  I wouldn't really call what I did "work" since it involved handing Larry and/or Tammy any number of creams, vitamins, pedialyte pops or painkillers while they were examining a patient.  I learned certain subtleties of the medical practice, such as the use for "vag packs" and the number of acceptable observers when Tammy is examining someone for hemorrhoids (three).  From my short time as a de facto nurse practitioner it is painfully obvious that there exists a fundamental lack of infrastructure and understanding of even the most basic health care practices in Haiti.  When we arrived in the morning there was often a line out the door to the clinic, and most of the ailments were treatable with remedies that you or I could find at our corner drug store.  Compounding the problem is the lingering belief in voodoo which often pits the witch doctors' remedies in direct conflict with the application of modern medicine.

Infant care is particularly atrocious, which is not necessarily surprising when as Larry told me the mortality rate is so high that they don't celebrate a child's birthday until they're four or five years old.  The birth of a child is often regarded as the burden of another mouth to feed rather than a cause for celebration.  Many pregnancies are unwanted since it's not uncommon for girls to be raped at some point in their teenage years.

We had one case where a mother brought in a baby girl who was less than two months old and so emaciated that I could count her individual ribs.  One of Larry's hands could almost wrap around the baby's entire body.  It was difficult to figure out why the baby was so malnourished; we have to work through translators and sometimes the parents or patients are either despondant, ignorant, or outright reluctant to answer questions.  In this case, the mother was only sporadically breastfeeding the baby for some reason that was unclear.  The baby seemed like it was asleep, but when we gave it some pedialyte it perked up and started squirming around, after which I was able to feed her about an ounce of formula since that's all she could handle.  Larry and Tammy gave the mother some formula to take home but emphasized that she needs to continue trying to breastfeed the baby since a mother can stop producing breast milk in as few as three days and there's no way she'll have enough access to formula to keep the baby alive.  She was supposed to come back to check in with the baby a few days later but we never saw them.  A week later Larry did manage to bring another baby that was in a similar condition to the hospital for treatment.

I found myself more comfortable with the construction work after we broke ground on the future HTHH medical clinic.  Our team was used mostly for grunt work such as digging and moving earth and concrete while the Haitian team led by their engineer Jackson performed most of the skilled labor.  In the short time I was there, we managed to dig and pour the concrete for the foundation, lay the rebar and the columns for the base, and wall up and fill the level up to the first floor.  I left before the first floor pour, unfortunately, but you'll be able to see more detail from the pictures and video:



One random fact you may not know about Haiti:  It's hot!  Yeah... I was surprised too! Also... construction is hard work!  I know, these facts are shocking.  I was so gnarly with sweat and dirt at the end of the day that even the Haitian kids wouldn't touch me.  They would just come up and poke me with a finger, look up and say "sal" and walk away.  I'd like to point out that Tammy assured us we'd have "four or five" cement mixers available, but she failed to mention that in Haiti a cement mixer means two guys with a shovel.  We required many (many) breaks.  During one of our many (many) breaks Max asked me if it was the heat or if we were just five years older.  I had to admit it was probably both.  Even though I age backward like Benjamin Button. Mentally.

In addition to the work itself, there were constant reminders of the dangers of working in Cite Soleil.  We were always accompanied by one or more of Tammy's security team to try and avoid any trouble.  Even the short 50 yard walk from the Mission Ranch clinic to the construction site required an escort.  Occasionally we would see a U.N. armored transport cruising by, but most of the local "law enforcement" is provided by the gangs.  Perhaps one of Tammy's most remarkable accomplishments is the bond she's been able to forge with the local gang leaders in Boston whereby they not only tolerated but welcomed our presence and understood the benefits that Tammy's work could provide their community.  That understanding only has a radius of a couple the couple of city blocks that are our gang's territory, and any venturing out of that area is asking for trouble.  To be fair, though, the most dangerous part of our day usually involved Tammy's driving us to the worksite.

From Helping Tammy

About a week into it, we were invited by the locals to a football match between Boston and another team on a late Saturday afternoon.  The match itself was an incredible experience.  It was played on a concrete basketball court which was completely surrounded by people at least five deep.  Being that we were the only blancs in attendance we garnered quite a bit of attention, but it was all positive.  I have to admit that I was a bit concerned at being one of the six white people in a crowd of a couple of hundred locals in one of the poorest slums in Haiti, but that concern dissipated after only a few minutes, and by minutes I mean beers.  Kids were running up and grabbing our legs asking to have their pictures taken, our friends from the clinic and the construction site were buying us drinks, and we even got high-fives from one of the players after one of Boston's goals.  There was a play-by-play guy who liked to scream and play sounds of gunshots through the P.A. system, which was fun for everybody.  We were also treated to a bizarre and disturbing halftime show involving 8-year-old girls grinding like extras from a Britney Spears video.  Good times.

On the way home the six of us piled into the truck and took the road between Boston and Soute with Tammy taking pictures of the sunset out her driver's side window.  This is probably the point where we should've had our guard up but hey, we spaced out... we're only human.  Tammy hit the brakes as one guy moved out in front of the car looking as if we were going to hit him.  Next thing we know there are two handguns through the driver's side window as a couple of guys are struggling to grab Tammy's camera.  Tammy wisely gave it up after a few seconds of struggle and the guys ran off.  It all happened so quickly that, being in the back seat, I only realized what was going on after the fact.  I remember a black gun and a silver gun being waved around at the girls (Tammy, Cari and Jamie were in the front seats), one of which was against Tammy's head, and that's about it.  We hauled ass out of there and didn't stop until we reached the hotel.  Tammy took it hard, more so because she's the team leader and felt badly that the team had to experience it than anything else.  From my end, I felt that it was a good thing to happen.  No one was hurt and though we did lose a camera we were also reminded of the environment we were in and that we have to be aware at all times.  We found out a few days later that one of the thieves was killed when they tried to pull the same thing on a Haitian driver who didn't stop and just ran the guy over.

We had a couple of other incidents that affected us more indirectly, such as was when a couple of gangs came looking for each other down the streets of Boston requiring us to hide out in the clinic building until things blew over.  It was obvious that they weren't interested in us because they knew exactly where we were hiding.  Still, when you're walking down the street and you see anxious locals scattering back to their homes it's probably a good idea to follow the security team back into a the building and chill out for a bit.

(P.S. There is no need to mention the content of the preceding two paragraphs to my grandma so... be cool.)

I think we made some friends in Boston once we showed that we only wanted to work hard and help out in whatever way we could.  Here are a few standouts that I've stolen from Max's notes with comments from both of us:
Jonbenson- That's his name.  Not just Jon, you have to say Jonbenson.  Good kid, hung out a lot with us, got made fun of because people said he looks like King Kong.
Peter- Good guy.  Slow talker.  Kept wanting to hook us up with his sister.
Milot- Mutt-faced security guy with a constant scowl, which is what you want in a security guy.
Dodes- Young, flirty girl who hangs around the clinic and the worksite.  Will probably get somebody killed someday.
Ken Ken- Tall young kid who loaned me his Kreyol-English dictionary.  Used to be a child soldier for one of the gangs but was rehabilitated.  Has a chip on his shoulder but a good heart.
Clifton- Nice kid who translates and wants to learn English.  Changes clothes a couple of times a day, doesn't like to get dirty.
There were loads of other memorable characters that you can see in the pictures and videos.  The locals that worked with us were paid $5 per day, and the labor was coordinated by Jackson who was the local engineer responsible for construction.

We managed to have a few laughs mostly thanks to the discovery of Bavaria beer at the local Texaco station.  They give you 50% more!  For free!  And trust me on this when I say that we had days where cries of "50% more" are what kept us going. I would also like to share with you the joys of goat meat, which I assure you is not a primer on bestiality but an endorsement of Goat Kreyol.  And if you love rice and beans... this is the country for you!  Know who loves rice and beans?  Larry!  He can't get enough.  Rice and beans and protein bars!  Boot Pep, this is for you:

From Helping Tammy

Some of the guys on the worksite would try and teach us Kreyol... they would sing this song that over and over again about "craisson" which we eventually found out means watercress.  The obsession with watercress remains a mystery.  Also, if you ever want to impress Haitians on a construction site tell them "Mwah mange ciment, caca beton" which means "I eat cement and shit concrete."  It's money in the bank.  Rich was often compared to either Jesus (because of the hair) or a vampire (because of his freakish canines).  We became a popular attraction simply by virtue of the fact that we spoke English, so random dudes would show up to practice chatting or to ask us about obscure tenses and conjugations.  And it was always dudes... the only woman we ever saw between the ages of 10 and 40 was Dodes, which in retrospect is kind of weird.  They were probably hiding from Rich.  I know I'd keep my daughter as far from him as possible.

After experiencing the environment in Cite Soleil firsthand, it is obvious that what Tammy has taken it upon herself to accomplish in the Boston/Jamaica Base area is staggering.  Through persistence and force of will, a two person team of Tammy and Robinson has managed over three years to create an institution inside this small area of Cite Soleil.  It has taken extraordinary effort and persistence to ingratiate herself with the locals and, more importantly, the local gang, and cultivate the relationships necessary for the relatively incident-free construction of the water tower and now the medical clinic.  Even the U.N. soldiers that we met were amazed at our group's ability to work relatively unmolested in the Boston/Jamaica Base area, and that was directly due to the dedication to building the proverbial bridges by Tammy and Robinson.  Robinson is the real miracle worker there, juggling the relationships between the various gangs with the logistical tasks in hiring the local labor along with the partnership with the folks from outside Haiti.  It's difficult to describe with one word what Robinson's role is, other than maybe he's the facilitator that enables all the work in Jamaica Base to actually take place.  Tammy said it best... the project could continue if something happened to her but not if something happened to Robinson.

Port-Au-Prince also held an interesting cast of characters among the non-natives since there is nobody who goes to Haiti for tourism... every visitor has an agenda.  There was Chuck, an executive for a company called DRC that specializes in post-disaster reconstruction, who drank with us and generously bought us all dinner a couple of times. He was meant to stay in Haiti for several months to oversee a construction project for the World Food Bank.  There's a lot of money to be made in the disaster business.  Then there was Jim, an old man from Arizona who was in Cite Soleil looking for a little girl he saw in a picture on the internet that he said "looked like his wife when she was young."  To what end he wanted to meet this girl nobody is sure, so we just assumed he was a perv.  Then there were the people from an NGO that shall remain nameless that really wanted to find some way to work with Tammy but which she wisely avoided.  You could tell in a couple of minutes that these guys were worthless... a bunch of hippies and travelers trying to set up self-perpetuating projects to justify their group's existence.  I tuned out immediately after they started talking about the utility of geodesic domes.  Jeremy and Rich have some more first-hand experiences I'm sure they'd be happy to share.

If you ever need a bit of a reality check about how good you have it then by all means visit Haiti.  I've never had someone ask me if I can take them in my checked luggage before. It's hard to believe that the U.S. and Haiti are on the same planet, let alone a short distance apart.  And believe me... if you need confirmation that these are literally different worlds, nothing is as striking as staring out your airplane window as you leave Port-Au-Prince and then seeing the endless golf courses of Miami less than two hours later.

What we experienced mostly as observers is a situation that seems to have no foreseeable resolution.  As Tammy will attest, things now are not that much different from before the earthquake in Cite Soleil.  The U.N. presence seems necessary in order to maintain what little peace there is in the area, but as with any military presence it breeds a certain amount of resentment among many of the locals, especially those who have been subject to round-ups or other rough tactics.  Food distribution and water supply continue to be problems for the area; basic infrastructure needs must be addressed before anything else can be discussed.  There are schools available where kids who are brave enough to resist the temptation of the gangs can learn English and other subjects, but there seems to be nowhere for them to apply that knowledge after graduation.  We're talking about a place where workers don't wear eye protection when they're welding because they feel that they won't live long enough for it to matter. The kids use rusty nails as play things and spend much of their days throwing rocks at each other.  Most of our friends have never gone beyond the hundred yard radius of the Boston area... when they would ask if we were staying at Visa Lodge it was almost with a sense of awe.  Elections mean gang warfare; candidates funnel guns and money to the gangs that support them so the gangs can intimidate rival areas into voting for their candidate or not voting at all.

If you want to contribute to a project that you can be certain will directly help a community in Haiti, please consider donating to Help Tammy Help Haiti (http://www.helptammyhelphaiti.com).  Expenses have risen since the earthquake and more money is needed for the completion of the medical clinic.  The donation link on the website is currently not working, but feel free to contact Tammy at tammy@helptammyhelphaiti.com for details on how you can donate.  You may also want to consider Doctors Without Borders who were the only other group we saw working in Cite Soleil.

Anyhow, enjoy the pictures which I mostly stole from everybody else.  Fair warning, some of them may be a bit unpleasant.  Besides the ones of Rich, which should go without saying.  Here's the link to the album:

Helping Tammy

Take 'er easy,
Dave