My short stories

This blog has moved

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 06:40:00 +0000

I have moved this blog to my own domain and you will be auto-directed in 5 seconds. If not automatically re-directed then please click the below link http://globetrotterlife.org/blog/

Who We Are, What We Do, Why We Do It

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000

People I know have often wondered why I am working in remote, dangerous places rather than being at home in a "safe" environment like Sweden where I come from.

First of all I dont think Sweden is that safe even if it on the surface might look like it. Looking at the type of crimes there when I grew up comparing to today there is a hugh difference.

Being on the travelling foot a lot has somehow up-rooted me and I feel the need to travel every so often irrespective of where I am. When I joined the Humanitarian world I was not necessarily the most likely person to join. I was lucky and saw an opportunity to travel and work at the same time. Being the technical guru I am, helped me continue in the organisation until I learned a lot of other aspects of the operation so I left the techincal field. Over the years though the idea of why I worked also changed dramatically. I guess that happens when being so extremely involved with work as you might become when working in the humanitarian field. You work long hours, long weeks and somehow never really disconnect. Even if you might be a small piece of the puzzle in some cases you can see the real impact. Not necessarily long term change impact but often day to day managing to keep a few more people alive so they too can have a chance at a future. I dont watch news too often when on leave as if there is any new war, earthquake or other disaster striking it immediatly relates to more work for me and others.

There is one short Video I have seen several times which really touch me each time I see it, as it really reflect my ideas as to why I continue work. Even if I would have a slow starting morning one day it seems to cure any potential doubts about why I am doing this work. Some people might never understand it, even among my friends, but then I never understood how someone can go to work and earn a meager salary while the boss is becoming a millionaire. We all have different drives in life.

Currently I work in South Sudan in a very small remote place. I live in a small prefabricated house. There is enough space for a bed, a small fridge, 2 chairs and a small table. I also have a small sink and a table top cooker so I can cook my own food if I want to. I even have my own shower and toilette inside so the 6 x 4 meters is well utilised. Luckily it has an AC or I would have to move out to one of the tents as it is impossible to live in this prefab without AC.
Despite all our efforts to seal the prefab I still have coakroaches, ants and every now and then some lokusts crawling around inside. Somehow the mosquitoes dont like the AC so I manange to keep those outside.

Two days ago I got some kind of food poisoning again while eating at the local chicken place. Last time that happened in Africa I got Amoeba Dysentry. Still wondering what the outcome of this times ordeal will come up with. I have eaten at the same place before and did not have a problem. Mind you there is only 3 places in this whole town that I would even consider eating at.

Despite all the hardships, being away from the family 6 weeks at a time there is still no other work I would rather do.

How high is the price for a humanitarian workers commitment

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:28:00 +0000

Sometimes working in the humanitarian World can make you react in a strange way to things that happen in life.

I am currently working in one of the most dangerous states in South Sudan less than 6 months away from an election that is highly debated and political. That election being a preface to and even more complicated and political referandum to potentially split a country in two. During the 6 weeks I have been in the state an estimated 34,000 people have been displaced, atleast 300 people killed (including the attackers) and just when I went on R&R I was called by the security guys that the only road south to Juba was a no go zone as the army was fighting against local population was taking place less than 50 kn from my office. The other 300 or so killed was less than 200 km north of my office. Thus danger is one thing I am working with every day of my life.

While being posted here I have chosen to keep my family in Kampala, Uganda which is a place I know since 1997 and which has seen good progress since I first went there.

Then suddenly I hear on the radio that there has bee riots 2 days in a row in Kampala as the Baganda King was not allowed to visit some town as the local tribe would not want it to happen.. Kampala was suddenly a warzone with over 500 people arrested for the riots which had claimed atleast 20 deaths as well as massive looting and destruction of property. this in the most successfully growing capital in Africa since the last 3 years.

All of the above are things that a normal person in the developped world would only see or hear on the news and never be realizing the impact of as it is far remote from home.

2 days after the riots in Kampala I get an SMS from my wife.

"Hi Huny I waz in a very bad car accident 2day am so lucky am alive, please call me when u get this"

I call my wife and get news of what has happened and I still have 2 weeks to go before my R&R.

She had gone with her sister to drop her son to school and on the way back had stopped at the fuelstation to fuel up and then continued out on the road. 300 meters infront she had noticed a car coming at way to high speed and had commented to her sister on the crazy driving.

She had continued at a speed of less than 30 km an hour as she had just turned out on the road. and then suddenly the car coming towards her hit one car ripping of a mirror vearing of and then coming straight towards her car in a speed that was in excess of 80 km an hour. Crashing straight into her Landrover Freelander making it swirve around 2 times before coming to a complete halt. Since there was 15 cm high guardrails on the roadside there was no way to get off the road to avoid a crash.

We had just bought the car 4 weeks earlier and luckily enough both my wife and her sister had seatbelts on and the car had dual airbags. My wife had serious chestpains and pain in the feet but what they confirmed nothing was broken. Her sister had the same type injuries plus had a massive amount of cuts on the legs from crashed glass. Luckilly neither of our sons were in the car.

People came to help and somehow helped themselves to the loose pieces like wallets and other valuables which seem to be customary before helping any victims in
Uganda. Atleast there was a few who recognised my wife and her sister and made sure they got to the hospital asap.

The crazy driver was bleeding from any body part that could be seen. eyes, ears, nose, mouth , chest and so forth and was seeminlgy not alive when pulled from the wreck and no one ever came to check on the car at the police station afterwards so he must have died in the process, an assumed drunken driver as the car was full of beer bottles.

Now the crazy thing is that when I called my wife to ask how she was doing I was feeling sorrow but even more so Anger at the situation. Here I am working in one of the most dangerous places on earth and then she end up in an accident. With no chance to help, be there, or being able to do anything. Yes I could have tried to take leave and maybe flown out of my duty station. But then what. It would take me 3 days to get back in any case. She said she was ok and I would not need to come but then that is exactly what would have happened if I had worked in any other place except in the crazy humanitarian world where danger is prevailant in every single corner.

The night before she had been hit I was ambushed by a so called military checkpoint with 10 soldiers all pointing guns, unsecured guns straight at me, while trying to enter the car... It sure did not look like a checkpoint as I saw two guys in military clothes only realizing that their guns were pointed at me when I passed them upon I hit the break only to be surrounded. This while driving a car which has UN written all over it. I was released and could continue to our compound but with a very strange feeling in my mind.

Only when looking back at the above scenarios can I realize how weird the world humanitarian workers face on a daily basis. Not only the danger itself but how we somehow seem to adapt and change in how we deal with threats and danger.

I dont believe anyone in the normal first world would even think of a situation when they would not immediately be at the side of a family member who has been in an accident, yet it might be an almost impossible task for someone working in the third world as a humanitarian worker. Yes people complain we are over paid but how do you compensate for something like the above. Do we just conclude "well that is what you are paid for".

These questions keep popping up in my mind. Yes danger is one thing for me and I somehow adjusted to deal with it, probably on a level that is way beyond normal by any standard, but when it also impacts my family and my 2.5 year old son who might loose his mother and father at the blink of an eye. What can reasonably be asked of a person working in the humanitairan field be? yet a drunken driver can be found anywhere in this world. How many people though has to deal with the dual type situations than many humanitairan workers face for themselves as well as family at the same time?

Just returning for another 6 weeks of danger and no family contact except by phone.

Sudan clashes

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:31:00 +0000

View Sudan Clashes in a larger map

TIM - Telecom Italia ripping people off with their Internet - Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:52:00 +0000

Finally I have my account activated again! My Unlimited account which actually is 400 hours is not available to me so I had to settle for the 100 hour subscription again. Thus in 1-2 weeks I'll probably run out of connectivity. No, I am not always on Internet but I wish my laptop could be though. Then I could continue to download some of the torrents while not using the laptop and leave it up for my wife to get online in an easy way.

Now in the TIM ALICE subscriptions they clearly mention that each time you connect you will be charged 15 minutes. Thus even if you are on one minute they will deduct 15 minutes from the 100 hour credit.

No problem there as I would normally be on atleast 3-4 hours in one go. I would not start up just for a few minute session. Well that works perfect in theory!

The reality is slightly different. Even though I have the latest drivers for my ONDA modem supplied by TIM and have installed it according to all the instructions there is some things that just dont work as they should.

So I get connected and start browsing. I have good connectivity and normally get a download speed of 150 - 200 kbps which I would consider very good for a HSPDA modem. The signal strength is just about full all the time so for sure the connectivity should be stabile. Well it aint.
Despite all this the ALICE system keep kicking me out and it can happen 3-4 times in an hour. I reconnect and most of the time I cant reconnect as it says the IP adress is already on the network. Ofcourse it is as I was on it just a minute ago. The system dont recognize that the previous session was lost and thus dont reassign the IP address. Thus I have to log off and log on again. That will ofcourse mean that 15 minutes connectivity time is lost! In some occasions it can take 3-4 trials with disconnecting the modem physically from the computer and connecting it back and then opening a new session before it can work. Each time a try is made 15 minutes are deducted..... I know because I have checked the credit hours left. Thus the 100 hours in reality becomes something much less. I would estimate that I loose atleast 1 - 1.5 hours of browsing time every night just due to disconnetions like that. Thus something like 20 hours out of a 100.

This overall means that for the connectivity that I should have paid 40 Euros for a month of I end up paying 48 Euros for 100 hours of which I loose 20 hours.

Pricewise this actually mean that I end up paying more for one month connectivity in Italy than what I would pay for the same service in Uganda!!!!! I paid 3 times the amount of money for the modem there and I pay 120 USD a month for connectivity which I thought was a bit steep. However when I compare it with what I would have to pay here in Italy to get the same level service here in Italy I am getting a real bargain in Uganda. I had my laptop running for 3 days in a row in Kampala connected to the HSDPA and not even once did I get disconnected. the overall Speed for the normal sites I browse was the same in both instances.

Ofcourse I should change provider here in Italy but that too would be a problem as the other companies demand a purchase of modem tied to a subscription for atleast 12 - 24 months. Getting a ADSL or other type fixed connectivity would be an option to except that since I have no telephone line I know it would take something like 4 months and a lot of hassle to get that installed. Something I am not interested in at present.

TIM - Telecom Italia ripping people off with their Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:55:00 +0000

I have been using the TIM Telecom Italia's Internet connections over HSDPA for almost a year now. Each month I go through the trouble of re-activating the system and it is to say the least a rip-off every single time.

As I am heavy Internet user I try to subscribe to the ALICE UNLIMITED. Well it is not really unlimited as it only allow you 400 hours of connectivity in a month. That amount normally covers me just barely. But that only IF the modem/network actually works properly full time during the month.

Today it was that day of the month again. Time to reload the Internet. As I dont trust the system I would never have it auto-activated on my Creditcard and thus have to go to the bancomat where I re-charge 50 Euro on to the Sim card or telephone number. I then get a SMS stating I have 50 Euro just loaded on the account. Ofcourse the Bancomat system don't allow me to reload the amount I want but rather have 4 fixed amounts.

With that I then try to activate the MAXXI ALICE UNLIMITED as per the instructions on internet. This entails sending a free! SMS. To make sure I don't consume all the credit I just put I check the availability of the promotion on internet with my Vodaphone connected mobile. And the www.tim.it webside proudly announce that I should subscribe to the MAXXI ALICE UNLIMITED as the most comprehensive subscription.

Unfortunately the system give me a not so positive answer to the effect that the particular offer is suspended? you can try to find that fact anywhere on the Website but it for sure is not suspended. It is just that they have figured out the way to rip people of. I have checked it month after month and even though I know how to activate that particular package it will only work every second or third activation while you have used another subscription in between ;-(

So with this denial SMS to activate the service the only option I have is to find another package. Then they have several options but it is only the 100 hour one that actually works any time of the day any time of the week. The others are only weekends and night time according to a schedule they do announce but in reality means all your normal phone credit is eaten up if by mistake someone forgot to only use it in the evening.

I then activate the 100 hour subscription which should cost 20 Euro and 5 euro for the first activation. Thus a maximum 25 Euro in any instance. That happened at 19:40

So a simple calculation would give me 50 - 20 = 30 Euro left or in worse case 50 - 25 Euro = 25 Euro left if for some reason the one day I was not subscribed warranted a new registration ;-(

Well obviously I dont know how to count as the credit left on the account is 1.81 Euro!!! I guess her smile below is saying. Thanks for letting us rip you off but atleast u got to see my thumbs up and smile.

If I try to press the link to Visualizza il dettaglio del traffico the only thing I can get is a blank screen or and error rapidly logging me out of the system.

To add insult to injury of course I also receive an SMS at 19:54 requesting me to refill the credit as obviously I will otherwise not be able to call or SMS anyone... I never use this Sim card for anything but the Internet.

Now the interesting thing is that this is a prepaid SIM card thus no billing or anything like that.
If I look on the billing there is no voice calls, no SMS's, no internet consumption and no miscellaneous charges of any sort. Just a blank page with 0 consumption. So where did 25 Euros disappear to????

Thus overall I have tried to activate 400 hours of Internet connectivity which should costs 40 Euro. Instead I am having to settle for 100 hours costing me 48,19 Euro's!!

Ofcourse there is no point in calling the Helpdesk as they dont speak anything but Italian. I have a collegue who speaks Italian and who tried to figure out how she could loose 50 Euro in one day even though she had only made 5 local telephone calls. She had no success in retrieving any money thus I do not expect any neither.

As you can see below All this happened in one our. Between 19:00 and 20:00 today. I guess they would say I did a whole lot of things that hour but in reality the only thing I was doing was trying to activate the Internet and check what is happening on the SMS log. As you can see the log shows first the received messages and the SMS's between the system and myself during that hour.

Inbox of SIM card

Outbox of Sim card.
As you can see all the SMS received and sent are all to 4916 which is a Free SMS number for the internet activation and credit checks. The recieved www.tim.it SMS;s are to warn me that someone tried to log in to the Account linked to the Sim card on the Tim server. That someone was me.

That was the first part of the ripoff?!

Help donate water for Free!

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:47:00 +0000

I had to try. I did not know donating over 400 cups of water could be so easy. I read this article on The Road to The Horizon and thought I would give it a try.

I love to look at maps and it seems I can get a reasonably good score if playing games about maps.

Try it.. Can you beat my score? If so let me know as I feel a challenge coming up :-) Even if you cant ;-) you can help donate free cups of water!

OK i played again. dont blame me if the game dont work anymore. At 1015 cups it crashed.... so no badge for my record ;-( but still for a good cause :-)

Congo DRC: A Country cursed by natural resources

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:16:00 +0000

As I wrote in a short story about Congo, the line about following the money does not seem to be very distant. Even if we go back as far as 1885 the main reason for the problems has been Congo's natural resources. It would be very naive to think that money and outside powers intrests are not the main drivers of the continued instability Congo faces, even as I write this today.

1885 - 1908 Congo Free State
King Leopold II created the Congo Free State as his private possession, his private playgarden through the creation of a dummy NGO with him as the sole shareholder. Mainly to exploit the country on its Rubber. About 10 million people died either of deceases or due to the practice of chopping of peoples legs if they could not harvest rubber fast enough for his taste.

Rubber mainly exported to USA and a few other Car producing countries, as rubber tires is the invention of the day. This in addition to other inventions which came with rubber. Hoses, Insulation for electical wires and so forth.

1908 - 1960 Belgian Congo
The Belgian government was more or less forced by the international community to annex the Congo Free state as the cruelty of Leopolds management was far beyond what could be accepted at the time.

The Belgians built up a society of expats in Congo who ran the country and exploited the countrys resources. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are built with Congolese Uranium and a large part of the US cold war warheads are supplied by congolese uranium. There was some people among the rulers at the time who actually wanted to raise the standard of the Congolese and make sure they could develop in a more productive way but it was voted down by a large margin. Why change a winning concept they thought.

1960 - 1961 Congo gain independence
Patrice Lumumba together with Kasavubu and Mobutu manages to gain independence and Lumumba becomes president. Unfortunately he does not manage to gain control fast enough as there are lot of parties including the Belgians who were making the changeover as difficult as possible.The Belgians had large mines in the Katanga region so they started supporting a split off of that region from the country, well knowing that it is probably the richest mining area in the Country. Lumumba was seeking US support then asks UN for support to stabilize the country but was denied in both cases. Thus he turned to the Soviets who was more than eager to help. This by default sealed his fate as the US wanted him removed by any means after that. There are traces that even the US President through CIA was planning to remove or even kill Lumumba as they claimed he was a communist. Something Lumumba denies on the strongest and history has concluded he was not. (note. seems the intelligence of USA keep repeating the same mistakes?! over and over and over)

While trying to fight the Katanga region Lumumba lost the initial battles and was deposed by Mobutu and Kasavubu and Kasavubu then took control of the Country.

1961 Lumumba is under house arrest and is later for his own protection?! flown down to Katanga. ther he was held in the hands of Belgian troops and the party he was fighting against and is executed. Years Later the Belgian government formally apologizes to the Congolese for the role they played in the assasination.

1961 UN moves in and on request of various parties attacked Katanga but the leader managed to escape to Rhodesia.

1961Dag Hammarskjoeld dies in mysterious ways while enroute to Rhodesia to negociate a seize fire with the Katanga rebel regime. (Who had most to gain from his death I wonder?! I dont believe it was an accident)

UN attacks once more in 1962 and Katanga is finally reunited with Congo again in 1963.

1965 - 1997 Congo transforms into Zaire
Mobutu takes over after a military coup and start his 30 odd years reign of terror. He is supported by USA as its suits their purpose of not allowing Congo to become a communist state and are very happy to help mine the resources as they are still in the cold war era and in need of the Uranium and other resources. Mobutu has made concessions and is not concerned about the exploitations of the country as long as he can get his share. 60% of the worlds uranium exportation takes place from Congo to USA via Belgium. 80% of the worlds Industrial Diamonds are exported from Congo. And a large amount of copper is mined and exported mainly to USA and Europe.

Already in 1965-66 L. Kabila start various rebel activities and the Chinese are very happy to support with finances as Kabila has communist ideas. There is an autonomous area around Kivu which thrives under the communist rule until 1988 when it is finally crushed. Meanwhile the Chinese has been able to exploit the area against continued support with arms and funding.
In the late 70s and early 80s Kabila meet up with Museveni, Nyerere and Kagame who are all about to become presidents are all starting to support L. Kabila. Everyone thinks Kabila is dead as he vanishes in 1988.

In 1990 with the fall of the Soviet union and end of the cold war the US regime withdraw any support of the Mobutu and his regime as it is no longer on their intrest to support him. But exploitation of the country for the resources continues at an undiminshed rate.

With the Rwanda genocide and the influx of refugees in Kivu there is a new wave of rebel activities coming in and this is supported by Kabila's friends in Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. Behind the scenes USA is also supporting the rebel activities as Mobutu is becoming an old unpredictable dictator and change of rule is a matter of time only. At the same time it is known that USA can not trust a Kabila who in the roots leaned towards communism.

1997 Congo's First war
In 1997 Kabila finally mange to overthrow Mobutu. Unfortunately for L. Kabila he does not necessarily play the game as his supporters had planned and Rwanda, Uganda and the USA instead help fund Bemba, a new rebel leader in the Kivu area. This leads to what they call they Second Congo war.

1998 Congo's Second war
Kabila is backed by new found allies in Angola, Chad, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Sudan . A seize fire is agreed in 1998. By this time there is a large amount of various foreign troops in Eastern Congo who help to exploit the resources.

2001 Kabila is assassinated and his son takes over the presidency. UN moves in and create the MONUC to maintain the peace in the country.

2003 all countries except Rwanda agrees to remove their troops from Eastern Congo. This after more than 5 years of massive illegal expolitation of the resources. Uganda and Rwanda continue with outspoken support for the rebels in Kivu area. Due to the rich Coltan mines in the Kivu/Katanga area the support for the rebels is reaching far beyond the shores of Africa.

2007 - 2009 The third Congo war?
With about 1,5 million people suffering in the Kivu region, the findings of Oil in Kivu and continued illegal exploitation of the mines including Coltan the fuel is at the critical mass to create another full scale war in Congo. Once again the foreign policy of various countries are being heavily lobbied by commercial corporations to support one or the other side. All depending on which "horse"they think will give them the best concessions for easy access to the natural resources. Yet again the people who rightfully should be getting a share of the cake will be left out unless the World finally WAKE UP!!! and is determined to stop this slaughter of people for greed.

I have been many times to then Kivu area. It could be paradise on earth with all the beautiful nature that is there and the friendly people that you will keep running into. Yet they continue to live in despair and are just trying to survive one more day.

People are tired of having to donate to this cause yet unless the same people stand up and say enough is enough everyone will keep having to give support (weither they like it or not) so that a number of corporations and their shareholders can continue to do major profits at the expense of the people in Congo as well as from you.

People suffer - YOU pay direct or in taxes -Corporations exploit and get rich- People suffer - YOU pay - Corporations get even richer

Civil Defence cars Dubai style :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 11:46:00 +0000

I was on my way to Abu Dhabi from Dubai one day. The highway between the towns is a nice 4 lane road in each direction so it is not uncommon that cars drive fast. In UAE you better learn fast that its very important to look in the rear view mirror or you might end up with a Ferrari or Lambourghini in the back of your car. People coming fast normally flash their headlights repeatedly and it would be unwise not to move a side as who knows if the breaks really work that good. UAE has the highest number of fatal road accidents per capita in the whole world.

As I was speeding along I saw a car not flashing lights but having the blue light flashing ontop. I have seen that many times but not from a low yellow car moving as fast as this one was coming. I was driving probably around 180 Km/h and this car was approaching me very fast so I knew it had to do something between 250 - 300 km/h.

The car passed and I could not quite figure out what it was. It looked like a Corvette but never had I seen a Civil Defence Corvette.

It vanished infront of me as fast as it had caught up. I told some friends but they could not believe it either. About a month later we went to the Dubai Airshow and to our amazement the Corvette was there. So it had not been a mirage in the desert :-)

The car does 0 - 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds. Has a top speed of 320 km/h with 512hp in a 7 liter V8. (unless they have asked for a special tuned version which would not be unlikely as the normal Z06 dont have a spolier in the back)

They will for sure get very fast to a fire or accident but knowing that the only rescue equipment it has is the bumpers and a 5 liter fire extingisher there aint much they can do once on the scene..

It should also be noted that most times when there is a fire in Dubai it means a building is burned down to the ground as there is little chance of actually being able to extinguish the fires. I have seen labourcamps, shoppingmalls, warehouses burn on many occasions. Fire-department simply too late, too little.

The Worlds biggest Shopping-mall = The Worlds biggest flop?

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:32:00 +0000

I saw that the worlds biggest shopping mall just opened up in Dubai. I have seen it being built for the last 2 or so years as it is just next to our office in Dubai. The road I have taken to work was changed just about every week to make space for the mall. Now it is opened but at the same time the world economies are having a major crisis. So far the reporting in Dubai in general has been positive and spending has been continuing. The signs have though been there that a change was on the way.

About one and a half year ago EMAAR ,one of the largest construction companies, suddenly decided to sell of a larger amount of the apartment blocks they had built for rental. The tenants were basically informed that they had to purchase their apartment within 2 weeks cash or face eviction. Knowing that EMAAR is a multi billion dollar company trying to do a move like that with over 4000 apartments was strange. There was very little to no news reporting about this and other similar strange moves in Dubai.

The minister of Finanace in the UAE still seems very positive as the GDP and inflation has been in the double digits for the last 2 years so even if there was a decline in the overall costs and sales it would not potentially hamper operations in Dubai too much as per their predictions.

Within the last 24 hours there are though a multitude of news reports popping up that houses on the Palm island has dropped over 40% in value and people even try to use SMS spamming to try find buyers. About 40,000 Mobile phone users received a SMS with an offer to buy cheap?! if they were fast. In other places heavily loaned house buyers are trying to sell of fast. Probably not at a loss yet if they purchased about 5 years ago as then their prices where much lower than now.

The market in Dubai have over the last 6 years expanded so extremely that about 20% of the world construction cranes sit in the country. A massive amount of loans have been given and small time investors have purchased several apartments on speculation with full intention of selling them at a much higher price even before they were finished.

Already when I arrived in Dubai in 2002 there was apartment blocks completely empty. Not because people did not want to rent but due to that the owners simply refused to lower the rent and rather kept the apartments empty. But this meant that whole buildings with 200- 300 apartments could stand empty. The boom is now starting to shake in its foundation fast.

Banks are refusing to give loans to expats all over the country. Simply because they expect that there will be larger layoffs off people in large portions of the businesses. Even if Dubai by itself has a lot of money to invest in construction, based on oil and the profits from the Iraq wars the main part of the companies working in the country is companies that have their HQ somewhere else in the world. Dubai by itself do not have any raw material thus it is built on the trade and potential refinement of raw material imported.

The main travel companies in Europe are seeing a stop in the holiday bookings and are cutting down fast among the destinations and booking of hotel for charters, thus the influx of tourists for the shopping malls and hotels in Dubai will shortly also take a big hit. The newly opened Atlantis hotel has dropped the room rates from 400+ USD to around 44 USD per night with less than 30% occupancy rates.

Gulf news
By Suzanne Fenton, Staff ReporterPublished: November 22, 2008, 23:27
Dubai: Business at Atlantis, the $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) hotel on the Palm Jumeirah is slow, with room rates slashed dramatically and occupancy low.
Despite the grand opening of the resort on Thursday night, which saw stars and celebrities descend on the Palm, causing actual residents difficulty accessing their own homes, business is not so impressive. Full story

With all this I would guess that there is a quite big chance for Dubai taking a Guiness World Record Title they probably would not want to see nor ever expected. The Largest Shopping-Mall in the world becoming the Largest shopping flop in the world in the shortest time ever. Over the last week alone the retail business has dropped over 20% in some areas.

Congo DRC, History repeating itself

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:58:00 +0000

I just read a piece on the BBC and was actually more interested in the comments around the article than the article/debate item itself.

Can Congo be saved from crisis?
More than 3,000 extra UN peacekeepers are needed in the eastern DR Congo to protect civilians there. Will this help the crisis?The head of UN peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, said current peacekeeper numbers were not enough to protect civilians from violence perpetrated by rebel groups and the Congolese army. There are 9,000 UN peacekeepers in the region, out of 17,000 nationwide.The latest crisis began in August when rebels advanced towards Goma, which is now ringed with refugee camps. What can be done to stabilise eastern DR Congo? Are you satisfied with the performance of the UN peacekeepers? Are you in DR Congo or Rwanda? Read the story

The news reporting itself is the same as it always has been. There are no new angles to find in a story that has gone on for almost 50 years or is there? Somehow the basic facts of what is behind the story somehow always get lost. Maybe because it would hit too close to home for comfort??
I personally do not really believe an increment of 3,000 soldiers on top of 9,000 would do even a slight difference when there is about 1.5 Million people who are running away from their homes. I would believe that those 12,000 or so soldiers would be trampled to death if the hoard of people fleeing actually were set in motion, even if they had no bad intentions. During the Rwanda Genocide UN had even more soldiers in Rwanda and they could do nothing when the violence started.

There are so many angles on should EU, US, Nato, UN help the people in Congo DRC with the current crisis. Some people say, give the various tribes their own land so they can live in peace. Other say they (the Congolese) dont want us (Europeans) help anyway so lets just not care. They did after all throw the Belgians out in the 60s. Let them solve it themselves. The range of comments basically goes from a full scale intervention by an army to get all arms out of the hands of the population/ rebels/ freedomfighters/ tribes to simply just leave it be and see what happens, after all it is their problem?

”It is easy to turn the responsibility over to others or, perhaps, to seek explanations in some kind of laws of history. It is less easy to look for the reasons within ourselves or in a field where we, all of us, carry major responsibility. However, such a search is necessary, because finally it is only within ourselves and in such fields that we can hope, by our own actions, to make a valid contribution to a turn of the trend of events.”
– From speech by Dag Hammarskjöld at the University of Cambridge, 5 June 1958 (Falkman 2005, p. 193).

I sometimes wonder what the best approach would be, but no matter how its done there will be a lot of people that suffer. People that are affected yet they have no part whatsoever in what is going on around them. Pure victims to a situation they can not get themselves out of.

Its easy to say ”Let them solve it themselves as we are no party to it and they dont want our help.” But that aint the truth in any circumstance...

Unfortunately the First world countries ARE the problem.

Congo is one of the richest countries in the world when it comes to natural resources. But in most cases the population never see a cent of anything that is mined, neither will they ever.
Rwanda is the biggest exporter of Coltan which is used in batteries and capacitors for Ipod's, Laptops, mobiles and so forth. Yet they actually dont have that material in Rwanda?! It is stolen from Congo. The Road to the Horizon has an article on this called "Did your laptop cause the war in Congo?"
There is Oil in Eastern Congo which has not yet even been explored. This does however not mean that no one is trying. There are large copper mines and other mines galore in the country. The land itself is so fertile that if you eat an orange and spit the seeds out, the seed will grow in a few weeks. Both problems as that mean people might be in the way of the treasures that lie benieth.
To say that we should leave the Congo alone to solve their own problems means that you first have to remove the greed for the resources in the country, by all other countries. I have worked in the region between 1997 -2001 and keep following up on what is going on even though I dont work there anymore.

Already then I saw a lot of strange things going on.

- Unmarked US planes flying in military "advisors" and "material" via Uganda
-”Advisors” from South Africa
-”Advisors” from Russia
-”Advisors” from France
-”Advisors” from China
-”Advisors” from India

Ugandan military commanders flying in with foreign business partners?

This was already happening in 1998 when a plane with the brother of the current Army boss of Uganda, crashed and died while on a gold trading mission in Congo. Well the current aint so current as he was charged and convicted of a large fraud with Army funds... I just found out now when reading up again on the story.

The list seems endless.It is not that these ”advisors” necessarily had any plans to try help the population in Eastern Congo, it was rather that they were trying to negociate contracts for mining that would see the full potential once there was finally peace in the area?, or is it? Maybe it is actually better that there is continous instability in the area so that companies supported by some rich countries can loot the treasures without paying decently for any of the resources being taken out? Afterall, people that are fleeing and starving will not see or care about the looting of the resources, will they?! Can it be that cynical? I actually think it is as all the non- mainstream information when looked at keep pointing glaringly in that direction.

There is ban on buying Elephant husks, war Diamonds.. But that was only because the general public discovered the looting?!

The problem that the people in Congo are facing is thus not their own. It is actually a problem that to the most extent is created and kept alive by the rich countries around the world. To stop sending aid to the area can only happen once the same governments get fully transparent about their real motives for being in the country in the first place. In the 50s and 60s it was easier for a few countries to loot the resources. The African states around Congo had so many internal problems they did not have to many stakes in Congo. However since the last 20 years even the surrounding countries in Africa want to claim their part of the Congo wealth.
While sending aid and advisors there is also Arms dealers like what was shown in ”Lord of War”. While the movie is intended as good entertainment the fact is it is actually very close to the truth. Arms dealers sanctioned by various countries governments. Ofcourse they cant be seen as doing this kind of trade so it happens behind the scenes. All disguised while the countries officially is helping the poor African country and takes the positive credits for the donations and loans given.

Congo is a particularly interesting country for historical reasons.

Belgian colonization.

The Congo war with UN involvement in the 50-60s while trying to obtain freedom.

Killing of the UN Secretary General under mysterious circumstances.

The obscure ways of the rich powers putting Patrice Lumumba in power only to be assasinated and replaced by Mobutu. Mobutu a very cruel but smart dictator. Himself part of a puzzle not created necessarily by the Congolese but rather by the rich countries exploiting Congo.

All this is part of various schemes of accessing the rich natural resources in Congo by parties among developped world countries, sometimes through proxy countries in Africa itself. It has absolutely nothing to do with actually trying to help the population. It might sound cynical but in this case the rich powers are extremely cynical. In some countries it is simply called "Foreign Policy". That the policy is then created to actually help companies exploit countries in the best possible way for the market back home is not very visible but not less cynical.

It is however very easy to see what is actually happening. 3 words sums it all up. 3 words which was also put in a movie many years ago.

"Follow the money" Classical words in the movie about the Watergate scandal. These days it though seems like the media for the most part is more interested in being in the hands of the powers that rule rather than being critical at looking at the full scope of the news they create.

In many cases the Dictators and corrupt governments in the poor countries are blamed for not being able to build up their standards. But who can blame them when they are shown the full potential by their counterparts who simply apply their "foreign policy" and encourage corruption through advisors and companies. It seems easier to teach someone how to become corrupt than to teach someone to build a proper functioning country where the citizens can thrive. The intrest is definetely on the former as it gives quicker gains for the lucky few.

Taking pride in your work

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:55:00 +0000

Since I am travelling a lot I see a lot of hotels, guesthouses and so forth. One thing that has always interested me in these travels is to look at architecture as well as workmanship. Some of this ofcourse comes from my father who has worked on construction-sites all his life and also because I have it in my mind to build my own house one day. I still remember the time when we one Christmas day 30 years ago got out all the sledges and started hammering away in the house to expand my brothers room and how much pride my father took in completing the work in full accordance with all the rules and regulations as well as to the full esthetical potential.. Mind you the walls in the house I grew up in was not necessarily straight... but after my father had remodelled you could measure it to a millimeters perfection.

I have just come back from a trip to Nyala Darfur and in 3 nights I actually shifted room 3 times. In the first the AC did not work. In the second I almost had a fire as there was a bad connection in the AC electricity plug. I was very lucky. I did not take any pictures in Nyala as the risk of ending up in trouble with a camera was too great. Mind you this was the "New" guest house.

I am now back in Khartoum and am staying in a very good guesthouse. Its referred to as the Southafrican guesthouse most of the time as the owner is from there. It is by far the best place to stay at present in Khartoum. For 90 USD you get 3 meals, all the laundry done once a day and wireless internet. There is a free gym with jacuzzi, swimingpool and a TV lounge. Quite a good package for the money you pay compared to anything else we have found so far.

I just moved in to a room on the top floor when I noticed a few things which just makes me laugh.

I try to go in to the bathroom and can not open the door properly as it is stopped by the washbasin as the distance is too short, so I have to squezze myself in.

Once inside I shave and while looking in the mirror I realize that it is offset from the center above the washbasin... (am quite sure the worker installing it did this as he did not close the bathroomdoor and thus could not easily get it centred, or was it because he was afraid to crack the tile?)

I then turn around and notice that on the floor there is one type of floor inside the bathroom and another outside the bathroom.. Except that under the bathroom door and going into the bedroom the bathroom tiles are sticking out!!

Then I look at the door out to the hallway and see that the guys putting up the wall for some reason decided to offset the wall by a few centimeters thus leaving most of the doorframe inside the room. None of this makes sense.

If they guys putting up the thin (non bearing) wall had put the wall where it was supposed to be, 10 cm further inside the bedroom and thus aligned with the hallway-door then the bathroom door would have perfectly passed the washbasin and that door would have opened all the way. Then no tiles would have been sticking out in the bedroom and the guy mounting the mirror could have centered it as is normal. Soo easy and yet so difficult.

I am also the only one in the guesthouse who have a balcony. I am sure it was supposed to be a glassdoor but it aint, yet there is windowblinds infront of the door.

Ofcourse I can not lock the door to the balcony as there is something wrong in the locking mechanism.. Atleast I am 4 floors up and no one else have access to the balcony so I should be ok.

Seeing these kind of things make me wonder... Is it just me being picky or is the level of pride people take in their work just not there? It sure seems like it for these construction workers, yet the staff working in maintaining this guesthouse is the most dedicated I have seen in a very long time.

Unlikely Coincidences

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:07:00 +0000

That the world is becoming smaller as we get easier access to travel and can fly anywhere on the globe is well known. This sometimes lead to strange coincidences. In 1990 I chartered a 54 foot sailing boat for me and some friends to sail to a very small and very remote place called Banaba (Ocean Island)almost on the equator and in the middle of the South Pacific. This was one of the Ham radio expeditions that I organised a few times. Banaba is as 12 days sail from Fiji were we started from or can be a 2 day sail if you mange to get to Kiribati Islands. The island now has about 300 inhabitants most of the time but when i was there they were less than a hundred. Mainly there to ensure the country can lay claim on the fishing rights that go with the territory. Since the guano (used as fertilizer) has been dug out, there is little to no other reasons to keep the island financially, than for the fishing rights that go with it. In 1980 the the island was left in a hurry by the Brits and Australians doing the mining.

5 years later in 1995 I was still working with a commercial company and I was installing satellite TV systems on Ships of various nature. Among them was a Norweigan coastguard ship. I flew up to Bodoya in Norway to meet the boat. The boat was in port for supply so the timing was good.

Once on board we started a trip further north while still going in close to the shore. I worked and tested the antenna and late at night went to bed. In the morning when I woke up there was no land in sight anywhere. The idea was to test the system by finding the rough sea! while getting closer to Jan Mayen, the western most Norweigan island in the north sea. After 2 days we saw the island and the tests were found to be just OK. Thus my work was concluded. As we had a helicopter on board I figured they would find away for me to get off the boat. This was not to be the case for the next 5 days though. The helicopter could not fly far enough to get me ashore and they would be heading further up north to inspect the fishing boats in the north sea. A lot of Russian fishing boats were up there. It was kind of strange to see so many boats as we did once up in the helicopter. As I had nothing to do I was allowed to join the crew flying out to the ships. We hovered and lowered down the inspectors to various boats. It was good fun as I love being in helicopters.

We continued sailing north and one day we came very close to Bear Island (Bjoernoya). Being a radio amateur I was of course very interested in that island as it was its own entity and almost impossible to get access to visit under any circumstance.

The helicopter crew asked if I wanted to go ashore and have lunch with the team that normally live on the island and of course I wanted to. So once more we took off with the Lynx helicopter. It is quite an exiting moment when taking off or landing from a small deck on a moving ship. Luckily for me the pilot was the number one instructor they had in the navy in the whole of Norway so I figured I was in good hands. That he loved flying I had already discovered but when we flew in over Bear island it became even more evident. As there is almost no animals nor houses on the island with only about 5 -6 residents there at any time we did not need to abide by any flight restrictions in terms of height. We flew less than 30 meters above the ground and in between the valleys and it was an amazing flight. Low flying and with high speed was a real thrill, talk about roller-coaster ride.

We landed next to the permanent radio/Loran station they have on the island and jumped off. Me and 2 more guys were going to stay there for lunch while the helicopter continued for their work inspecting ships.

We were welcomed with open arms. The guys staying on the island was more than happy to finally have some other people to talk to. As they lived there 6-12 months at a time it could become a bit boring only talking to 5 other guys. We enjoyed the lunch and they showed us around the station and it was very interesting. While chatting with one of the guys about travels we ended up on the topic of South Pacific. I mentioned my backpacking trips and the charters I had done a few years before. The radio operator then says -well I was posted in Banaba in 1975 before heading out on some ships as radio operator. I could not quite believe it. There was never more than 2000 people on Banaba at anyone time (mostly imported Asian workers) and there was only 6 people on Bjoernoya and yet we were two people who had both been to same 2 km island in the pacific and manage to meet up on a just as small remote island in the North Sea of the Atlantic. I am not even able to figure out what the odds of a meeting like that would be but it seems to happen anyway. We continued our journey and when we finally cam close to land we were at the Russian border just above Kirkenes. From there it took me 5 different flights and a whole day to get to Oslo and then another day to get back home to Dalby, Sweden.

Strange as it seems I have two very similar experiences with very unlikely random meetings.

In 1989 I went to a small island called Rotuma in Fiji. To get to the island you have to arrange to live with the locals. There are about 200 people on the island and there are maybe 5 - 10 outside visitors a year on the island. Despite that I manage to have the seat next to a Danish guy (when flying from Copenhagen to Rome) who happened to have been to Rotuma also, 2 years after I was there.

I come from a small village in Sweden called Dalby. In my school there was 1000 students. In 1988 when I flew as a backpacker to Pacific and Australia I went to Frazier Island. There I see a familiar face and found out it was a girl who went to the same school as me just two years apart. She actually was in my little brothers class. That year these was 30,000 travellers from Sweden in Australia inclusive of all package tours. Now what are that chances that among 1000 people there are 2 who would travel to the other side of the world, get onto the same small uninhabited island, on the same day and actually meet.

I am sure there are mathematical formulas that would say it is more common than one might think :-) But it still amazes me.

You know you are in an emergency when...

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:24:00 +0000

There are so many anecdotes that can be said about an emergency in relation to things that don't work, crazy thing happening and so forth. All the below anecdotes are though true...

You know you are in an emergency when...

You hear a gunshot just outside your hotel bar and all people suddenly disappear.
You have 5km to find a toilette and shower even though you are in a town.
You for one week only can find an omelet to be the only edible thing in a town.
You see all the selection in a bar is disappearing in front of you with no replenishment.
You go to the main hotel in town and they serve half your team and then says sorry food finished.
You find yourself on a balcony heating military food rations gazing at military helicopters flying around with searchlights trying to find people who are putting houses on fire.
You have paid 100 USD for a substandard hotel room and still end up sitting outside town sleeping in a car.
You have to try kill about a thousand locusts in your room before you can go to bed.
You have to shovel away a mountain of locusts in front of your bedroom door.
You eat before sunset as the only generator in the place has not worked for 3 months.
You eat fish and rice for lunch and is lucky to find either fish or rice for dinner.
You are happy to sleep in a tent as the ground is shaking from earthquakes every 10 minutes.
You start re-using even your underwear as there has been only bottled water for the last 3 weeks in very limited quantities.

2 months, 3 continents, Taj Mahal and a new posting

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:15:00 +0000

Was just sitting updating my blog and realized that I had not had time to actually finalize and post the story about my trip to Fiji and that was 2 months ago even though it was written. It just shows how consuming our work and travels can be. The below story is a compilation of what has happened during the two months after that trip.

After arriving back to Dubai from Fiji/Australia I was in Dubai 2 weeks only to plan my trips to Delhi, India to and then from there straight to Derby, UK. Both trips of one week each and then I went back to Dubai for my last 2 weeks there.

As I have been posted in Dubai for 6 years I was up for re-assignment within WFP, an exercise which can make you very happy or very unhappy, for sure it will affect your life. The final agreeement was just done for my move while I stepped onboard the plane to India. It was agreed that I would take up a new posting in Rome at our Head Quarter and due to the project I would need to move within one month.

I just arrived in Rome last Sunday and quickly found an apartment about 800 meters away from Colosseum through one of my colleagues. I dropped my bags in the apartment and started work Monday morning. Then ofcourse Easter came up as I was back in Europe so I booked a seat on the last flights to head over to Copenhagen so I could get back to my parents to celebrate Easter. So here I am now on Easter Friday in Sweden. Something I have not even thought about doing for the last 6 years while being based in the middle east. Meanwhile my wife and son is still in Dubai :-(

This is the typical life working with the most dynamic UN organisation there is. To work and keep moving like this is not possible unless you really have the passion for the work you do and have a family that will put up with the constant travels and moves that happen. It is always stressful on the family life.

Luckily for me, my wife met me while I was travelling like this already so it is probably harder on me than her as I dont want to miss the little new things our baby does every day of his life.

While handing over my duties in Delhi and saying goodbye to the 25 superb staff I was supervising there, Pawan, the supervisor for the offshored global ICT servicedesk that I had been asked to set up, offered to take me to Agra to see the Taj Mahal but also a place called Fatepu Sikri, this on my last day in India. Over the last one and a half year I have been in India for work numerous times but had actually never been outside the office or hotel to see any of the sites including Taj Mahal, yet it was only 3 hours drive from Delhi.

Pawan and his wife's driver picked me up in the morning and we started the very interesting journey out to Agra. Even though we were driving on a proper highway with serious barriers between cars going in our direction and the others going back toward Delhi we had to be careful. It seemed like a national sport to go against the traffic also on a main highway. No one wanted to go an extra 200 meters to find the proper entry to the road so jsut go against traffic was the norm.

I think it took about 20 miniutes for both me and Pawan to figure out that our driver was not really of a higher caliber either. If he could speed up and hit the break just before hitting the guy infront he seemed happy and if there was no traffic for miles then he would slow down way below the speed limit, well that is if there was one as we never saw a sign.

After one hour Pawan swapped with the driver and I could finally release my foot from the imaginary brake I had been pushing. Telling me to remind him to tell his wife to fire the driver on our return.

McDonalds dont serve beef in India!
We stopped at several local places to get some coffee but neither of us thought that they looked very inviting so we continued until we saw a McDonalds. We ordered some coffee and I was just looking at the menu and to my surprise I did not see Big Mac. Hmm, but ofcourse no Big Mac.. That would have been an insult in a country were all cows are holy. I then remembered my first mission to India. We had been so busy going between potential offices that we had just stopped to get a quick snack and it happened to be a McDonalds. As I was busy in a telephone conference while driving I had just asked them to get me a bigmac. When the burger arrived I took a bite and it did not taste like what I had ordered. I did not think more of it at the time except that it seemed someone had not heard what I wanted. Now I was reading the menu on my last day in India and it just struck me how crazy it must have sounded the first time. Learning about the cultures we visit is a very interesting part as well as important part of what we need to do in our work.

Then I was thinking to myself, why on earth even put up an McDonalds in a country that dont even eat beef. There is so much good food with such a variety in India.

We continued our very interesting journey and first visited Fatepu Sikri.

It was a very nice old palace area with a very interesting history. To cut it very short the basic story was that there was this very rich guy and ruler of the are who about 500 years ago first married a Muslim woman. He built here a small house of one room. She never gave him any sons. Later on he married a Christian woman and she neither gave him a son but he built her a bigger house, which even had and upstairs area. then finally he married a Hindu woman and she gave him a son so he built her a palace whihc was about the double size of his own palace.. Infact he built her two just opposite of eachother one for the winter with less windows and one for the summer with many windows.

What was very interesting is that in all the houses/palaces all the religious signs and markings are prevailant from all religions in all the places. Now considering that this is built 500 years ago means that this man was way ahead of his time. We in this "so called modern" world can not even tear down the walls between the religions in this way. Its rather the opposite and it scars me that there can be so many religious fanatics in any and all the religions when infact most of the documented history somehow links together anyway.

Anyway then we continued to Taj Mahal. I have heard so many stories about this wonder of the world. Nothing could though have prepared me for the beauty of seeing it through the arch as we entered into the courtyard were it is located. It is the most amazing building I have ever seen and I have by now travelled quite some. The attention to detail is just overwhelming when you stand there infront of it. One thing which is very interesting is what most people are not told. All the 20,000 some workers who worked on the Taj Mahal all had their hands chopped off so they could not replicate or build something similar ever again. Talk about sacrifice for a wonder of the world.

Here I was several hundred years later trying to imagine what it must have looked like in those old days. Me, Pawan and many thousands more people. For sure it is a wonder and no one going to India should miss it.

We enjoyed the sunset out by the Taj Mahal and then headed back to Delhi.. Almost 4 hours night driving. We arrived at my hotel and just had time to do the final packing and just check out heading straight to the airport. I slept all the way to Dubai dreaming of the history days relaizing how lucky I am to still be travelling and working in these places.

The sad part is that it was also the last trip for me to India for some time. For now, my job is done there. I have set up 3 offshored units which all have very good people who for the most part would never hear that they are superb staff. Just for the simple reason that offshoring by default is a bad word as it means people in another place potentially lost their jobs as it could be done equally or in some cases better, but far cheaper in another location around the globe. While this offshoring might be sad it also shows that UN can save money for the real benficiaries.

46 days, 16 Countries and 37 flights later...

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:58:00 +0000

When 9/11 hit, Peter was based in Islamabad-Pakistan, and stood with one leg in a plane, ready to leave for a long assessment mission to Central and South America.. As we all knew it was going to be busy time in Central Asia for the next six months, Peter cancelled his trip, called me on the phone and asked me to fill in. This was the story I wrote about the trip. A typical story of "us being on the road the whole time"...
This story was first published on Peters blog and I have added in more details as well as pictures from the trip to the story in this annotated version.

Dear all,

I am on the final stage of my mission through our Central and South America offices in eleven countries: Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Cuba.

This mission was organised in less than a week following the Sep 11th bombing in the US. I was on my way to West Africa for another assessment mission when I got a call from HQ to re-prioritize, with departure... euh.. immediately.

I have been away for 46 days now. During those 46 days I have taken 37 different flights. I have checked in and out of hotels 20 times. In several places I woke up in the morning not recognising the hotel room, wondering what country I was in, not a nice feeling.

I have been travelling through a total of 16 countries to asses 11 of them and visited 20 different offices. 70% of the flights were before 07:30 AM, just to make sure I did not enjoy a full night's sleep or breakfast. Especially if you know that most airlines here require you to check in three hours before take-off. I guess I am now an instant "Frequent Flyer Gold Status" on TACA-airlines !

In Miami I spent 5 hours going through 3 different security checks with my luggage as all passenger traffic had been rerouted to one location. Explaining to 4 guys how come I had so many stamps from various African countries who would for sure be on a terrorist list. When I finally was ready to board the plane, the automatic boarding pass machine spit out my boarding pass one more time which meant I had to once more open all my luggage as well as go through yet one more x-ray machine. Despite 5 hours in the airport I actually never even had a chance to sit down and have a coffee. That after already having travelled for 20 hours since leaving Kampala, Uganda.

On one occasion in Honduras I flew for 30 minutes, take-off at 0600 in the morning to arrive in San Pedro Sula to immediately continue in a car for 4 hours to reach Santa Cruz Copan. We stayed there about 30 minutes while I did the assesment and then drove straight back to San Pedro Sula. The morning after I was back in the air heading back to Tegucigalpa. At 6 AM.

In the Dominican Republic I had a whole weekend for myself.. "Great", I thought.. Until I turned on the TV and found a hurricane was heading straight at us... So I got locked up in the hotel room the whole of Saturday!

In Dominican Republic there was no flight to Port-au-Prince as the airline was grounded due to insurance problems. So I ended up going by road from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to Cap Haitien, Haiti, a trip of about 6 hours total. Crossing the border between the two countries was like being instantly teleported back to Africa. The next day at 0700 I flew out of Cap Haitien to Port-au-Prince on a local airline. The morning after I was out of Haiti heading to Columbia.

In Colombia I flew to Apartado via Medellin. In Medellin you land at one airport and you have to transfer to another airport to take a small plane to get to Apartado (Apartado = far away!). Well, these airports are one hours drive apart(ado). The area is more known as the FARC controlled areas in Colombia.
Up on the mountain above Bogota.

As they were warming up for the Miss Colombia beauty contest and had just selected the local beautyqueen the same day I arrived, I had the fortune of being kissed farewell by Miss Apartado at the Airport when leaving.

I lost my seat on the overbooked morning flight to Quito.. All my tickets got cancelled as I showed up as a no-show passenger on their computer... on the flight from Santo Domingo which THEY cancelled... I spent nine hours at the airport as the evening flight was delayed. Technical problems! When things go wrong they go WRONG! I could have gone back to the office but I had to spend almost two hours getting my booking for seats back on the remaining 15 flights I had on that ticket.

The Courtyard in Potosi, Bolivia. Once the capital of the Spanish conquistadors in S. America.

Heading out of Peru en route to Cuba via Panama the plane ended up doing an emergency landing in Quito as a passenger in business class had a fatal heart attack.

In Cuba I arrived with no visa.. Usually that is not a problem since I have both a UNLP [a UN passport] and a Swedish passport... But not in Cuba! Either you have a visa or you spend two hours waiting with no clue about what is going on... And they will make sure the people waiting for you in the arrivals hall do not know you are there...

In Cuba they changed back to winter time during my stay.. Well I didn't find out until almost a day later. No wonder there were no people in the restaurant at 0800 on Sunday for breakfast.. Because it was only 0700 for all the others?!

Once back in Managua it all ended up in a bit of a chaos as there were presidential elections and the security team decided to escalate the security precautions, demanding all non-essential staff to stay put.

A second Hurricane showed up during this final stage of the mission, killing at least four in Honduras before heading full speed for Cuba.

One day before my departure day out of the region I got the news that Sabena has filed for chapter 11 and Brussels Airport was on strike. Straight on my return flight route, of course! So all my return flights had to be changed to a different routing with yet one more ticket... That makes a total of 16 tickets. My travel expense claim will be interesting..

Yours Sincerely,
Mats
(in an airport somewhere)

20 years ago I decided to travel the world

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:17:00 +0000

Just sitting here at Sydney airport on my way back home to Dubai after dropping my 10 year old daughter back to Fiji. Yeah I know it sounds a bit crazy but I guess that is my life.

It all started 20 years ago just around this time of the year. I was still in the army in 1987/88 and we were out camping in the snow!

Being a lower officer in the army, with mandatory service, I was out on exercise with my platoon. We were out for 3 weeks in the cold winter. The weather was absolutely appaulling considering we had to camp in tents. It was about 0 degrees daytime so everything melted and we got wet, only to freeze to about -10 C in the night. I still remember about 4 nights when the fireguard either fell asleep or simply had forgotten how to keep the fire going. With the result that we, or rather I, had to restart the fire in the middle of the night. It was 3 weeks of hell for me. I hate cold weather, I hate being cold and wet especially. One of those dark nights again I could not sleep with things flying through my mind.

I was cursing the situation so many times I even forgot the count. Then suddenly one night I just had enough. Not that I could do anything to get out of there but at least I could occupy my mind with something else. For some reason I just said to myself -Next winter I will be as far away from cold Sweden as I possibly can get. I will be on the opposite side of the world for the whole winter. The thought was as simple as that.

From that moment my mind was fully occupied with just that idea. We continued our exercises but I was in another world all together. The idea of being on the other side of the world consumed every moment in the misery :-)

From Sweden that would mean a place like Australia and maybe New Zealand. My mind was already made up and nothing would be able to change me from going. I just started thinking of every detail I would have to plan and get ready to do what I had set out to do. Money, VISA, Itinerary... the list was endless but the more I thought about it the more real it became and the more interesting it became.

After the camping trip we were back in the barracks and got some free time in the evenings. I immediately started to check all sources I had in regards to flights and travel magazines. I found a book called the pacific Handbook which was like a bible on how to travel in the pacific by air or by boat, everything was covered. Much like the Lonely planetbooks do today but they are for my taste missing the original target these days. (later I found anothe ruse for it, being my pillow in some places ;-)

Hmm why only go to Australia and New Zealand I thought after reading a bit. I could by a ticket for about 1000 USD from Copenhagen via Los Angeles to Hawaii, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Cook islands, and Tahiti. For an additional 200 USD I could add in Tonga and Samoa islands. There was so many options but it was clear that I could do more than just got to one place. Living costs in pacific could be very cheap if I wanted to so even a budget of 2000 USD for living costs for 6 months would do it.

I told my parents the idea and they simply said. - You must be crazy. Go to pacific backpacking alone and you have never even travelled in Europe let alone in Sweden nor anywhere. hmm for me that seemed such a minor detail that it was dismissed immediately :-)

September 17 , 1998 I flew out as planned. I returned back from my pacific back packing trip in end February 1989. When I flew out of Tahiti towards Los Angeles I was already planning the second trip. A trip which lasted 8 month.

This was the simple start of something that I would never have imagined. On the return back from my trips I just new I would not be able to work and live in Sweden. The world was too interesting to see and with so many countries to visit I just had to find a way to see more of it.

Little did I know then that 10 years later I would find a job were I could get to explore the world as I now keep doing.

My daughter was born in 1997, the same year I joined UN. I am just sitting here at Sydney airport being sad having left her behind in Fiji were she lives with her mom. But at the same time I'm happy. My daughter lives in paradise on Taveuni Island. The island were the dateline goes right through and they see every day first in the world. The same place were the Blue Lagoon film was partially filmed years back. The first time I saw Fiji and Australia is exactly 20 years ago. Since then I have flown numerous times around the globe. I have had the top frequent flyer cards with Emirates 5 years in a row, KLM another 5, Sabena another 5 years and even SAS Eurobonus another 3 years. Looking at the miles I have flown it is way above a Million miles. I have seen paradise places, been in hell on earth and everything between during the 20 years that has followed that initial Backpacking trip to Pacific.

Above is a map that shows the flight paths I have taken in red and either boat or car ride in blue.

People say you are getting old when you start looking back at memories. Maybe it is but for me it rather feels like there has been so little time to actually really think about what I have seen and done over the years. The few times I can relax and actually think back it takes time to just even try sort the mind out.

I just got another mail from my boss. He wants me to go to West Africa to investigate a potential place for us to open up a new office. This year I also have to move out of Dubai as we normally change posting every 4 years and I have overstayed almost two years. Can only wonder, were will I go this time and what part of the world can I then explore further.

Dubai in a nutshell! or Credit card Hell!

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:28:00 +0000

Using a credit- or debit- card in Dubai is a natural thing. As with most other developed countries this is one of the features that normally works. During most of the shopping festivals around here we see a major amount of advertisements for VISA, MasterCard ,Diners, American Express and so on. Usually one of the credit card companies have teamed up with a Bank and several of the shopping malls and other outlets so that you can earn points for life for every dollar you spend. Once you have your gold card another bank comes up with a platinum, or why not the latest titanium card. The banks keep calling us to tell us how good their card is and why we must have it. Just use it and earn points you can even use on the airlines. Why not! They are very surprised when I tell them to never call me again as it seems they believe they have the offer of a lifetime. (Have a friend who actually took them up on the offer.. 8 months later he had still not received the card or was it the pincode to use it... And guess what the shopping festival had ended.)

It worked perfect for a while, I have a VISA and MasterCard from my usual bank and not a Dubai based one, so don't need any more cards thus I don't earn any points... But neither do I pay all the various transaction fees that they invent meanwhile. Until lately, that is.

I normally fuel up at the most prevailing fuel chains. It is two Dubai based companies that somehow are still owned by the same company and they almost have a monopoly in Dubai for the fuel stations. I know of one other chain also but to find a fuelstation from them is virtually impossible.

4 months ago the large ones announced that it was too expensive for them to cover the Creditcard fees so they would charge 1.5% or 2% on each transaction. I did not really complain about the 2 Dirham they charge me extra but it felt crazy... the reason for using the card should be benefiting the company probably more than me as it means no cash to move around thus less risk of robbery.

To my surprise it was getting more and more difficult though to use the cards. The attendants kept coming back to me saying "card no work!" Looking at the 4-5 slips they had it was evident that the card did work but their machines did not. Transaction cancelled was the error code so normally I sent the guys back and voila! it worked.

Now yesterday I tried to fuel up and pay with my card again and the guy simply informed we "we don't accept credit-cards anymore!"

Hmmm. Well looking at how things work in Dubai in general I am not really surprised. It seems everything is about how to move costs around and try to gain maximum amount of profit for a few in the shortest possible time. I guess it is not unlike any other place but to stop accepting credit cards that must be a novelty in this day and age. Are they on to something the rest of us don't know about yet?!

Maybe the fuel company got fed up trying to access the lines to the bank 5 times as they could only charge for one transaction try.... maybe it is the bank that is not catching up with their internal connections?.. for sure this is the case with the local bank we normally use for our office!, or maybe it is the telephone company lines that simply can not catch up with the expansion in the country..still charging for each call tried between the fuel station and the bank, thus they earn their money while no transaction could be made, or maybe it is that all these credit card offers in reality look nice on the surface, and the easy way out of delivering all the points is to close down the services people use and then maybe re-create them in the future, under a new name not in the list of participating companies.. Thus avoiding people to amass enough points to make it worth anything.

I have no clue what the answer is but I just cant figure out why a major chain would suddenly stop having people pay this way. Oh by the way you can though still get their internal fuel payment cards and pay with them ;-) I dont know but I would guess it works on pre-payment ;-)

I do though know that the price has always been cheaper in the next Emirate, Abu Dhabi, and guess what?! They have never charged for using the credit cards !? Even from their large almost monopoly size company.

Once I climbed Mount Makilala, Mindanao

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:55:00 +0000

I am sure very few people have a clue about were on earth this mountain is. It's not like it is well known like Mount Everest or Kilimanjaro :-)

We had to set up a new operation in Mindanao to support mainly the Muslim population in the hard to reach areas of the island. Mindanao is a very nice island and could be a tourist paradise but it is instead notoriously known for all the kidnappings of prominent people or foreigners. Either the Abu Sayyaf or some of the other rebels are making sure of this. Most of the time the people were released after paying a ransom. Most of the time!

The UN office in Manila had assigned one of the security officers to join me on the mission as I would not be allowed to travel alone or with a driver only. The risk for kidnapping was too high. After looking at a few of the maps I had identified some of the potential locations for our communication systems and one was Makilala. As most areas are off limits for anyone let alone visitors we made arrangements with the commander on the island to get access on the mountains.

So me and my security officer arrived early in the morning to the local military outpost close to the mountain and greeted the commandos. they were just about to finish their morning briefings when we arrived. They invited us for coffee and we sat just chatting with them. Being all in uniform they wondered if we really planned to climb the mountains. But of course that is what we have to do. Hmmm....

They all looked at me, then at my security officer in despair. Me in my safari vest, shorts and sneakers. My normal field outfit :-) a tad overweight ;-) and with an orange T-shirt. then they looked at my colleague. A retired general still looking fit, but retired.

hmmm.. They did all their calling around to check if we would be allowed on the mountain but found out we did have permission.

We jumped into our car and drove ahead to the meeting point. After about 30 minutes we see two military trucks coming over and stopping. 20 soldiers jumped of and again we were told to wait. They needed to send some troops ahead to clear the tracks for us before we could start climbing.. It was clear that there was potential for threats in the area.

After a few minutes we started walking up toward the mountain in a nice tempo.. I started to remember the trip up the mountain with the Karamojong in Uganda and the speed they walked at... Guess what? The Philippine commandos seem to keep the same speed or maybe it is me who has gotten slower ;-)

We walked and walked and the scenery was spectacular. Village people coming out greeting us on the way. Living very simple in their wooden huts. They for sure did not have a lot of money but their smiley faces would not go away. Most people on the mountain lived on harvesting the rubber from the rubber-trees. After 10 minutes we needed to slow down..again after another 10 again..... It continued like that and our faces were full of sweat. It got steeper and steeper and the track smaller and smaller. We could hear the commandos signalling between each other but we could only see the 6 that we had as close escort. The rest was moving in a very different way.

After almost one hour the retired general was slowing down and could not keep my pace even so we split our group also and I continued. After another 30 minutes of struggling I finally reached the top to the amusement of the commandos who was already preparing their lunch. It had taken just about 3 hours for the climb.

We got word that the general had fainted and been taken to a small hut to rest. But he was ok. He did arrive to the top 30 minutes later.

I did my work and then we just sat there taking in the view. It was spectacular about 1500 meters up. We could see Mt Apo the highest peak 2954m in Mindanao and about 100 km away. The skies were clear and the forests around intensely green. Unfortunately no picture taking in this area for security reasons.

After a bit more checking the site we headed down again. It was more difficult to see the tracks coming down. We also noticed that we had basically gone around one mountain to go up on the next one. Once down we met up with the commander again and then headed back to Davao. Once we reached Davao it was dinner and then straight to bed. It was fun but we had both reached our limit,that day:-) The next morning we drove to mount Malalag and started all over again.

Don't!

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:35:00 +0000

6 years ago I moved to Dubai and for most it has been a good experience;-)

- Living in a construction site , ever since.

- Working inside another construction site. It was almost not for about 6 months.

- More and more traffic jams.

Don't get me wrong there are good sides also but they are no part of this story ;-)

There is one thing that drives me bananas. Like in any other place there are rules and regulations when it comes to renting an apartment. Most of the times those rules are quite reasonable but were does it end? With my Landlord here it took about 1 week to feel like I was living in a student dorm in Sweden... Don't do this, don't do that.. If you think I am joking please continue to read.

- Don't have any Pets

- Don't BBQ on the balcony or on common grounds.

- Don't hang laundry on the balcony

- Don't install a Satellite dish

- Don't litter

- Don't have social functions in the common grounds (mind you they are like 10 football pitches)

- Don't do any kind of alterations to the premises

- Don't park bicycles in the staircase

-Don't live more than 2 adults (Husband and Wife!) and 0 children in a 1 bedroom apartment

- Don't live more than 2 adults (Husband and Wife!) and 1 child if the apartment is 2 bedrooms

- Don't live more than 2 adults (Husband and Wife!) and 2 children if the apartment has 3 bedrooms

- Don't allow relatives coming for visit to stay in your apartment

- Don't move any furniture out or in to the apartment without explicit permission from Landlord

- Don't clean the apartment after 2000

- Don't leave any belongings in common areas

- Don't drill in the walls in the kitchen

- Don't drill in the walls in the bathroom

- Don't sublet a room in your apartment

- Don't share your apartment for free.

- Don't park more than one car in the parking (too bad if both husband and wife actually need one each!)

- Don't distribute flyer's in the buildings (vendors/residents).

I always have a pile of 20 brochures every month... I know exactly how long my neighbours have been gone! However as we have no pigeon holes or any other means of getting mail at the apartment even the landlord is actually leaving contractual documents outside the door! I do have a PO box at the post office.!?

- Don't play loud music.

- Don't smoke in common areas

- Don't use the fire exits for casual entry (mind you the doors are always open.)

Now last week I got two more papers.

Mandatory tenant ID card. (have not filed the papers yet and wont. With copy of passport, residence visa and tenant contract)

-Don't move around in the premises without the mandatory ID card (mind you there is no fence around the compound. just desert, a 2 km long shopping mall and a construction site.....

Mandatory Parking permit (mind you the form explicitly says they have no obligation to guarantee a space even though my apartment number is marked on a parking space?! again with copy of passport, residence visa and tenant contract)

- Don't park your car without the mandatory Parking permit

For both of the above note that to get the tenant contract the same office require the same exact document and if they, the landlord does not have an original signed tenant contract for my apartment ... then who does!!!

Whatever you think... DON'T!

Been there, done that!

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:45:00 +0000

That was the print on a T-shirt I bought in Rarotonga, South Cook islands in 1989. I had just been to my 10th country in South pacific at that time. Now I have added a few more countries. This is just a map of places I have been to. Marked dark brown are countries and the green spots are small entities. Click on the map to see more details.

So many countries and so little time ;-) As you can see I am kind of addicted to travelling.

Shanghai last week.

My passport

My official passport

Flying to Africa with 10 dollars in the pockets

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 20:25:00 +0000

As usual I had not been planning our holiday in time. Well we knew we were going down to Kampala but I had not booked the flights. Normally it was not a problem as the flights did not use to be full in June.

I was trying to get the bookings done online but the system kept refusing to do the final booking. Each time I re-tried the price would have gone up another 200 Dirhams.

Over the weekend we had been shopping for stuff we needed but for some reason neither the MasterCard nor the VISA card was working. I knew we had money so there should not be any problem but it did not matter were we went the cards were rejected. I saw other people shopping having the same problem. In the end I had 220 USD in cash left.
Being in Dubai this was a major problem.. Everywhere you go it is always possible to pay with cards so carrying cash was not normal.

Sunday morning I went to DNATA, while my wife was sleeping in, as we still had no bookings. I figured I could get a seat with my gold card and she already had her ticket but no seat.

I arrived at DNATA around 1030. Being in shorts and a T-shirt I was already casual enough :-) The T-shirt being black saying "I am not paid enough to be nice to you". I like T-shirts that are a bit sarcastic every now and then ;-)

It finally came to my turn and the girl at the travel desk start finding us some seats.
"Well Sir. You will have to wait 2 weeks before we can get you a seat." she says. What??? I need to fly sooner than that.. what about in business class.
Well Sir. it looks full but there are two seats on today's flight..
And today's flight is at 1430 so are you sure you can make it to the airport in that time. I said if you can book it fast and let me get back home right now then no problem. It was now 1130 already.

OK sir that will be 210 USD for the taxes and upgrade taxes. Again I tried to pay with the credit cards but they are still being rejected. Sir you will have to go and pay cash at the other counter.

I run over to the other counter and pull out 200 USD and then pay the rest in Dirhams. Leaving 10 USD only in the pocket....

I run back and it takes a while before the tickets are written out. At 1200 I finally run out of the place and start driving home. We live about 20 minutes away from DNATA office and of course about 40 minutes away from the airport. I call my wife "Honey we are flying in 2 and a half hours if not we have to wait 2 weeks, please pack asap I am home in a few minutes."What ? you must be mad" she says. "Well what to do We cant stay 2 more weeks" I counter. She agrees and I continue flying down sheik Zayed Road. Arriving home just before 1230. She was just about ready with all the bags and we pack them into the car. I did not even have time to change as we have to get to the airport within the next 30 minutes. Again we fly down Sheikh Zayed road and manage to get to the airport just after 1300. I drop her and the bags at the entrance and then find a parking for the car. We get our boarding passes and run through the airport. Seems I am always running in airports for some reason!

Pew, we get on board the plane and finally relax. The air hostesses are looking strange at me each time they pass. I wonder what is going on then I realize that I still have the T-shirt with the nice print on :-) Next time one of the girls serve me a drink I tell them the T-shirt is there to remind me I need to be nice to people. I can hear them discussing and having a laugh in the galley.

We arrive in Uganda and luckily we have someone meeting us as we would not even be able to pay a taxi to get back home.

It took another 3 days before the cards started working and then we managed to have a good holiday.

On my return back in Dubai I get out to the parking and of course the parking ticket were up to about 300 USD. I drive to the exit and try to pay. "Sorry sir we don't take credit cards!" - What?? all places in Dubai take cards. "No sir not us!"
I grab my 300 USD and ask the guy to accept dollars as I have no Dirhams yet. The guy reluctantly accept them, of course at a bad rate.

There simply is no win situation.

A few seconds from horror

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:19:00 +0000

The following was published in the news after Valentines day in Uganda a few years back.

"Between 1997 and 2001, suspected ADF operatives detonated a total of 48 bombs in Kampala, Iganga and Jinja, killing 88 people and injuring 268.

The most deadly attacks occurred on July 30, 1997 when a grenade thrown into a crowd on Queen's Way killed 10 and wounded 45, and on August 25, 1998, when bombs exploded in three different buses, killing a total of 20 people and injuring 35.

Many will also remember the 1999 Valentine's Day explosion in Telex Bar in Kabalagala, which claimed five lives and injured 34, and the bomb blast on Kafumbe Mukasa Road on April 24, 1999, which cost the lives of another five and wounded seven."

Me and my wife had been out having dinner and was on the way home. Taking the normal route through Kabalagala on the way to Bunga, both suburbs in Kampala.

We came to the T-junction heading towards the Telex bar and Family shop. Things just did not look normal. People were running up from the Telex bar area and I could not figure out what was going on. Sometimes there are some fight in town if people have caught a thief so we have gotten quite good at detecting trouble. Living in danger zones you have to go by the feelings you get in situations. If it feels bad then act as if it is bad.

Anyway we saw people running up the hill away from the Telex bar area. As I am looking down towards Telex bar a bomb blows up right in front of me. It was the first time I ever saw one actually go of so close, it was an eary feeling. I immediately turn to drive up the hill away from the place and call the incident in to the office.
The radio room is asking if it just happened now-now as they had a report just a few minutes ago also. I told them it was right now and that there must have been 2 blasts in that case. We continue home on the back roads (I know them all by now.) while monitoring the radio.

The rest of the night it was quiet and everyone was told to remain at home. The next morning I come in to the office and have a chat with our technicians. Bjoern one of the Norwegian guys then tell me. "I was sitting there at Telex bar and suddenly there was a bomb. I had dead bodies around me and even more injured people." Yet he did not even have a scratch on him. Obviously he had been protected by one of the dead people without even realizing it. He left the bar and was lucky to have gone away from the second bomb.

Later on I talked to the bouncers at my normal hangout "Capital pub" and they had stopped 2 guys with their bags from coming in as they had refused to show what was in them. The target had most likely been Capital as it was the most frequented place by expats among all the bars in the area.

Two of my wife's friends died in the bombing.

There are many ifs that I have though after that incident.

- What if we had been driving 3 minutes earlier?
- What if we had reached Capital, as the plan was to go there?
- What if the bouncers had not been vigilant?
- What if Bjoern had not been so lucky?

Luckily none of those ifs were the case though. Still touching wood.

My dear cat Sussie remembered

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:47:00 +0000

Yesterday my dear cat Sussie died. She was the most affectionate cat you could find.

I already had a cat at that time and my wife found Sussie in the middle of the winter outside in the snow. Scared, freezing and dirty. Just a small kitten maybe 6 months old. We could not imagine someone throwing out a cat so young in that way. But then maybe she had escaped. She was a young cat but very smart. At 6 months she new how to open a door by hanging on the door handle.

The first time I saw here she was so weak. I was in bed while my wife gave her a hot bath. As soon as she was dry she ran straight to bed and just wanted to lie right next to me. I don't know why but she wanted my comfort.

When we moved to Uganda we took the cats with us and Sussie has lived there ever since. From being an indoor cat she became a free cat who never went more than 100 meter or so from the house, by her own choice. She loved being out, lapping up the un, but she never forgot the feeling of being left out in the cold so she would always run back in the house.

As a cat she lived a very good life. Even if I travelled a lot there was always someone in the house looking after her. We never even rented out the house when moving to Dubai as I wanted her to have a good place to stay even if I could not be there all the time. People thought I was crazy, but I loved my cat!
She would be as independent as a cat can be and if she didn't want to be patted there was no chance to catch her. She however always came to me, jumping up in my lap, purring away.

Some people love dogs and some cats and I am for sure a cat person. While she would not make a sound when there was a threat she was very good as a watch-cat. Any time there was a threat outside I would simply look at were Sussie was looking. Long before anyone else she had already scouted out people coming close to the house, night or day. She was also very good at determining friendly people from not so friendly people. As there is a lot of mice, rats, snakes and other animals crawling around in Africa she had plenty to play with. For us it was very good. We never had any rodents or other animals in the house or even in the garden. The occasional Gecco would not survive for long.

Sussie became 12 years old.

My dear Sussie will always be remembered.

Once I climbed a mountain with the karamojong

noreply@blogger.com (Mats) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:16:00 +0000

I was on my way back from a mission in northeastern Uganda. All the radio installations were succesful and the staff in the suboffices were happy. they had though one request and that was to get them all connected together by radio.. Thus so they would be able to use their handsets to talk from office to office. I had seen the landscape and figured out that it should be no problem to achieve that final goal also. I had found that the perfect location would be Mount Napak or Napak hills as they referred to it. Asking around everyone told me it was an easy climb and that it would be easy to secure a location for a repeater on the top.

The plan was to head back to Kampala but as it was very early in the morning we figured that we could make it to the top and back and still make it to Kampala before sunset. The guys had told me it would take less than an hour to get to the top. We met with the local village council who was all to happy to appoint one of his deputies help us get on the way. We drove to the foot of the mountain were we met up with some Karamojong guys who would guide us up the mountain. The karamojong guys said it was an easy 30 minute walk to the top. Perfect we concluded as that would give us even more time to get back and on our way home.

the karamojong are tribe that roam around in Uganda and into Kenya with their cattle. They rarely build anything permanant. They rather just follow the seasons and the grazing patterns for their cattle. They are a very tall tribe and almost always dressed in a tradition chequered skirt. they dont carry any belongings with them except for the 3 essential things they have. A toothbrush, A walking stick and a woooden T shaped piece that can serve either as a stool or a pillow. that is it.. just the bare essentials. In some cases you will find them with a gun also. the gun is mainly for protection. Since they dont like to shoot their animals they sometimes do targetpractice on passing cars. The intent is not necessarily to kill but on a number of occasion ofcourse this has been the end result !?

The guides we got for the mountain was though not the gun carrying ones which made me more at ease.

We started to walk. As usual I carried a bottle of coke but as the walk was supposed to be like a walk in the park I only had a small bottle. We started of in a good pace withthe karimojong leading the way. I think it took about 10 minutes then all us rookies were tired.. these guys were not walking.. they were running!!! We requested them to take it slower and we managed another 10 minutes then we stopped again and said that maybe it is better we lead the way and they follow our pace.

Slowly we started to realize that this 30 minute walk was probably going to take a bit longer or shall we say much longer! As we felt we were already high up we decided that to eturn without reaching the peak would just be achieving nothing we all agreed that we would continue all the way even if it would take a bit longer time. 3 hours and 45 minutes later we finally reached the peak. The mountain is stnading about 1000 meter above the surrounding areas. On reaching the top we were told that we had passed several villages?! We had not seen any but they had seen us. As the karimojong living on the mountain are very suspicious to visitors they hide and only make themselves known if they know your intent.

The view from the top was spectacular. We could see almost 150 km towards the north or as far as we wanted the radiosignal to reach. We talked to the guys in the Kotido office just on our small radio and they could not believe we were on the mountain top so far away. We located a good site for a repeater and then it was time to head down again. By this time we were exhausted but the local guys had barely even raised the pulse one beat. I found out that it wss not uncommon that they ran up the mountain all the way, or ran between the different villages even if they were as far away as a marathon or two! At the same time I also realized that they actually had no concept of what 30 minutes would be. 30 minutes or 4 hours did not make a difference. You reach when you reach and that was it.

Continuing down we stopped at one of the villages and suddenly we were greated by the villagers. As we had run out of anything to drink they offered us water. Infact they even offered to slaughter a goat for a barbeque. We kindly said not to the goat but drank some very fresh water from the mountain. As they have a serious problem of guinea worm in most of the areas we had to sift the water through a napkin.

After a 20 minutes rest we continued down the mountain. It took almost as much time as going up and we were exhausted. We had though found a good site for our systems so I was happy with the climb.