Around the World in 50 Years

by Albert Podell

  Since so few Nauruans can find work, they sit around and grow fat on a regimen of SPAM, fried chicken, and other fatty foods introduced by the GIs who liberated the island in WW II. The population is among the planet’s heaviest, with 95 percent being overweight or obese. The portions in the local eateries are twice as large as anyone should eat. Most of the adults I saw were above 300 pounds. Their inter-island airline has configured a creative way to accommodate them: In the front 20 rows, the middle armrests do not lift up, as they do on most jetliners; instead they swivel sideways so that three seats abreast can be reconfigured to fit two fat folks.

  A bonus of this visit was that I was able, for the first time in all my travels, to totally circumambulate an entire nation under my own power. (I had tried in San Marino, but it was too hilly and its border poorly delineated, and I had intended to circle Vatican City on my last visit, but that coincided with the investiture of Pope Benedict, which made it far too crowded.) I traded two worn T-shirts (NYU and Orlando) and one tired tank top (Cozumel) for the all-day loan of a thick-tired bike, on which, starting at 7:00 a.m. (to avoid the midday sun, which is brutal just 25 miles south of the Equator), I pedaled the perimeter of the country in four hours.

  Content with my singular achievement, and ready for some R & R, I headed for Brisbane, but was there confronted with a discomforting realization.

  I knew this was the likely last time I’d ever see Australia, that Oz was over, that I was done Down Under. I realized that, because of age and obligations, I would not be able to revisit this land I’d known and enjoyed for more than 30 years, one that had provided me with much love, beauty, excitement, friendships, and adventures. But I was not ready for the type of adventure it threw at me this time.

  Brisbane is one of the world’s most livable cities—sparkling, energetic, prosperous, and progressive. It boasts clean air and clean streets; wide sidewalks, inviting plazas, dozens of picturesque parks, gardens, and arbored walkways, and a superb pedestrian mall. It was the domain of handsome, flab-free, health-conscious young studs in bike shorts, and lithe lassies who were everything plus, wearing tiny cutoffs with black hiking boots or diaphanous sundresses with high heels. It’s a cement South Sea paradise, 21st-century style.

  First time I visited Brissie was 1981, heading hot up from the Gold Coast where I’d been practicing my Hawaiian big-board technique and Aussie slang on the local surfies—“G’day, mate. Heaps rad bra, eh?”—before dropping in on the Sunshine Coast for a bit more bronzing, then on to spectacular diving on the Great Barrier Reef. I was backpacking, bunking at Australian Youth Hostels (AYH), chowing down on kangaroo burgers and emu steaks, a wayfaring wanderer loving the beauties of Australia and blissfully enjoying carefree promiscuity in the back of long-distance buses with a series of suntanned Sheilas in those last sublime times before AIDS came along and spoiled all the fun. Oh, what a difference a day makes.

  On this trip I’d shifted from the AYHs to the landmarked edifice across from the Central Train Station housing the backpacker’s haven known throughout the international footloose set as X Base Brisbane, where I was the only guest over 28. It had been built a hundred years ago for the Salvation Army as a way station for homeless dipsomaniacal souls who pledged to shun Demon Rum in exchange for a tiny room, daily sermons, and three squares. It was now a popular venue for international hookups, but the women guests treated me as an interloper.

  I tried, without success, to get my groove back in the basement’s Down Under Bar, where much of the meeting and greeting took place. To assist the pre-mating process, the bar hosted a daily “Full On, Flat Out” nonstop, wild scene fueled by Pure Blonde Naked Pale Ale. It featured Minglah Monday, (“Beer ’n Babes”), Temptation Tuesday (“Beauties ’n Bikinis”), Wicked Wet Wednesday (“Wet T Contest”), Thumpin Thursday, Funky Friday, Sinful Saturday, and Seedy Sunday, all at cut-rate prices, but at high cost to one’s liver, hearing, and sleep, which I willingly paid, but to no avail. If I’d been a narc, I could hardly have been less popular, or more the object of unwelcoming looks. I’d been shunted off to the realm of fantasy. Oh, yes, what a difference a day makes.

  During the previous ten years, as I’d traveled through nations where STDs were rampant, I’d refrained from hunting quail, although it had once been my favorite sport. Now that I was back in safe territory and ready to resume the chase, I did a reality check and got the message—loud and clear—that it would be unseemly, unwelcome, and unsuccessful for me to try romancing any of the 20-something beauties who roused my interest.

  I’d never been a lech or a sexual predator, even though it got depressingly lonely on these multi-month voyages. I’d previously relied on my appearance, charm, suitability, and joie de vivre to foster mutually pleasing liaisons on the road—where it was impossible to enter into serious relationships because I was never in one place for more than a few days. But all I could foster at the Down Under Bar was the eponymous Aussie lager. I no longer fit into the singles scene, and the harder I tried to talk and dress as the young guys did so naturally and effortlessly, the more awkward I became. This was a new kind of adventure for me, and not one I was prepared for or cared to continue.

  Reality bit hard: I was no ageless Peter Pan, no timeless Indiana Jones. No longer Keats’s Bold Lover, “for ever panting, and for ever young.” I’d best get the hell out of Dodge and return to my mission.

  But first I drowned my sorrow in a farewell feast with an old Brissie buddy at a restaurant whose French chef specialized in “Advanced Australian Fare,” which no old drover would recognize. I ordered, and gluttonously consumed, the enormous “Native Platter” of barbecued crocodile, emu prosciutto, munchy muntries, glacé lilly pilly, dukkah, smoked glacé guandong—Spell Checker just gave up and went down in flames—lime glacé, tender greens covered with bunya nuts, seared rare kangaroo, a delicious confit of Tasmanian possum, home-baked whole-wheat damper dipped in macadamia oil, rosella chutney, anisata salmon gravlax, Moreton Bay bugs (Thenus orientalis), and, for dessert, at a nearby bakery, a heavenly lamington covered with coconut-crusted chocolate—all for less than the cost of a used car.

  Farewell, Brissie. I’ll dearly miss you and the fabulous times we’ve had. Good-bye, Oz. No, not my customary au revoir. Because, my dear old friend, I know I won’t ever see you again.

  CHAPTER 26

  Second Thoughts

  After visiting Kosovo and Portugal, and shifting into final preparations for the Nasty Nine, the news from those lands caused me to have serious second thoughts about the safety and sanity of continuing this quixotic quest.

  Let’s start with Chad. I thought the rebellion there was quiescent, but Amnesty International had just reported that both the rebels and the government forces were busily recruiting and abducting children to become soldiers, and few things frighten me more than a heavily armed, trigger-happy preteen. A few weeks earlier, the JEM rebel group accused the Chadian government of plotting with the Sudanese to begin a joint operation against them, and Agence France-Presse reported that both Chadian and Sudanese forces were on red alert because many Darfur rebels had left their hideouts in Libya and crossed the border. It was still a hanging Chad.

  Rwanda had been relatively quiet after 1994’s horrendous, hundred-day bloodbath in which a million Hutus and Tutsis were slaughtered, although recent elections had been tainted, and journalists and opposition politicians had been persecuted. My planned route was across the country, down to Kigali, into the Southern Province, skirting the DRC through the Nyungwe Forest, and across Rwanda’s southwest border into Burundi. Then Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs issued this warning:

  We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Rwanda because of the risk of rebel and criminal activity. Pay close attention to your personal security at all times … Grenade attacks have occurred in Kigali and Southern Province. We advise you to reconsider your need to travel to the areas bordering Burundi because of the high risk of conflict between government forces a
nd rebels and banditry. These areas include the Nyungwe Forest. We strongly advise you not to travel to the areas bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo … because of the volatile and unpredictable security situation in this region.

  With murderous guerrillas, Islamic terrorists, rampant corruption, rigged elections, increasing poverty, disease, travel restrictions, a nonfunctioning government, and citizen discontent in the “Savage Seven” countries that I still needed to visit to complete my quest, I took time to consider the prospects, evaluate the odds, and decide if the game was worth the candle.

  Uganda had appeared quiet, at least compared to five years before, when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was on a bloody rampage. The LRA was now mostly active in the DRC, but President Obama announced that the U.S. had dispatched the first of a group of military personnel to help the Ugandans fight the LRA. On October 14, 2011, he declared that:

  For more than two decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa. I have authorized … combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of [LRA commander] Joseph Kony from the battlefield. During the next month, additional forces will deploy, including a second combat-equipped team …

  I had arranged, six months earlier, to visit Uganda accompanied by James Stedronsky, a law school chum who was an outdoor enthusiast, so I’d have someone to cover my back, especially since I’d be camping out for most of the two weeks there, but Jim bailed out the day after the troop announcement, sending me this e-mail:

  I’m not traveling to Uganda as a US citizen while US special ops are chasing an outrageously dangerous group through the country. It’s too dangerous, Al. You have no idea whether someone can make a buck selling you to some rebels. You need to seriously discuss this with some other people whose judgment you trust. It’s blatantly reckless to travel alone under these circumstances. You need to discuss this with mature people who are very close to you and care about you. You know better than anyone that when traveling you have to continuously weigh risks and change plans. A US military intervention ranks with these. Don’t decide this by yourself and don’t insist on going “because this is what I do.”

  But, Jim, this is what I do.

  The world’s newest state, South Sudan, had become even more dangerous. It had been my hope, for the previous five years, that the achievement of independence in July 2011 would end the fighting between the South’s animist population and the Muslim-dominated North. But the violence instead intensified along the disputed, mineral-rich border zone. Hundreds were killed and dozens of villages burned to the ground in the three months following independence.

  In other parts of the new nation, more than 2,400 had been killed, 3,000 wounded, and 26,000 cattle stolen in fighting between the Murle and Lou Nuer communities. (Cattle rustling is a main source of insecurity in South Sudan, as cows represent wealth and social status, and are used as “blood money,” and compensation, and payment of dowries.) The International Crisis Group noted that “Sticks and spears have historically been used to carry out rustling and the violent disputes it often causes. However, the proliferation of small arms changed the nature of this practice, making raiding far more deadly.”

  Then there was Yemen, to which the Arab Spring had come late, but ferociously, with an almost successful assassination of the autocratic president, followed by heavy-handed government retaliation, which was killing about ten protesters a day, while Al-Qaeda made the most of the disorganization and turbulence to consolidate its hold on South Yemen, countered by escalating attacks by American drones to pick off terrorist leaders. Admittedly not the best time to visit—unless you were an arms merchant.

  Even well-developed Kenya, which had been calm after two of its largest tribes hacked each other up following an election two years earlier, and which I’d have to transit to enter Somalia and South Sudan, went ballistic a few weeks before I was scheduled to depart, and dispatched its army into neighboring Somalia to attack the terrorists of Al-Shabaab, who had kidnapped a French tourist and killed her. The fittingly named spokesman for Al-Shabaab, Sheikh Ali Mohamed Rage, vowed his group would attack Kenya with a vengeance in retaliation.

  He would carry out this threat on March 12, 2012, when assailants hurled four grenades into the Nairobi bus station, killing at least six and injuring more than 50. Twenty other grenade/explosive attacks in Kenya killed 48 and injured more than 200 in 2012. On September 21, 2013, Al-Shabaab terrorists invaded an upscale shopping mall in Nairobi, killed six Kenyan soldiers and 61 civilians, and broadcast that this was retribution for Kenya’s military support of the Somalian government.

  The worst was Somalia, often cited as the most dangerous country on earth. I knew Al-Shabaab had established a brutal reign in which they whipped women for showing their ankles, chopped off the hands of petty thieves, and beheaded those suspected of being disloyal. They had banned TV, music, gold teeth, and bras as offensive to Islam. But I didn’t realize quite how dangerous it was until I received an e-mail from the manager of a hotel in Mogadishu to whom I’d inquired about their accommodations and how far it was to walk to the nearest restaurant. He replied:

  Dear Al, I will try to guide you as best as I can on your planned trip. Mogadishu is unlike any place on earth. There is no such thing as “going for a walk.” You cannot walk out of our compound whenever you want. You will be immediately spotted, and kidnapped within minutes. There are no taxis. You will need armed Somali security guards, who will take you in a convoy of Toyota Surfs with blacked-out windows should you need to move around, even 100 yards. Security guard escort service plus vehicle and driver is $350/day. Foreigners cannot move around (even with armed guards) anywhere in the city after sundown. We cannot offer a rate without meals because you will starve! There are no restaurants you can go to outside our compound. Either you eat at our place or you do not eat. For these reasons, coming here as a tourist is wildly expensive and not recommended. Our clients are journalists, diplomats, and UN staff, who have received hostile-environments training. Moving around the city, you may encounter small-arms fire, possible IEDs, grenade or RPG attacks. If you’re still interested in visiting, please let me know.

  And he was trying to encourage my visit.

  * * *

  When high risk is closely linked to the reasonable possibility of a high reward, as in the stock market or romance, I’ve often given it a go, with much success in the former, and only a few dozen disasters in the latter. But when it came to this travel game, the high-risk countries offered scant rewards. They were, more often than not, sad, sorry, lawless lands with few things worth seeing, unless you had a fetish for starving, homeless people; ruined infrastructure; wounded and malnourished children; and bullet-pocked buildings. When traveling in lawless lands and failed states, high risk comes with a high possibility of an untimely funeral—if, that is, your next of kin is fortunate enough to locate your body.

  On my scoreboard, the reward was always the same: just one more country. Whether it’s France or Somalia, Canada or a killing ground, it still only counted as one country, regardless of the risk involved. For that reason, I’d diligently sought to avoid the dangerous hot spots when they were inflamed, and visit them only after they’d cooled down. My overall venture may have been fraught with perils, but since I’d never been an adrenaline junkie, and was no longer the blissfully ignorant, foolishly invincible youth who naïvely set out on that drive around the world decades earlier, I did whatever I reasonably could to minimize the risk. I never consciously went in search of danger. When it confronted me, I’d tried to make the best of it and find a way out of it or around it. I was a living oxymoron—a cautious adventurer.

  But I could no longer do that or be that. I was down to the nitty gritty of the Nasty Nine, none of which showed signs of becoming completely peaceful before I got carted off to the assisted-living facility or the bo
oby bin. If I was going to go for the goal, now was the time. I’d dodged and ducked and avoided the big dangers as long as possible, but now I had to put up or shut up.

  I could have stopped here, at 187 countries, and lived peacefully in my cozy, souvenir-filled apartment, enjoying my sweet girlfriend, my good pals, the spa at Chelsea Piers, my front-row ballet seats, my pile of must-read books, and enough savings to lead a comfortable life. Or I could continue the adventure and risk it all for an objective that to most probably seemed meaningless and inconsequential and whose origins and attraction I but vaguely understood.

  After much consideration, I decided to go for it. I arranged to leave on November 18, 2011, for Saudi Arabia and Yemen, then into Africa, and I hoped to be back in the States and up in Vermont before the end of ski season.

  I never made it.

  CHAPTER 27

  My Meddle in the Muddle East

  Despite my e-mailed entreaties to my friends asking that they not try to talk me out of my plans, only ten of them advised me to “Go For It!”—four adventurous types, three free spirits, two beneficiaries of my will, and one who asked to be added to it.

  The legion of naysayers recommended I stay home and live a long and peaceful life. Some sent me brochures for attractive retirement communities. A friendly shrink offered me a free mental evaluation. My cousin Larry tried to lure me down to Vero Beach by promising to make me blueberry pancakes for breakfast. My insurance agent advised he was unable to get me that million-dollar term-life policy now that he knew where I intended to travel. And Professor John King, my forensic pathologist pal at the Cornell, who usually autopsies pigs and sheep around the world that have died of mysterious diseases, thoughtfully volunteered to “help get what is left of you home.”

  I partly heeded their advice by beefing up protection. I hired two security experts and six guards with assault rifles and an armored car for Mogadishu, and I agreed to take Andrew Doran, who is a fearless martial-arts expert and crack shot, for the most dangerous parts of the trip—once I was sure they hosted no massage parlors to tempt him. I went to a rifle range to reattain the sharpshooter rating I’d earned in the army, and shot 245 out of a possible 250 points at medium range on a semiautomatic with basic slit sights! Not bad for a squinty dude who can barely see his shoes on an overcast day. I was ready for action.