Around the World in 50 Years

by Albert Podell

  Back in N’Djamena, it was evident that Chad was in sorry shape. The capital was utterly listless—little activity, little joy. The people looked traumatized, which is understandable after several decades of rebellions, civil wars, genocide in Darfur, unresponsive governments, distrust, oppression, and widespread corruption. Andrew did not react well to this atmosphere and, after walking only two blocks with me, excused himself and rushed back to the safety of the guesthouse. What the hell was wrong with this tough guy who was supposed to be protecting me?

  We eventually needed to avail ourselves of Chad’s culture of corruption. The regime—ever wary—required foreigners to register within 72 hours of arrival. We’d arrived on a Thursday and we’d sought to register on Friday, but wherever we went—immigration, the police, the French Embassy, the Ministry of the Interior—no one knew where the rare tourist should go to register. Then all the government offices closed early for the weekend, leaving Andrew and me with glaring gaps in our passports where the immigration police had rubber-stamped a form that was to be filled in when we registered. They had warned us that the penalty for failing to register was severe, including detention. If we were not allowed to fly out on Sunday because of the missing registration, our ongoing itinerary would be a shambles.

  On Saturday morning, while we’d been waiting in vain at the airport for the sandstorm to abate, Carl, aware of our problem, had undertaken some reconnaissance and, within ten minutes, had found a senior police officer who offered to meet us at the airport the next day—his day off, he emphasized—to grease some palms and facilitate our departure.

  Because Carl is both a good Christian and a guest of the government, he did not resort to outright bribery to secure our freedom, as when you specifically pay an official to achieve a certain result. Instead, using his extensive knowledge of Chadian culture and mores, he conveyed to the cowboy cop, without mentioning money or any amounts thereof, that the cop’s intercession on our behalf would be appreciated. “Highly appreciated.”

  On Sunday morning, with our bags packed and those empty forms burning holes in our passports, Andrew and I and Carl rendezvoused with the cop, who made the rounds of his colleagues for 30 minutes, after which we were whisked through immigration with VIP dispatch as every official in the area pointedly looked the other way. I wouldn’t try this technique at JFK, but it’s SOP in much of Africa and enabled us to stay on schedule and, via Addis and Nairobi, catch the Midnight Special flying to Mogadishu.

  Mogadishu was a blast, but, fortunately, not literally. Although widely deemed “The World’s Most Dangerous City,” I was pleased to find that, after some 30 years of battling warlords and radical Islamists, it was returning to some form of normality. Two months before, Al-Shabaab had been driven out of all but two northern sections, with so many jihadis killed that they were no longer a match for the 9,000 African Union (AU) and UN soldiers protecting the town.

  I visited the spot where the helicopter from Black Hawk Down went down and saw some of the heavy parts of the chopper embedded in the clumps of cactus. I walked along dazzling Lido Beach, a world-class strand of wide white sand bordered by war-shattered villas with not one surviving roof or window in a mile. In the reopened outdoor market in the heart of town I found an authentic, Somali-style stool to add to my African stool collection, then at ten. I visited a large IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camp where, despite having nothing but a few pieces of cardboard and plastic garbage bags over their heads for improvised tents, and only getting one meal a day from the refugee organizations, the people—mostly women and children; their husbands and fathers are dead—were exceptionally warm and accessible, eager to pose for photos, and delighted to see their digitized images.

  But before you conclude that this sounds like a safe, ordinary, tourist trip, let me note that Andrew and I always had two hired guards walking in front of us with AK-47s locked and loaded, two similarly armed guards walking behind us, plus one guard on each side, all wearing flak jackets, plus two security chiefs beside us, inside this protective square, scanning the roofs and sweeping the alleys with binoculars for killers or kidnappers, all trailed by two specially equipped, bullet-resistant 4 × 4s that were in constant contact by walkie-talkie, ready to pick us up instantly if any incident unfolded, the entire entourage guarding me and Andrew (at $770 a day) from the second we left our residence to the moment we returned.

  Andrew Doran, who accompanied me to the Savage Seven, and is trained in martial arts, sits with three of our six heavily armed Somali guards in Mogadishu. We rode in a bullet-proof window-tinted SUV while the guards both preceded and followed us in pickup trucks, searching for snipers and IEDs. Andrew Doran

  Mogadishu was hardly likely to win a Safe Cities award anytime soon, but the expat who headed our security provider optimistically opined that, “Mog is coming back. My construction business is flourishing. Mog might soon be a boomtown. Those wrecked, abandoned houses on the beach may be worth a million bucks in a few years. You can buy one today for next to nothing. You’ll see. You’ll know we’ve made it as soon as Mickey Dee, KFC, and the Russian hookers move in.”

  A representative of the AU Mission, which provided the troops to clear the jihadis out of the country, told me that two of Mog’s main markets had just reopened, people were “streaming back” to their homes, roads were being repaved, houses rebuilt, and Mog was “experiencing a resurgence.” The prime minister summed it up: After 20 years of competing warlords, pirates, tribal extremists, and religious fanatics, “Somalis are sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

  But the rest of the nation was not in the control of the government or the AU; it was lawless, with seven million people facing starvation. Their only alternative—making the long, difficult, and dangerous journey to the refugee camps on the borders of Kenya—was not viable because those camps were already filled to over 500 percent of capacity, and the process of getting food to them was rife with corruption. Yet, despite this, the moribund economy was coming to life in a few spots as nomadic Muslim shepherds sold hundreds of thousands of goats and sheep to the northern livestock markets, from which daring Lebanese and Saudi traders exported this prized halal meat to Mecca to feed the annual two million foreign pilgrims.

  From Somalia I flew, alone, to Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Andrew had become increasingly weird and paranoid. He declared that, despite our earlier agreement, he would not go with me to South Sudan, but would travel on his own to Kenya and take a “safe” tourist safari with a guide. When I asked him what was wrong, he became angry, insisted he was fine, and refused to disclose more. I had no idea what was causing his atypical behavior, but had no doubt that something was significantly amiss. He agreed, albeit reluctantly, to meet me in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, in ten days, to begin the long journey through guerrilla country.

  South Sudan was then in the final stages of the euphoria that followed its independence, still less than six months old, and before the inevitable hangover hits and reality bites, as it must. Wherever I looked, I saw T-shirts and signs proclaiming the glory of freedom and the elation of liberty, but I saw no tangible signs of reconstruction or advancement. Every billboard was tied to independence, from those advertising that freedom meant having a cell phone to those declaring that WE SAY NO TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN OUR NEWLY INDEPENDENT NATION—but those women were the only ones toiling in the heat. And I was shocked when I learned that a larger number of South Sudanese teenage girls died each year during childbirth than were trying to complete primary school!

  Almost every South Sudanese I talked to was enthralled to finally have a state of their own after 57 years of nasty civil war (a peaceful hiatus prevailed from 1972–1982); to have “The People’s Own President,” the Stetson-wearing lieutenant general who’d led their fight to freedom; and to finally have a government of their own, that cared about them (as the biased Arab/Muslim one in Khartoum never did), in a new nation where they might speak freely, assemble without fear of any secre
t police, and pursue their dreams. They had hope, ambition, and oil, but they were so impoverished and uneducated, and their land had been so long deprived of funding from Khartoum, and so shattered by the fight for freedom from the North, that experts estimated a best-case scenario would take South Sudan at least ten to 12 years to become a fully functioning and self-sufficient state—and that was only if all went well, and if Sudan did not attack them, and if Khartoum let them use its pipeline to export their oil to earn foreign exchange, and if South Sudan’s mutually antagonistic Big Men were able to cooperate rather than fight, and if the age-old animosity between South Sudan’s main tribes did not deteriorate into warfare, and if their people dreamed realistic dreams. The world’s newest nation was a big If.

  Numerous problems remained to be solved, high among them the unattainable expectations that had accompanied their independence. I met several veterans of the war, some missing an arm or a leg, who proudly—or sometimes angrily—showed me their ID card from the South Sudanese People’s Liberation Army and expressed dissatisfaction with the high prices, the mass unemployment, and the slow pace of reconstruction and oil development. One of them forced me to put my camera away when he saw me photographing the shabby outdoor market, because he was ashamed of it: “Come back in two years and we will have a city here…”

  The most flagrant instance of overblown expectations came from a college sophomore I met when deplaning, who helped me find a room at the South Sudan Two Hotel. I treated him to dinner there the next evening—a tasteless buffet of rice, potato chips, macaroni elbows, and scrawny chicken, without a single vegetable, at thrice the price it cost in most of East Africa. He confidently told me that when he graduated in three years he expected to have a starting salary of 300,000 South Sudanese pounds a month, the equivalent of one million dollars a year! I remonstrated with him, told him he was nuts, reminded him that more than 60 percent of his countrymen lived on less than two dollars a day, that even hard-charging minibus drivers, who worked seven days a week, only netted $200 a month. But he bizarrely insisted he was right. And he was majoring in economics.

  Perhaps this inability to think things through to a wise and valid conclusion is even more prevalent in South Sudan than in most of Africa, because this land had for decades been starved for food, health care, education, communication facilities, and everything else by the harsh regime in Khartoum that despised these non-Arabic Christians and animists. Small wonder that the three most popular shows on Juba TV—as compiled by my own, admittedly unscientific, market research—were patriotic speeches, soccer, and a syndicated wrestling program from the States called TLC, in which the combatants fight with tables, ladders, and chairs.

  Take that economics major: I’d invited him to meet me at 7:00 p.m. at my hotel to discuss some business, but he came at 6:00 instead and left because he assumed I was out. He later told me he had pushed the door to my room, and when it didn’t open, he presumed I was elsewhere. Did he try knocking on my door? No, never thought of that. Did he ask the receptionist if I was out? No, never considered it. Did he wait until our appointed time? You already know the answer. And remember, this kid is one of his country’s intellectual elite.

  Or consider the wiring in my hotel room: The fan on the wall sported two identically colored cords dangling an inch apart. One was the pull cord to turn it on; the other was a spliced wire for the current. Pull one in the dark and you get cooled; pull the other and you get cooked.

  Or when I had to go to the South Sudan One Hotel to use the Internet: The driver dropped me at off at 2:00 p.m. and agreed to return for me at 5:00. He never showed. I went to reception and asked them to call South Sudan Two (their downscale branch, where I was staying) to have the van sent back. None of the staff knew the phone number—of their sister hotel! It took three hours to get a ride back.

  South Sudan prices were exorbitantly high for everything, as a result of the influx of aid workers from the UN and NGOs, all wanting to do good, but many causing unintended harm to the economy because they imported their Western valuations and spending habits. I’ve seen this same NGO-induced inflation in other new countries having small populations—Macedonia, Kosovo, East Timor—where the proportion of humanitarian workers was large enough to push up the prices. These aid workers are willing, and able, to spend $60 for a dinner in a land where most folks don’t earn that much in a month. Then they plunk down 300 to 400 bucks a night at the few good hotels and further warp the economy. They pay five dollars for a minibus ride that should (and previously did) cost ten cents. They go to the market and pay whatever is asked, no matter how inflated by local standards, because it seems cheap compared to what they paid at home, and they’re too busy or too dignified to bargain. But in the process they (and those they hire to cook and work for them) drive up the prices of beans, rice, meat, vegetables, and other staples beyond the purses of the poor locals. The consequence is, inevitably, that the sellers raise their prices to meet what the traffic will bear—and distort the economy for years.

  I’m not opposed to those who want to do good—indeed, I donate regularly to many of these organizations—but I wish their workers would be more self-sacrificing and leave at home their insistence on air conditioning, new mattresses, toilets with seats, and fancy food. If they’d live in a more frugal style in these countries, and try to be more sensitive to, and fit into, the established local economy, they’d benefit by not destabilizing that economy and by developing more empathy for the people they’re there to help. If you’re there to help folks who subsist on two dollars a day, try doing that yourself for a few days. Walk in their sandals, shop from their pockets. You’ll be all the better for it. And so will they.

  I spent my last two days in Juba preparing to transition from the deserts and dryness of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Chad, Somalia, and South Sudan to the wet jungles and moist upland forests of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. I disinfected everything (even the inside of my toiletries kit and the sports soles in my hiking boots) with iodine-pill solution, sprayed all my jungle clothes with pyrethrum to deter mosquitoes, finished off Tom Clancy’s nine hundred-page The Sum of All Fears so I didn’t have to drag it along, delighted the locals with gifts of used T-shirts, and tenderly cut the duct-taped legs off my old jungle pants to turn these faithful friends (who had seen me through some 60 countries in ten years) into shorts. I allocated my stash of dense, high-energy foods—cereal, peanuts, dried figs, dates, and power bars—to each of the remote campsites ahead, where food was scarce, and wrapped my medicine kit in extra insulation. I made an effort to catch up on the sleep I’d previously lost fitfully dozing under airport luggage counters while awaiting dawn flights. I consolidated supplies and containers to lighten my load from 80 pounds to around 70. (I’d left New York with 120.) I did my last wash of the trip (nothing will dry in the jungles), and I traveled six miles to find a cyber café to let my friends know that I missed them and wished them a Merry Christmas.

  I informed the taxi driver who brought me from the cyber café to my hotel that I had to go to the airport the next morning at 11:00 a.m. and asked him to come for me. He agreed. But he never showed up. Aware of TIA, I had, as backup, also told the receptionist that I might need the hotel’s van to take me to the airport, but when I saw her that morning she had forgotten, and the van was being washed in the Nile and would not return until afternoon. I knew that each of the twin South Sudan Hotels had its own van, so I asked for the other one. They told me it was “broken.” When I asked how it was broken, they said, “No gas.” I was unable to determine if that meant no gas in the vehicle, no gas in Juba, no gas in the whole country, or no gas between their ears.

  I raised my voice—just a bit—and told them I had to get to the airport. The receptionist, the assistant receptionist, the guard, and the manager huddled and conversed, but none of them had any idea how I could get to the airport. “Maybe you could wait until tomorrow?”

  “Do you have any guests checking out this morning?” I a
sked.

  Yes, they did.

  “Well, many of your guests came here in their own cars. There are a dozen in the parking lot. Why don’t you ask one of them if they would give me a ride to the airport?”

  They were stunned. Transfixed. Stupefied. They had never done this! Never even thought of it. And they could not absorb my suggestion.

  Just then a man in a business suit with a large suitcase checked out and headed for a car.

  “Excuse me, sir, but if you are going the airport, can you give me a lift?” I asked.

  No problem.

  I found the attitude of Air Uganda (“The Wings of East Africa”) refreshingly realistic and practical. No instructions on door dynamics to us passengers seated by the emergency exits. No preflight safety video. No announcement about what to do if our tired commuter jet crashed in the jungle en route from Juba to Kampala. And no stewardess standing in the aisle pulling life-vest toggles and blowing into inflation tubes, as if we might actually survive an “over-water emergency.” This four-year-old shoestring airline knew that if we were going down, we were going down. So the crew skipped all that useless salvation stuff.

  They did tell us to tighten our seat belts, but that was primarily meant to curtail traffic to the galley for free Tusker on a route where a majority of the passengers seemed determined to set a record for most cans of beer drunk during a one-hour flight, likely inspired by the Tusker billboard at the airport featuring a photo of a well-endowed babe in a bikini embracing the copy line: GOOD BODY GREAT HEAD NEVER BITTER.