Around the World in 50 Years
Page 37
Plan D was to join a group of bird-watchers on a once-a-year tour of “Angolan Endemics,” organized by a well-connected birding company in South Africa. This had serious drawbacks because the company did not guarantee I’d receive a visa, and my further inquiry disclosed that two of the four Americans who’d applied the year before had in fact not been granted visas. If I was declined, the birding company would keep $4,200 of my deposit, which I decided was too high a price to pay in view of the odds. Moreover, even if this stratagem did enable me to acquire a visa, I’d have to spend 18 days camped out with a bunch of bird nuts, which my previous experience with members of this species in New Guinea convinced me was an even higher price to pay. Dump D.
Plan E was to sponsor a child in Angola through a charity, and then arrange to visit him. Since I enjoyed my relationship with the kids I was supporting in Ethiopia and Uganda, this seemed like the perfect option. I contracted with SOS Children’s Village International to support a young boy in far eastern Angola. But when I later wrote to take SOS up on the offer set forth in their promotional literature, which said they’d gladly arrange for a donor to visit his child, they informed me—without any explanation or rationale—that their policy firmly prohibited them from sending me the letter of invitation I’d need to visit Angola. A bizarre policy and the end of Plan E.
After this year of frustrations and failures, Plan X materialized. It required the cooperation of three Angolan citizens, one Portuguese, and one expat in the Middle East, all of whom splendidly carried out their tasks. After a few fits and starts, and some correctable misunderstandings and delays, Plan X succeeded, and on November 27, 2012, exactly 50 years, two months, and 14 days after I had visited my first foreign country, my TAP Airbus 330 touched down at Angola’s Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, and I was able to visit my last.
I have pledged not to reveal how this was arranged or the names of those who assisted me, because it would get them in very hot water with the government. But if you apply some of what you’ve learned in the previous pages about dealings in Africa, you can probably figure it out. (Just keep it to yourself.)
From the touristic standpoint, Angola offered little. There were no breathtaking scenes of natural beauty, just miles of boring fields. The people wore dull Portuguese-style clothing instead of the exotic or brightly colored garments favored in so many other parts of Africa. The food was similarly bland. Most of the animals in the game parks had been killed during the long civil war. And most of the locals were so busy scrambling around in their oil-boom economy that they had little time to fraternize. Luanda was growing so rapidly that everything was under construction or reconstruction, resulting in an unscenic forest of cranes and so many torn-up streets clogged by so many new cars that the traffic jams were the worst and widest-spread I’d ever been caught in, often consuming 15 minutes to drive one block.
The prices were the world’s highest because the oil companies paid whatever was asked, with apartments renting for $4,000 to $20,000 a month. A miniscule room in a lowly motel cost at least $200 a night. A one-day round trip to a nature preserve socked you for $500. Wood carvings that sold for $20 elsewhere were priced at $200, and my souvenir shopping was hampered by the take-it-or-leave-it attitude that prevailed among the vendors, who refused to bargain. Fish and chips from a shack cost $25. Most offensive of all, when I asked for a little bag to take home my uneaten food, they charged me three dollars for it. For a doggie bag!
But none of this was of any personal consequence or diminished my feeling of fulfillment.
On 12/12/12, four days after completing my quest to visit every country on earth, I embarked on “life’s greatest adventure,” by marrying Nadezda Dukhina, a Russian writer and poet who was born twenty years after I had already finished my first expedition around the world. Michael Alden
On December 9, 2012, with my travel mission accomplished, I landed at JFK, where the glorious Nadezda was waiting for me with open arms. I mumbled a jet-lagged and embarrassingly inarticulate marriage proposal in the middle of the crowded terminal as tears welled into her lovely gray-blue eyes. She pressed her warm and welcoming body next to mine and assured me that—for reasons that to me remain inexplicable but wonderful—she loved this old dude with all her dear young heart and would be filled with joy to be my wife.
Three days later—on 12/12/12—we were married in City Hall and I embarked upon my last—and life’s greatest—adventure.
THE END
CHAPTER 30
… And One More for the Road
When people learn that I’ve visited every country on our big blue marble, they often ask me one of three questions:
Q. Which is my favorite country?
A. The United States of America. Not because I’m chauvinistic or xenophobic, but because I believe that we alone have it all, even if not all to perfection. The U.S. has the widest possible diversity of spectacular scenery and depth of natural resources; relatively clean air and water; a fascinatingly heterogeneous population living in relative harmony; safe streets; few deadly communicable diseases; a functioning democracy; a superlative Constitution; equal opportunity in most spheres of life; an increasing tolerance of different races, religions, and sexual preferences; equal justice under the law; a free and vibrant press; a world-class culture in books, films, theater, museums, dance, and popular music; the cuisines of every nation; an increasing attention to health and good diet; an abiding entrepreneurial spirit; and peace at home.
My favorite foreign countries are, for scenery: Switzerland, France, Canada, New Zealand, Peru, and Nepal. For food: Mexico, France, Italy, China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Lebanon. For the type of women I like: Belarus, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic. For tranquility combined with hospitality: Ireland, Burma, Bhutan, Morocco, and most Pacific Island nations. For cultural heritage: England, Egypt, India, Cambodia, France, Spain, Italy, and Mali. For unspoiled beauty: Mongolia, Dominica, Costa Rica, the Sahara, and Antarctica. And for wildlife: alas, only Kenya, Botswana, and Tanzania are left.
Me with the Huli Wigmen in the Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea. All their decorative feathers and cassowary nose quills come from indigenous birds that these so-called “ignorant” tribesmen have harvested for centuries in a sustainable manner.
Q. Of all you saw, what most concerns you?
A. Five developments:
1) The increasing evidence that global warming is a fact, and one about which not enough is being done.
2) The spread of a radical form of militant Islam through the Muslim world combined with its hatred toward others. And the increasingly violent schism between the Sunni and the Shia.
3) Schoolyards—in South Korea, Japan, India, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, and Switzerland. Schoolyards filled with kids who show, in their dress, deportment, attitude, and actions, that they (in contrast to American kids) take school and the education it offers seriously, and respect and value it as the surest path to advancement, a good future, and the opportunity to eat our lunch. I hope our new Core Curriculum will help correct this inbalance.
4) The increasing emergence and virulent nature of epizootic diseases, those that originate in birds and animals but infect humans as they push into the jungles in search of land and bush-meat protein. I am especially worried about those high-morbidity, quick-killing, fast-spreading new viral hemorrhagic fevers—Ebola, Marburg, Machupo, Nipah, and Lassa—all emerging from the forests in recent decades. These are diseases against which humans have no natural immunity, no tested and reliable vaccines or approved medicines, and no adequate public-health systems, enabling them to spread around the world with the speed of a jetliner and potentially devastate the planet with the worst pandemic since the black plague.
5) A band of hard-charging competitors—Asian tigers, African lions, and South American jaguars—increasingly becoming able to dine on our dinner. They have gleaming, efficient 21st-century infrastructure; abundant supplies of, or access to, raw mate
rials; and, above all, citizens who are willing to work diligently, despite lower wages, to have a better and eventually more prosperous life for themselves and their children. If the work ethic I observed in the Western world continues to weaken, and we remain corpulent and complacent, we are history. Ancient history.
The third question most often asked is: What do I wish had been different on these journeys? And my answer is always the same: Nothing.
I believe you have to take troubles, misfortune, adventures, disruptions, disasters—whatever you choose to call them—as life throws them at you, make the best of them, and, if possible, try to use the accidentally cracked eggs to make a nourishing omelet or a piece of abstract art.
I certainly would have been safer and more comfortable and have fewer gray hairs if many events had not transpired: if Murphy had not visited Kiribati and wrecked my plane connections, if I’d not been nearly lynched in East Pakistan, almost drowned in Costa Rica, detained by the police in Kinshasa and Hargeisa, jailed in Baghdad (for which tale, as for a hundred other adventures, there was no room in this book), attacked by the flying crabs in Algeria, broken my ribs and ripped flesh and torn rotator cuffs in many lands, and if I’d managed to avert or avoid all the other incidents, accidents, breakdowns, and derailments described herein.
But, to accentuate the positive, each of these events provided me with new coping skills, prepared me for the next rock or wreck on the road, and increased my confidence that I’d be able to extricate myself from almost any dangerous situation, to endure and survive, and gave me—I hope you agree—some great stories to recount.
Okay, to be totally honest, I would have enjoyed this quest far more if we had not crashed into the pig in Botswana, if I’d not been compelled to eat that poor monkey’s brain in Hong Kong, if Steve had not been stricken with cancer, if that college girl in Malawi had not turned me down so effortlessly, if I’d made out better on my final visit to Oz, if …
Yet, at the end of the day, I was able to play the cards the world dealt me and survive to 196. Who else can say that?
COUNTRIES VISITED
In Chronogical Order
1937
United States of America
1962
Canada
1963
Spain, France
1965
Andorra, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia
1966
Japan, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
1972
Great Britain / Dominican Republic
1977
Switzerland
1978
Monaco, Italy, Vatican City
1979
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Austria, Cyprus, Greece
1981
Israel, Australia, New Zealand
1982
Jamaica
1983
Brazil
1984
Antigua
1985
Bahamas
1986
China
1987
Ireland, Peru
1988
Egypt
1989
Kenya, Tanzania, Barbados, Ecuador
1990
Venezuela
1994
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Finland
1998
Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines
1999
Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia
2000
Belize, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Cape Verde Islands
2001
Poland, Slovenia, Croatia
2002
Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti
2003
Togo, Benin, Ghana, Turkey, Iceland, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Sao Tome & Principe, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan
2004
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, San Marino
2005
Malta, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar
2006
Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea (Conakry), Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan
2007
Maldives, Sri Lanka, Fiji, New Guinea, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Palau, Vanuatu, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Tonga, Western Samoa
2008
Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria
2009
Colombia, Haiti, Cuba, Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Kitts & Nevis, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo
2010
Kiribati, North Korea, Mongolia, Brunei, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma (Myanmar), Vietnam
2011
East Timor, Nauru, Kosovo, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Yemen
2012
Chad, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola
2014
Revisit Yemen and Equatorial Guinea legally
COUNTRIES VISITED THAT NO LONGER EXIST
Czechoslovakia, East Pakistan, East Germany, South Vietnam, USSR, United Arab Republic, Yugoslavia
TERRITORY: SELF-GOVERNING
Aruba, Curaçao, French Guyana, Guadalupe, Martinique, St. Maarten, Saba
TERRITORY: NON-SELF-GOVERNING
American Samoa, Anguilla, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guam, Hong Kong, Macao, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands
I GRATEFULLY THANK
Peter Joseph, my wise, careful, perceptive, knowledgeable, skillful, and patient editor at St. Martin’s, who vastly improved my book. While I wrecked his digestion.
Tony Outhwaite, the most positive, passionate, informed, savvy, supportive, and devoted agent any writer could have, for making my dream a reality.
Wolfenden, publishers of the paperback edition of Who Needs a Road?, for keeping it in print for more than 48 years after its first publication and for permitting me to use material from it for chapters 2 to 7 of this book.
Nan Prener, for her praise of my dispatches from the field, for her early enthusiasm for my doing a book, and for later thrice proofreading the entire manuscript, recommending many constructive changes, and catching many foolish mistakes.
Rick Guimond, my faithful secretary for 30 years, who input my hundreds of corrections and edits on sixteen drafts of the manuscript.
Polly Whittell, for recommending Tony, and for convincing me to cut certain parts of the book that were, believe it or not, far more offensive than those I retained. And the others who helped me search for an enthusiastic agent and a top publisher: Peter Finn, Steve Zimmerman, Harry Petchesky, Larry Sutter, Neil Goldstein, Beverly Hyman, Larry Birnbach, David Hahn, Keven Danow, and Andrew van den Houten.
Harold Stephens, for inspiring me with a love of travel and adventure, for first getting me on the foreign road, for urging me to write this book, and for encouraging me to complete it.
Bob Prener, PhD, and Larry Sutter, J.D., the former for his scientific sagacity, the latter for his lawyerly logic.
David Smith, for a decade of giving me excellent advice on obscure airlines, arcane geography, little-known routes, and potential political problems and dangers along the way.
Professor Jon Surgl, for his painstaking ten-day review and correction of my 13th draft, which almost wrecked our friendship, but vastly improved the manuscript.
Nina Wehner Vitali, without whose vast network of helpful UN connections, I never would have reached 196.
Professor Jose Alvarez of NYU School of Law, for reading and correcting the chapter on what constitutes a country.
Sandy Krinski, one of the best TV sitcom w
riters, for improving my word usage and polishing my humor.
Melanie Fried, for skillfully organizing and comptently taking care of, a hundred details, from page proofs to photographs.
Paulette Cooper, author of 20 books, for taking time away from Was Elvis Jewish? to send me nine single-spaced pages of constructive criticism.
Dr. Todd Linden—for all the vaccinations, prescriptions, admonitions, and treatments that kept me on the road.
Keith Schwabinger, for devoting more than 100 hours to check and correct the facts.
Ira and Sandy Teller for reading my awful first draft and making sound suggestions short of suicide.
All the stalwarts who diligently plowed through drafts 7 to 12 and sent me comments and corrections: Jane Santoro, Stephanie Braxton, Peter Heinlein, John Crowther, Larry Sutter, Keven Danow, Claus Hirsch, Treva Silverman, Miha Loha, Jane Bieger, Chuck Hunt, David Smith, Betsy Brown, Nadezda Dukhina, Sylvia Law, Jeannie Forrest, Don Dunn, Sandy Krinski, and Treva Silverman.
Isaac Simon of UBS and Daryl Weber of Wells Fargo, outstanding investment advisers, for giving me several solid stock recommendations that enabled me to afford these travels.
Those nationals and expats who read and corrected the chapter on their countries:
Australia—Jane Bieger: inveterate traveler, writer, owner of The Rock Shop in Brisbane.
Chad—Karen and Carl Anonymous.
China—Alex Miller: teacher, social media entrepreneur, and husband of Yan.