I’m in Healthrow airport in London, on the last bar of my battery power – both literally and figuratively. I’m on my way home at the tail end of a long Africa trip. For the sake of amusement, with a 9-hour layover, I’m sitting here crunching some numbers from this trip.
In all, by my count, I’ve been traveling for 81 strait days now. In that time I’ve had one day off with no work, 7 in hotels writing or on the road traveling all day, and 73 days of in the field work – out shooting photos. I’ve ridden in public buses, private planes, and one matatu in Kenya – a suicidal experience of public transport. Since June 29 I’ve shot, by estimate, more than 30,000 photos, and written captions for about 4,000 of those. I’ve recorded 7 1/2 hours of video tape, and written 45 stories, blogs, or interview write-ups. I’ve been to or through 7 countries – South Africa, three times, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Uganda, Kenya, twice, and Tanzania.
In the last 81 days I’ve seen an elephant shot on a hunt in Zimbabwe, had a hairy landing in a tiny Cessna on a wind-blown airfield in Mozambique and gotten sick three times – including now, in just my last two days of traveling. I spent a day with CDC staff tracking potential outbreaks in the slums of Nairobi, and saw drought withering eastern Kenya and southern Tanzania. I saw a one year old girl on Tuesday who weighs 7 pounds, a victim of malnutrition in Kenya’s drought-plagued east, and I spoke with women who walk as far as 16 miles a day to fetch water, which they carry home, on their back, each and every day of their lives.
I turned 39 – and figured out that I spent every single one of my 30-something birthdays overseas. On the way to the airport in Nairobi last night I saw a man get hit by a matatu –(he ran off, apparently fine), and have seen about 500 almost-accidents. I went to a dinner party at an old friend’s house in Kenya, where one of the guests spent the evening on the phone coordinating the drop off of ransom money for Somali pirates – apparently a family business of his, as his father was arrested and spent a few days in a Somalia jail a few days later, I was told. In the first four weeks of this trip I lost 6 pounds. In the last 53 days I gained all 6 back plus one.. I stayed in five star hotels 30 yards from the Indian Ocean, and I stayed in $14 a night hotels with no electricity, and lots of mosquitoes. I bought 6 pounds worth of gifts, if the scale at Jomo Kenyatta Airport is accurate, and logged, by estimated count, 24 flights with five different carriers, and one private Cessna.
And I remembered, amid all of that, how much I miss my life overseas, and how difficult it can be at times to return home to the suburbs of Baltimore, where almost no one outside my family and immediate friends knows I’ve even been away this summer. I don’t mean that in a ‘poor me’ sort of way. I suppose it’s just difficult to get even your head around it sometimes – the gap that exists between the lives you lead when you do this kind of work.
September 18th, 2009 | by David in Travel | 1 Comment
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
February 4th, 2010 at 1:20 am
That was a different thought track. I like your finesse that you put into your writing . Please do continue with more similar to this.