Friday, January 30, 2009

The oldies but the goodies

Apparently, there are some stories from my travels that I tell often, due to the peculiarity of events that unfolded, the bizarreness of the situation I found myself in and the insights into the strength and resilience or alternatively the generosity and kindness of people I have met.

I will try to write some of these stories down for posterity.

In no particular order these might include:
  1. The major animal stories of Africa in 1999 featuring zebras, breakfast-stealing baboons, elephants and macaques
  2. Leaving a trail of disaster in my wake while traveling in 1999
  3. The little girl who carried her malnourished baby brother up a hill for 5 hours to reach the clinic in Nepal and then brought him back 1 week later for review
  4. My final walk out from Rukumkot, covered in marigolds and tikka powder, accompanying a seriously ill patient in a thunder storm, hobbling on 2 sticks
  5. My first week in Nigeria contending with a plane crash, a bus crash and a shooting, including many sleepless nights and a helicopter retrieval
  6. Culinary experiences in Vietnam, including silk worms, scorpions, mini-fish on a boat off Phu Quoc, chicken feet and chicken tongues
  7. Humiliations at Erez crossing into Gaza
  8. Carpet buying and a ring in Jerusalem
  9. Burns, hormones, stones and dying in Nepal
  10. Goat head soup
  11. MoPol clearing the road in Nigeria by waving a bazooka
  12. Buying petrol in Gaza
  13. Checkpoints, suicides and trauma in Sri Lanka
There are more and I may well just copy/paste bits of old emails into this forum just because I have already written them....