Like A Moth to a Flame

[aggienaut]

   In which our protagonist embarks on another adventure, from which he will not return unscathed, but several plot arcs that will echo ever more significantly in the following years are set into motion

June 26th, 2014 - The aircraft gently jolts into motion, which sensation is mainly transmitted from the seat in front of me through my knees, jammed against it. I peer out the window as the gate pulls away, and wonder why I can't shake this strong feeling I've forgotten something. I had packed for a year in Australia the morning-of, but for some reason for this, a month in the West African country of Guinea, I've had this anxiety for the past week that I'd forget something important. Usually the realization of the forgotten item hits around the time I pull onto the freeway. Sometimes it takes until we are pulling in to the airport. But this time it’s far overdue and it’s freaking me out.
   The crinkling noise of the guy in orange bermuda shorts next to me unfolding a newspaper draws my attention from the window. Wall Street Journal. Headline: "Bomb Blast in Abuja." Big picture front and center of carnage. I peer at the picture trying to see if I recognized any buildings in it. That's where I'd normally be headed!! I think to myself, easily picturing the hot chaotic atmosphere of Abuja. This seems very ominous.
   But I’m not headed to Nigeria this time, I’m headed to the country of Guinea on the western bulge of Africa. This time the danger isn’t religious fanatics with guns and explosives, but deadly unstoppable microbes.

   Several months earlier, a two year old boy named Emile playfully entered a hollow tree in the forests of a southern province of Guinea. Deforestation had driven fruit bats from a different area into this hollow tree, and it seems they carried the Ebola virus. The boy soon died, followed by his immediate family, followed by most of his village, in a rapidly expanding wave of death. Ebola is highly contagious and at the time resulted in horrible death within 21 days for about 80% of those infected. This project had already been postponed on account of the disease, but upon realizing it wasn’t about to blow over they decided to just go ahead with it.

   As the flight accelerates down the runway I ponder why I feel so anxious. It's not like I could be unprepared, I've done five of these projects already. The guy next to me's body odor intrudes upon my thoughts and I lean closer to the window. Tiny houses go by far down below, and cars like toys. We soar up over Saddleback Mountain and leave Orange County behind. Just over our small little mountain from Orange County lies rugged landscape akin to the planet of Tatooine. As I hungrily devour the tiny bag of little pretzels that pass for a meal now (because lord knows there's no meal that falls between 8am and 3pm) I gaze out at the barren landscape below and try to make out Jabba's Palace or perhaps a tuskan raider village, but all I see is a windfarm. I try punching some buttons on the screen in the seat in front of me and find it would cost at least $6 to watch anything, and I'd have to pay for headphones too. I read my book (Insect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World).



   Boarding my transatlantic flight I narrow my eyes at the entitled bastards in first class as I make my way to my seat, a middle seat in a middle row, ugh. But as they dim the lights and begin backing away from the gate, hark are the angels singing, a mysterious light shining from above upon the seats on either side of me that flying cherubs are indicating are vacant?? I turn off the overhead lights lest everyone be disturbed and the flight attendants chase the cherubs away to prepare for takeoff.
   Hurtling through the night is much more comfortably now that I’m not on a US airline. A little complimentary bottle of mediocre wine comes by, and there’s food, and free headphones and free movies. But I’m still strangely anxious. Still haven't thought of anything I've forgotten, which is unsettling. As I watch The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which is about travel and being adventurous, I start to ponder more existential hypotheses -- what if I just felt guilty because I need this project as much as the people being trained? Since returning from Turkey ten months ago it’s just been back to the same old job at “the bee mines,” and the one exciting other job prospect I had had, had hired all four other finalist candidates leaving me wondering what was wrong with me and if I'd ever manage to get a better job.
   Or maybe I just feel anxious about taking so much time off work during the busy season? ...but then again, my boss hadn't even asked when I'd return. "When I was your age," he'd regaled us at work the other day, "I was chasing bees all over the world."

   Many hours later, I’m boarding my final flight from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to Conakry, many brightly robed Africans and I jostle towards the gate in not-quite-a-line. The flight attendant scans my ticket on a machine, which flashes a red light and makes an angry buzz-alert noise. Oh no! The flight attendant frowns at the ticket and punches its number into her computer. Now the machine makes a short peppy R2-D2 noise and dispenses a new ticket for me – I’ve been upgraded to first class!
   I settle into the fully reclining armchair seat and narrow my eyes at the mere mortals shuffling by to the purgatory of coach class. pah, commoners! Once in the air the flight attendant comes by with a towel over his arm, pouring us champagne, a four course meal for lunch involving foie gras (which I dislike but acknowledge that it’s fancy), scallops, and creme brulee, among other things. I doze away like a happy otter, not wanting this supremely comfortable flight to ever end!




   By and by we begin to descend, and Guinea materializes as a landscape seemingly devoid of human development, a maze of curving rivers and damp looking foliage. And this just outside the capitol. There are nearly no buildings in sight, at least out my port-side window, until immediately prior to landing.
   While deplaning I get to talking to a woman from Doctors Without Borders who is here to help fight “the worst ebola outbreak in history,” as she describes it. “It’s completely out of control!” she adds confidentially. Hmmm well great.

   Outside the terminal it's hot and humid, and there are the usual throngs of pushy porters trying to help me (for a fee) and taxi drivers insistent on taking me whereever I needed to go, but I’ve been through this before and plow through the crowd to the two staffmembers from The Organization (identifiable by their hats), a young man and young woman, and load my things into the Organization's landcruiser.
   Conakry seems more like a large village or expansive town than a city. Previous African capitols I've been in (Abuja, Addis Ababa) are at least characterized by paved streets and big buildings, but across the street from the airport there are houses with corrugated metal roofs, and dirt roads with streams of filthy water running through them. Not quite shantytown, more "functional squalor." The Lonely Planet guidebook describes Conakry as "smelling nausious" in general but the misty rain must have been dampening that effect. We wend our way around throngs of children playing soccer. World Cup fever is in full swing.



   Total travel time: 28 hours. Hotel is decent: the AC works, the power hardly ever goes out, and the internet usually works, what more can one ask for? I’ve been provided $414 for the expected up-country expenses, which comes out to 2.8 million guinean francs. I’m a millionaire! But the largest note they have is the 10,000 franc note, worth about $1.48, so I feel more like a druglord with these cumbersome bricks of bills rubber-banded together. And the room doesn't have a safe! I’m carrying a fortune by local standards but there’s no safe! But my gimlet eye alights on a pertinent oddity – there’s no safe, but there’s a lock on the room mini-fridge, with a key in it. So I place my cold hard cash as well as my laptop in the fridge and lock it before trotting down the street for Turkish food.
   Merhaba, merhaba.
   Returning to my room I take my laptop out of the fridge and turn it on. Rather to my surprise my laptop bursts into tears over the indignity of having been stored in the fridge. I realize I had forgotten some basic physics, a cold laptop in an atmosphere at near 100% humidity immediately begins gathering copious amounts of condensation. Fat droplets of water roll down its sleek black sides like tears. Fearing it will fry itself I quickly shut it down and unplug the fridge so it can’t make my computer cry again.



   I have a few days in the capital. Pounding rain alternates with steaming sunshine, kids kick soccer balls around on streets potholed with mouldering puddles. I meet another volunteer just finishing a project, as he stumbles back into the hotel after being held by the military/police (gendarmes) for a few hours because he’d taken a picture of the statue in front of the military barracks down the street, and he was only released after he gave in and bribed them $50 to release him. He soon departs to head back home, but I also meet another volunteer who is going up-country at the same time I am, Edie, an older woman who does business development.
   Graphs of ebola deaths keep rising. Ebola is here in the capital but not out in the country where I’m going, which lends a feeling of particular urgency to escape the fetid capital. Finally on Tuesday morning The Organization’s car arrives. They have a new driver, they explain, because the previous driver died on Saturday.

---

Every time I post one of these journey-to sections I think about favorite author Paul Theroux saying somewhere one should never write about the flight to somewhere because flights are boring and no one wants to read about them; but far be it for me to think I know better than him I think it gives more of a sense of the distance journeyed to get tehre than if protagonist just voila is there, and as long as you can fill it with useful emotional insights (in this case a sense of anxiety, and the arc of flights getting more comfortable the further from origin before plunging into the squalid local city, which I like to think conveys a sense of the protagonist's love of travel)

Comments

[tonithegreat]

Oh my! A fraught path indeed.

[aggienaut]

Foreshadowing: I don't get out of there unscathed ;)

[tamara_in_jakarta]

I was working this outbreak and what kept running through my mind the whole time was "They just went ahead with the project anyway???"

[aggienaut]

Yeah generally I think the organization that sent me there (Winrock International) is great and seems to care about its staff and volunteers a lot more than some, but I can't help but cynically laugh about how they had at first postponed the project hoping I guess it would blow over and then sent me as it was ever worsening, and as noted even at the time being described as "completely out of control."

Were you based in the area at the time??

[tamara_in_jakarta]

Started in Conakry but by November was in Freetown in Sierra Leone.

[aggienaut]

When did you start in Conakry? You weren't there when I was were you??

Conakry is ... some place isn't it. ahaha. Though I haven't been to Freetown to compare.

[tamara_in_jakarta]

Conakry was from mid August 2014

[aggienaut]

Dang I departed July 15th 2014, just missed you!

Did you post any livejournal entries about being there that are still up and accessible or anything? Would love to hear about your experiences there.

[tamara_in_jakarta]

I have notes and pictures from the time but didn't post a lot, first for security reasons, but second because it was just another Ebola outbreak with the added mess of a bunch of technical experts thinking this was still like the rest, where geography would help to contain it, and not the bubbling chaos of travel across porous borders that meant something only to colonial mapmakers.

[aggienaut]

Well I hope you'll keep it in mind maybe for future LJI topics because I'd love to read about your experiences in that circumstance. (:

[muchtooarrogant]

I like the little touches of humor you sprinkle throughout this story. "Fearing it will fry itself I quickly shut it down and unplug the fridge so it can’t make my computer cry again." Although you've flown into a very grim situation, the humor helps keep the story from being too oppressive.

Dan

[aggienaut]

Thanks! One of my self criticisms with earlier sections (this is part of an ongoing memoir project) was that I felt like Ii hadn't succeeded in getting much humor in. I suppose maybe humor actually naturally pairs better with an otherwise somewhat more tense tone?

Also I worked "cold hard cash" in but have thus far resisted making a reference to my cool computer or some aspect of it being chill ahahaha.

[roina_arwen]

I always enjoy reading about your travels. I've been many places but Africa isn't one of them.

[fausts_dream]

If I am gut wrenchingly honest, I haven't always read every word of all of your entries, especially in past seasons. I have even thought to myself, "I should get three hours college credit for this" because you are always teaching me something I don't know.

This season, my perspective is a little different and you seem "warmer" and more fun than before, to add to your fascinating facts.

This entry is great (and I read every word).

[aggienaut]

Hahaha thanks for being honest. That's an interesting observation. It's funny, my first season of Idol way back in the dark ages (2008!), there was some dramas mid season (for which I was wholly innocent, I swear!) and at least one person commented somewhere they didn't think I'd see that "I knew that guy would be trouble" (maybe it didn't help that I think I often used this troll icon). The next season I was also banned from finishing for new reasons and possibly one other season? ;) But 16 years have passed (!) and maybe I'm learning to be warmer and fuzzier (:

Or maybe its the constant writing practice of being absolutely constantly steeped in writing now. And/or very specifically one philosophy-of-writing thing I've thought about recently is how any kind of writing, be it travelogue or an explanation of a scientific concept should have emotion to it, rather than just lining up the adequate words on the page to explain what's going on.

Anyway, I appreciate your comment it made me introspective, and any comment that can make the reader introspective is a good one (:

[murielle]

Perhaps flights were boring to Theroux, but they're not boring to me.

Love this! I would never have thought of using the fridge for a safe. Smart! 😃

[halfshellvenus]

I would be feeling anxious if I were heading into an Ebola outbreak! I don't think that can ever be very far from your mind.

so I feel more like a druglord with these cumbersome bricks of bills rubber-banded together.
Hahahaha! I think you put the fridge to good use, though, considering it had a lock. :D

[rayaso]

Ebola is one of the deadliest viruses, so why not send our employee into a hot zone? As usual, I loved this. You mix travel, humor, and bees and come up with your own special brand of honey.

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