Getting Ready for Africa Trip

Africa » Mali » North-West » Timbuktu
June 18th 2006

Published: June 18th 2006

Since I got busy with my startup company, there have been few postings on my blog. So we start again.

As you may know, I am busy not only with my TIP-LS company in partnership with Richard, I am also working on getting ready for my trip to West Africa coming up on July 1st. While most travelers would be busy with purchasing and packing, I ended up busy with something else. I took a series of 8 vaccinations including Yellow Fever, Typhoid and Hep A. I also got busy getting my visas in order.

Ghana requires a visa, for which applied and things went without a hitch. Mali requires a visa, when I filled out the form, I noticed that my passport has no more visa page left. Guess I have been traveling too much. Still two years left to go on the current passport. So before sending in the app to Mali Embassy, I had to send my passport to the US passport office for "visa extension pages". I sent this on May 22nd. I was meticulous in filling out the forms, attaching photographs and getting everything spotlessly correct. I sent it via overnight express, FedEx and enclosed a return FedEx envelope. I thought I was "expediting" the issuance of new visa extension pages. I forgot all about it.

Last tuesday June 13th, I suddenly remembered that my passport was still out and I was running out of time to apply for Mali visa. So I looked up the FedEx on the website. They have a nice tracking system. I punched in my package code and they informed me that it had been delivered on May 23. So far so good. So what is taking the passport office so long? I found a number to call at the passport office website for passport status inquiry. But the number has an extensive phone menu tree and I could not find a menu that matched my needs. I tried all the numbers at random. In each case, I was placed on a queue with periodic announcements. After 10 or 12 minutes, the phone call would get dropped. I'd start over again.

Come wednesday, I tried another approach. I drove to Chandler, (next town) and walked into the local passport office. The kind woman, pulled out an information sheet and gave me a number to call for Passport Office. Upon comparing, I found it was the same number that I had called on Tuesday. I told her that I had tried the number and not succeeded. She asked me to call and not punch any code numbers. They then presume you do not have a touch tone phone and an operator answers you. After reaching home, with a Starbucks coffee in hand, I tried that trick. With only a 7 minutes wait, it worked.

The woman answering the phone promptly requested my name, phone number, street address and date I had sent the passport. She repeated that it would take anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks since I had not "paid for" expedited processing. I was puzzled. But I did not want her to hang up. So I kept her talking while I was thinking of a question to ask. So with a lot of patience and thankfulness for her kindness I asked her to lookup the actual state of my passport processing. She did. Miracle! She said that the processing was completed and the passport had been mailed to me already. What a relief. I asked her to give me the date of mailing. Second miracle, it was Tuesday. So I mentally calculated that the passport would arrive on Thursday.

On Thursday around 2pm, the FedEx truck pulled up and the package arrived. Inside was the passport with 24 extension pages attached. Double relief.

On Thursday evening, I called the Embassy du Mali (remember Mali is a former French colony). The phone greeting said the office was closed. It was barely 5pm in Washington, 2pm in Arizona. I punched Code 3 to reach the "visa section". A man answered. He answered my question with clarity: If you send the passport, two copies of application, if everything is in order, we can send it back to you in a week. I let that rest for the evening, as I had work to do with Richard.

On Friday, I called the Embassy du Mali again and asked a different question. If I was in Accra, Ghana, could I just walk in to the Embassy du Mali there and get the visa issued without waiting and postal risk. He said yes. He in fact said that was a better option.

So here I am with passport in hand and a clear sense of how to proceed to Mali. Each time I make an important journey, there is always something that occurs that provokes anxiety. As I have grown accustomed to this pattern, I don't let myself panic, but just swing into action. I am glad I was given some anxiety and that I acted on that. All is well that ends well wrote Shakespeare. He appears to have been right.

Another travel story. One of the other ways I have prepared for this trip is to set up a Google Alert for Ghana, Mali and Senegal. This gives me daily update of news stories from those areas. The news alerts of Ghana are mostly about Soccer and the ongoing World Cup Series. Here in the US, this is hardly noticed. But for most of the world, this is the biggest ongoing news story. Ghana played Czechoslovakia and local boys are all over the news. But the stories from Mali are quite different.

Mali is a landlocked country, lying just north of Ghana and Burkina Faso and to the east of Senegal. The southern half of Mali is semi-desert, that is called Sehel over there. After crossing the river Niger (with a broad delta which turns south and crosses into Nigeria), if you go further north, you can reach Timbuktu. There is nothing there in Timbuktu to see or to do - it is just part of our cultural idiom of "from here to Timbuktu". I just wanted to go to Timbuktu. North from Timbuktu, a traveler would enter into the Sahara. Sahara is arid and filled with sand dunes. Difficult to cross east-west, its expanse is thousand miles or more. But car rallies including the famous Paris-Dakar rally routinely have people cross the Sahara from North to South. I even had fantasy that I might reach the southern edge of Sahara and perhaps see the bright stars above the desert sands at night on a moonless night. (Consult you calendar to find out where it is New Moon in July).

One of the news alerts told me a very sad story. The steel-blue skinned desert nomads (who still trek the desert on camelbacks and camp at oases) are known as the tribe of the Tuaregs. In the US we have a Japanese carmaker who makes a 4WD vehicle and has named it Tuareg. It is supposed to make us think of a camel that can cross the desert and hardly need any fuel stop or watering hole.

Well, the Tuareg's have remained so very poor and not a trace of advancement is visible to them. So the Malinese Tuaregs have acquired a small militia, bought themselves arms and ammunition and have started a series of raids into the towns that border the Sahara and Sehel. The proper government of Mali has invited the Tuaregs for talks and negotiations at the same time issuing threatening warnings and amassing police and military forces. The Tuaregs do not trust the govt officials and have not come to the discussion table.

The news item informed me of two things. That Algeria has agreed.
to negotiate a peace between the two parties. The second news item is that the US State Department has "discovered" that the Tuaregs are really mercenaries of Al Qaeda and the Sehel/Sahara is the newest breeding ground for terrorists. So over 120 special forces of the US military have been dispathced to northern Mali. On any given day, a plane lands, 20 or more special forces (men and women) arrive. The special forces are here with one purpose. To give the Tuareg terrorist camps strong notice to stop their training of terrorists. They also claim no understanding or knowledge of the conditions of the Tuaregs and want to deal with force a situation that might be better to be treated with "gentle, gentlier, gentliest". The special forces also do not relate to the general population of Timbuktu - they come home from the day of sorties, collect at the local "americaine" bar and drink and play among their buddies.

Now reading all this, I faced a dilemma. One part of me began overflowing with compassion for the Tuarges. I had met many Tuaregs at the Northern edge of the Sahara on my last trip to Morocco. I loved their tall stature, their indigo blue head and face scarves, their commanding perch atop their camels and their friendliness towards me - another fellow who only spoke only broken French. On the other hand, I also sensed that being in Timbuktu as a US citizen but a civilian might pose some risk. Hamlet might utter in my situation: "To go or not to go, that is the question".

So I thought about this dilemma. Finally I came to the resolution in the following way. I decided that if I canceled my trip I would be succumbing my sensed fear. Yet I had to go and not judge and not take sides.

So my spiritual practice is called upon to assist me all over again. What this means is that just like Krishna called upon Arjuna to do his duty in great calmness, with resolute determination, to act and to act swiftly, I am being exhorted to do what I had set out to do. Yes, I did not like the soldiers for what they do.

So I am determined to go there and to hold myself in great equanimity - regardless who I am sitting or standing next to.

Do drop in on this blog and share your thoughts with me.

Getting Ready for Africa Trip

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