My old job

[onlymark]

I was trying to think of something smart to say about this but couldn't come up with anything, so I thought I'd just stick this and the following up over the next period of time (might take awhile) for you to have a read of during those coffee break times with your feet on the desk.
It's various episodes in my oh so distant previous life in the tourist industry.
Many know already what I did for many years, if you don't then I've obviously not mentioned it enough and played on it over the years.
In essence it involved taking a truck full of people on journeys around Africa, parts of the Middle East and Asia.

If you've read some/all of this before I apologise for the repetition.

Anyway, to make a start -

This was supplied to all potential Expedition Leaders before their
application to the company I worked for.

PROJECT LEADER/DRIVER JOB DESCRIPTION
LEADERSHIP – You may find yourself leading multi-national groups for
months on end, many of whom you may not like, but nonetheless require the
same level of attention as the others. You will be RESPONSIBLE for their
safety and well being in sometimes difficult and potentially dangerous
situations. You will be on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, often for months
on end.

LANGUAGE – The working language of all our projects is English, therefore
a STRONG command both spoken and written is essential. Spanish and
French are obvious assets but not essential.

DRIVING SKILLS – The very nature of the majority of our projects dictate a
considerable amount of driving – therefore you must enjoy driving. The safety
and comfort of our clients must be your priority at all times and the standard
required is for the applicant to obtain a British PCV (Passenger Carrying Vehicle – i.e. Bus/Coach) licence.
It is not necessary to hold this licence at present; however were you to be offered and accept a position with us, this would be conditional to your passing the test if you are not already a holder of the licence.
You will be expected to drive on some of the toughest/worst road conditions in the world.

VEHICLE & EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE – You will be responsible for
the maintenance and repair of our expedition vehicles whilst deployed
overseas. Utilising your initiative, common sense and resourcefulness often
resorting to “Bush mechanics” but still maintaining a high safety standard. You
are responsible for all of the company’s equipment repair maintenance etc.

ADMIN SKILLS – You will be responsible for the Accounting of Expedition
funds, regular routine reports of trip progress and various other associated
paperwork.

TRAINING – This takes place, on all aspects of expeditioning, in the UK and
lasts approx. 6 months, during which you will be based in our UK workshops
and expected to live on company premises. Some distinct mechanical aptitude
is necessary, however this does not mean you have to be a qualified mechanic.
You will learn about our vehicles and equipment from “hands on” experience
assisting in their overhaul/refurbishment, and also being involved in the
construction of new vehicles.
Following this period in the UK you will then be deployed overseas on a
“training trip” in the continent we feel you most suited to. On satisfactory
completion of your training trip, you will then be expected to lead solo
expeditions.

COMMITMENT – Due to the nature of the company’s projects, the Nomadic
lifestyle of the Leader allows for no home ties. Therefore you must be single
and unattached. Throughout the minimum 3-year commitment period you must
be available for deployment to any destination at any time.

If your reason for working for this company is financial reward, or for the
belief that we will “pay you to travel”, then I suggest you go no further. Rather that you wish to share our adventures, meet the challenges and give others the opportunity to visit those parts of the world that we are privileged to see.
Finally, remember that this “job” is about people. So consider the following ;
Are you :- Racist, Sexist, Ageist, Xenophobic?
If an honest answer is yes, then I suggest that you think again.

[onlymark]

This typical journey would take us by road from the Kathmandu valley in Nepal all the way to London (apart from the ferry between Belgium and England). It was to take us eleven weeks and cross through or into twelve countries. Who were we? We were an assortment of sixteen travellers of different nationalities brought together and led by myself. We had a large truck to carry our kit and ourselves with a trailer behind for the luggage.

Why were we doing this? Well on my part it was my job. I was working for a British company who ran adventure travel trips throughout Africa, Asia and South America.
Apart from rafting and trekking the majority were overland journeys round, through and in the three continents. You could start one Saturday from London and continue through Europe to North Africa, through central Africa and down to the south. Or upon reaching Kenya, turn north to Egypt.

You could then continue through the Middle East into Asia, to Nepal or in fact all the way to Saigon.
It took a minimum of forty-two weeks to travel London to Saigon and to add to the excitement there was always the option of doing it in the reverse direction.

This was my job and my life. I had to be “at work” all day, every day for months on end, and I mean 24 hours a day. From breakfast, driving, maintenance, organisation, communication, breakdowns, border crossings, accounts, route planning, time management and so on. That was without any
group members.

When there was then I was also a mediator, a psychologist, psychiatrist, a font of all knowledge (though not always), a driver (I know I mentioned it before but I did a lot of driving), a doctor, a nurse, a shoulder to lean on, a sympathetic listener, a marriage guidance counsellor, an entertainer, know about cooking, cleaning, sewing, repairing, a photographer, a game tracker, a guard, sociologist, behavioural scientist, could pinpoint exactly where you could change money and at what rate, where the best ice cream was (I knew this one by heart having a weakness for the stuff), where to get water and food and be able to impart this knowledge at the drop of a hat any time day or night.

I lost track of the times I was woken up by someone needing assurance or help because they were a little off colour or had heard a noise around the camp. The point was though that it was one of the best and most rewarding jobs in the world. I was to get the group from start to finish with the
minimum of fuss and effort in the safest and most enjoyable way.

The people made it though. Not only the group members but the local officials and inhabitants of wherever we were. I hope to share with you some of these experiences, stories and the adventures I had over the time I was in Africa and Asia with different groups on different journeys. The thing that set me off with these stories was that after a time each new group would seem to ask some of the same questions. This group was one I was with when I had an experience of a truck being forced off the road. This led me to be surrounded by angry tribesmen, a story to come later.

They were a regular group, there were no eccentric characters and other than that incident, nothing went terribly wrong or out of the ordinary, or as ordinary as a journey between Nepal and London can be. But there was one man, called Anthony, who I realised, wanted to change career and was
fascinated by my job. This prompted many questions, usually in an evening while we and the group were relaxing around the campfire. The question usually went along the lines of, “What was the worst/best/hottest/dirtiest/strange/stupidest etc etc.”
As a result I would end up telling a different story each night. Hence each of the stories would stem from one of his questions about the things I had experienced throughout my time with the company.

The first question he asked was, “How did you start doing this job?” So I told him.

[mich64]

Does this type of travel still operate in the same way as when you had the job Mark? If so, do you have any contact with current drivers and are the conditions any better or worse for the driver and travellers?

I can understand why you would need all those qualifications to accept a postion like this. The travellers must have thought many times, what have I gotten myself into?

I hope you can describe the types of people who travelled with you as I am wondering what there impulse was to do this, how costly these trips were for the travellers and how travelling with people you do not know for that length of time affected them.

In my opinion, it would take alot of abilites to be responsible for the job description and there are probably not many people qualified to apply. Do you miss it?
Cheers,
Mich

[onlymark]

Mich, most conditions are much the same. Some are worse in regards of the countries open to go to, some are better in that there are getting to be more and more facilities in campsites etc. But most happens now as it has done for a couple of decades.
I'm not in contact with any current drivers but with several older ones who I used to work with.
I agree that there are times when the passengers, and myself, wondered what on earth we were doing this for.

What makes someone pay do it is varied. Often there is an underlying reason that in many areas it is a lot easier and safer way to travel. The big lottery though is if you would get on with all the rest who are also doing it and you are stuck with for several weeks or months. Usually no trip passes without some strife.

I look back on it a little with rose tinted glasses (it seems better than it was) but I soon remember the other side of it.
Dragoman, a UK company, is probably the best now at it, but they are also one of the more expensive -
www.dragoman.com/holidays/search?region[]=0&country[]=0&category[2]=24&month=0&code=&gobutton=

But if you take into account the cost usually includes more or less all transport, most all meals and accommodation (though there is an emphasis on camping), and it's for a basic trip 50 -70 USD per day, it's quite reasonable. You do usually have to 'participate' though which means helping with cooking in a rota system and putting your own tent up etc.

[onlymark]

It all started as most do with a warm fire in a cosy living room (are you sitting comfortably? I know I was) when I was dreaming of a holiday.
Not just a two-week thing into Spain but something different. Something with a bit of adventure. I had previously sent for brochures from likely companies and was reading these. At the time I already had a steady, well paid job for the last ten years as a policeman, before that I had been a mechanic, starting when I was 17 years old.

I made a radical change from one to the other and what I didn’t realise was that the seeds had been sown for yet another.
I picked up one of the brochures, glanced at the front page and then opened it. On the next was a page devoted to a history of the project leaders currently employed. I read on but then came back to that page. A thought struck me. Maybe I shared a number of skills that they had.

Maybe instead of just having a holiday I could do it full time. After all I had no commitments, I was single, living at home after the end of a relationship, no debts and no ties other than to my parents.
As my father had been born in Kenya into the world of the white middle class, joined the Royal Air Force, posted around the world, stationed in England where he met and married my mother and they emigrated for several years back out to East Africa, then they would understand my desire to travel.

I rounded up information on the five best companies I could find and sent off a CV. Then waited.
Four letters of rejection soon came back. They all said I was too old. I was in my mid thirties and I felt as fit as a butchers dog so what was the problem? The fifth company actually telephoned me at work, also to say I was too old.
I was having a bad day and I took it out on someone who I found out later to be one of the Directors of that company.

I told him that if he was rejecting me without an interview purely on the basis of age when clearly I was well qualified then I thought the company was narrow minded and hence it probably wasn’t worthy of my time and effort.
I blustered on for a few more sentences then became aware he was inviting me down to London for the said interview.
Needless to say I went and it started the long road physically and metaphorically to Africa and Asia.

Anyway, the first step I took after the interview was to give up my job and move south to the workshop the company ran. Here I was supposed to stay for up to six months and a further six months or so would be out in the wide blue yonder with an experienced leader finding all out about trip life. In the workshop I was supposed to learn mechanics, first aid, how to talk in front of people, basically how to look after the kit, the truck and the group.

A stint was down in the office in London where you found your way around various Embassies, were taught accounts and communications.
One of the regimes in the workshop was that all the trainees took it in turns cooking each day. As the group would do this on a rota basis throughout the trip then you had to be able to do everything they did.
The problem was that some had never cooked in their life.
It made for some interesting meals and plenty of abuse from a dozen or so very hungry people.

You were judged on everything you did, your standard of appearance, your ability to cook, clean, integrate with a group, mechanical aptitude, leadership qualities, problem solving, habits, be they bad or good, did you get drunk and fall down, get abusive, go to sleep or retain an awareness of what was going on around you.
Whilst I was there a high turnover of trainees was the norm.
Everyone would dread Fridays as around lunchtime it seemed each week someone would end up in the office and the next you saw of them was as they were packing their bags.

There was a definite pecking order amongst us trainees with a “House Manager” and “Bar Manager” usually being those who had been there the longest. One ran all the day-to-day stuff with the house we lived in and the other ran the house bar, of course we had to have a bar, it was probably one of the most important parts of the whole training.

After only a month or so I went down to London and did my three weeks there, at the end to be given fifty pounds and my passport and told that I had five days to get down to La Spezia in northern Italy.
There I would meet an established leader and we would take off a ferry one of our trucks and drive it back to England.

It had been put on the ship in Mombassa in Kenya and was to return for a regular overhaul.
On no account was I to spend any of my own money on the way down. “This is a test” I thought, to see if I could survive on my own wits. It was easy enough to work out that ten pounds a day, including transport, wouldn’t get me very far.
A quick trip to the bank, sod the rules, was my first call on leaving the office and an easy journey was made by train stopping off for a little holiday here and there to use up the time allowed.

No one ever asked and I think that part of the test was to see if you could get around the system, a skill that was put to use on many occasions.
Upon our triumphant return I only had another week of training before I was off again. Probably they thought that at the age I was I had some experience of life.
Being previously a mechanic and a policeman gave me a good grounding in knowledge of the vehicles and people so I was ripe for cutting short the original timetable and letting me loose as soon as the opportunity arose.

I found out that a trip had left London some months before to go in to Africa. The leader had some health, romantic and substance abuse difficulties so was to leave in East Africa.
Together with a proper leader, actually an ex leader who was now the workshop manager, we were to fly out to meet this trip and take it over.
I felt quite honoured to go so early on and even more so when I found that we were to fly to Nairobi on British Airways in Business class.
Little did I know that they were the only seats available at short notice.

I lived it up any how, stealing the soap from the toilets, stuffing as many peanuts as I could in my mouth and showing the stewardesses my squirrel impression.
Polite as she was, I don’t think she was too impressed.

One of my dreams then came true. I was in Nairobi. The birthplace of my father.
This city became the stopping off point for many trips around Africa and I was to visit it frequently over the years.
After an initial minor culture shock I soon became used to the hustle and bustle there but I was not sorry to leave.
I did an uneventful training trip for the next few months to end up in Nepal.

Anthony’s next question was, “Have you been to Kathmandu before?”

[mich64]

I am sure you have been told this would make an interesting and successful book. Are we just lucky to be reading it before you hand it over to your editors?

I spent sometime on the link you provided (put in my favourites) and was surprised to realize that there were quite a few trips that we would actually consider. Of course they were the more pampered short duration selections but I feel we would be completely happy with a few of the choices.

Happily anticipating reading more...
Cheers,
Mich

[Deleted]

I have read enough of Mark's stories to know that I want him in charge of my road trips to Afghanistan, Nigeria, Colombia, Yemen and a number of other places.

He would have been useful in the Cambodian mudpit the time I thought I was going to die. But the local talent was actually better than I expected.

[cheerypeabrain]

ooooh I am enjoying reading this Markipoo....excellent.

[bixaorellana]

This is an absolutely wonderful story, Mark, especially because it's true, from modern times, and from the horse's mouth, as it were. I can't wait for the next installments.

Just a few things amongst the many that jumped out at me ~~

Jun 1, 2011 14:13:05 GMT onlyMark said:

a shoulder to lean on

You expanded on how many different kinds of shoulder you had to be. Would you say that was the hardest part of the whole job?

Jun 1, 2011 16:46:45 GMT onlyMark said:

They all said I was too old. I was in my mid thirties

Gad, you'd think that late twenties to mid-thirties would be the minimum age. It would be guys in great shape, but also more likely to be able to make mature decisions, plus with some solid life experience.

Jun 1, 2011 16:46:45 GMT onlyMark said:

Anyway, the first step I took after the interview was to give up my job and move south to the workshop the company ran. Here I was supposed to stay for up to six months and a further six months or so would be out in the wide blue yonder with an experienced leader finding all out about trip life. In the workshop I was supposed to learn mechanics, first aid, how to talk in front of people, basically how to look after the kit, the truck and the group.

From your intro to Reply #4, it would seem you already were first class in all of these areas.

Jun 1, 2011 16:46:45 GMT onlyMark said:

...of course we had to have a bar, it was probably one of the most important parts of the whole training.

Had to laugh at this. No doubt the bar was a good way to unwind and to get to know the other trainees. But surely it was a good way for the company to find out at the outset who couldn't be trusted around liquor.

Jun 1, 2011 16:46:45 GMT onlyMark said:

...stuffing as many peanuts as I could in my mouth and showing the stewardesses my squirrel impression.
Polite as she was, I don’t think she was too impressed.

Don't sell yourself short. She waaaaanted you.

[onlymark]

mich, it is a book. It isn't successful because it's not been marketed and that wasn't the reason for writing it. The instigator was my wife - who was a group member when I first met her and we subsequently married - and therefore had an 'in' to the way of the trips. She wanted me to write it so that our three kids, when a little older, would know what 'their dad had done' because they have always been interested that I've been a few places.
I wrote all this several years ago, and put it on a "Print on Demand" website. It's a publisher but doesn't run off a load of them, it just prints one off now and again when one is ordered. My mother, when she was alive, ordered a dozen or so and gave them to our relatives. Bless her.

Organised overlands are poo pooed on somewhere like the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree because they are seen as an easy option and not for hard core proper travellers. However, they serve a good purpose for many reasons.

K2, the locals are experienced far more than most at the best ways to do things, and very innovative. I'm more of a jack of all trades. A number of times I'd be a bit stumped by a problem and someone would have a solution.

Bixa, the hardest part of the job was coping with unrealistic expectations, naivety, downright stupidity, lack of common sense and occasional bigotry.
And the groups weren't much better.

It was always a young persons game. One of the criticisms levelled at me during the interview was that I was too old to relate to many of the group who were often early twenties. I extolled my virtues of what you mentioned plus a couple of things like maturity, level headed, responsible blah blah blah. Also the "first class in all of these areas" thing played a part. They realised I needed little training other than familiarisation.
One other thing partially held against me was I didn't drink. At all.
Funny that.
Their rationale was that I'd never be fully integrated in the group.

The Stewardess/Flight Attendant/Stewardpersonthingy did keep bringing me extra food and goodies though.

[onlymark]

The question 'Anthony' asked was "Have you been to Kathmandu before?"

I had, and I went/ended up there at the end of a trip or the beginning about ten times, but I'll skip that bit as it's more of a bit of info about the town/city and Ghurkas than much else.
I'll move on to his next question - remember this is a guy who came on a trip and was asking me questions, the answers, more or less, formed a basis of what I wrote as the stories.

He asked, "Does anyone ever pay for the trip but then doesn’t turn up?"

[onlymark]

Two nights before we were to set of from Kathmandu towards India all the group and myself would meet to have a pre-departure meeting. This usually happened in the bar/restaurant around the corner from the office in Thamel.
I noticed on this meeting that one of the group was not in attendance. This happened all too regularly so I thought no more of it. On the morning of departure we were still one short so I contacted my office in London to find if there was any news.

Neither the group or the office knew anything, so after leaving a host of messages with our itinerary myself and nineteen others set off.
On the way into India we all got to know each other a little better and exchanged anecdotes about our travel. One girl had flown from England into Delhi a few days earlier and then caught another flight to Nepal, to Kathmandu.
She said that it was quite tiring as she had not arrived until late, the reason being that a passenger on the plane, an American she thought, had boarded the plane, strolled up and down the aisle and then refused to go any further.

It seemed that the American was complaining about the condition and safety of the aircraft, operated by Air India, and was refusing to fly in it.
After a long drawn out discussion between him and the crew it was decided that he would have his luggage unloaded and stay in Delhi.
Nothing more was heard of him until, yes, you’ve guessed it, we arrive in a campsite in Varanasi (India) and I see walking towards me a male carrying a large rucksack.

I hear a voice behind me saying, “That was the man on the plane!” He approaches me and asks if I am the leader of the trip, which I confirm.
The very next thing he says is, “I’ve missed the first 5 days of the trip and I want you to pay me compensation.”

It took me a long time to convince him that none was forthcoming as it was his decision to miss the plane, a flight he had booked independently. He was adamant in the fact that he was going to sue somebody for anything he could.
I referred him to the airline company and wished him luck!

It was unlikely he would get anything out of them unless he was an expert in aircraft safety, which needless to say he wasn’t.
The moral of his experience, I told him, was that you can’t expect a third world country to have the same standards as at home. Far too many people expect that when they travel they will not encounter any element of risk, everything will have the same conditions as when at home.

A couple on another trip in India complained incessantly about the dust in the campsites saying that the tourist industry ought to get their act together and clean up once in a while. They seemed blind to the fact of where they were and didn’t make allowances.
After calming the American guy down he soon got in to the journey and at the end he gave away his expensive sleeping bag to one of the local beggars.

He also made a present to me of forty-eight condoms, which he had been carrying around with him in the hope, he said, of meeting Miss Right!
These I made a gift of to a local guide I knew who already had ten children.
The American guy also would round up any local he could find when we reached a campsite and pay them to put his tent up - also when it was his turn on cook duty he's either pay a local to do it for him or treat us all out of his own money at a restaurant.
He wasn't the only one who did this either.

Another time a girl booked and paid for a trip and met up for the pre-departure meeting. She was doing the 2nd section of a longer trip that combined two shorter trips.
She asked me what we would do in the evenings. I asked her what she would like.
Her answer was, "I like to be entertained".

Funnily enough a guy who had finished the first section who was then ending the trip must have been 'entertaining' enough for her because she went off with him before the trip started and I never saw her again.


“Do people try and bring drugs with them?” asked Anthony.

[onlymark]

John looked like the type of person you wouldn’t want to meet down a dark alley at night.
He had the look of suppressed violence and I was wary of him from the first time he crept up to me. He tapped me on the shoulder at the predeparture meeting in Kathmandu, I turned and saw the eyes of a man, which had a psychotic glint to them.
He said to me, “I’ve had a problem with the police here.”

I thought that didn’t seem unlikely but said, “What kind of problem?”
He said, “They think I’m a drug dealer.”
He then launched in to a story about how his room had been bugged and he had been pulled in by the police to answer some questions.
I said, “And how has it ended?”
He said, “They’ve just let me go.”

I asked him if there was any reason why he couldn’t start the trip, I didn’t want to get too deep into the conversation, and thanked him for his honesty.
He told me as far as he knew there was no reason to have to stay. I was just about to turn away, thinking that was the end of it, when he came even closer to me and whispered, “But what shall I do with them?”
I asked, “With what? The Police?”
“No” he said, “With the drugs.”

He still had them with him and not had them found by the police!
I told him as clearly as I could that there was to be no illegal drugs of any sort on the trip and he had a choice as to what he wanted to do.
Get rid, start the trip and not have anything to do with them or he would be left behind. Or keep them and miss out on his journey.
I saw him actually hesitate before saying, “Okay, I’ll dump them.”

The trip started two days later, with John, after I had confirmed with him that he had nothing with him and we made our way for some days through Nepal to the border with India.
The border itself is in the middle of a very busy village with people coming and going all the time. There is a lot of activity with hawkers, beggars, moneychangers, officials of both countries, trucks, carts, animals, generally bedlam.
So that I could keep the group together I would leave them in the back of the truck while I would take their passports and complete as much of the formalities as possible without them.

I collected all the paperwork together and started to walk towards the Nepalese Immigration office. I was counting the passports and kept coming up with one short, the group having collected them and handed them to me a minute before. I was halfway through going back when John approached me, he had jumped out the back of the truck as I was walking away.

He said, “You don’t have mine.”
I said, “Well give it to me. We want to get through here as quick as we can.” He said, “The Police still have it in Kathmandu.”
I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that he had not told me anything for the last four days.

Obviously the Police had not wanted him to leave the country and there was more to this than met the eye. I told him that the proper way to go about it was to go back and face the music. This he wasn’t too keen on and protested his innocence implying the Police had “fitted him up.”
We stood there for some time deciding what to do, all the time being pushed here and there by the throng of people.

I wasn’t about to drive all the way back just for him. I started looking up and down the street at all the people walking up and down through the border and then said to him, “What if....?” We both had the same idea and I arranged where to meet him later.

He walked off along the street soon being lost from sight. It took about three hours to complete the formalities to leave Nepal and enter India, fairly quick for that border.
Then we drove a kilometre or so to a nearby hotel on the outskirts of the village. Under the shade of a large tree with his feet up drinking a cold cola was John.
In all the confusion he had just walked across the border without anyone stopping him.

He soon arranged to get a new passport when we reached Delhi after the “loss” of his old one and I told him that if there was one more incident he would be left behind. There never was but it was a relief to say goodbye to him at the end. He still travels but I don’t think he ever returned to Nepal!


Anthony asked, “Has anyone ever been really ill?”

[mickthecactus]

It's quite exciting but not as good as doing insurance.........

[tod2]

Wonderful Mark! Definitely should be high up there with famous adventurous 'short stories'. More please!

[bixaorellana]

Mark, this is so great. It does feel like sitting around the campfire, all wide-eyed, as you tell us the story.

Thanks for the answers, and I'm fascinated by your accounts of how people act and change during these trips. I'm also sickly fascinated by where "John" might have had the dope, that the police didn't find it. You have to grudgingly admire someone who lands on his feet, as he seems to, albeit with the unwitting help of more law-abiding people.

;D, Mick!

More, Mark, more! (pleeease)

[lola]

Poleaxed, oM.
That is one stunning job description.

[hwinpp]

Good stories, go on!

[onlymark]

Oh dear, I've just seen there is a lot more. I didn't realise I written quite so much. I hope the quality is consistent, it's a long while since I've read it.
Anyway, I've just ended up doing something that will keep me a bit occupied, so I'll try and add stuff (sporadically) as soon as I'm able.

mick, many times I wished I had an office job, no doubt about it. I would have swapped in an instant, seriously.
tod, steady on girl. I'd settle for infamous though.
bixa, I don't know where he'd hidden it, but there was too much to put where the sun doesn't shine.
lola, the job description certainly got my juices flowing, but it is a bit unusual!
hwinpp, your wish is my command.

[mickthecactus]

In point of fact Mark my job is bloody good. I arrange house insurance for the rich and famous. Currently trying to sort out a converted early 17th c water mill.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

[onlymark]

Couldn't someone just phone up the co-op though and get it?

[onlymark]

Janet was somewhat older than the norm for a trip of this kind. We were to travel overland from Kathmandu to London for many weeks and through some difficult countries.
To do this took a certain amount of stamina, fitness and the right mental attitude.
The group would range in age between twenty and forty five years old. Janet was fifty four. At times on older person would come on the trips but they were very much in the minority.
They tended to feel left out of the social scene, sometimes had difficulty physically contributing to the general day to day running and could be set in their ways causing problems with a flexible mode of travel and living.

Janet had somehow convinced my office that none of this would be a problem for her so she had duly turned up at the pre departure meeting two nights before the start. I had not really noticed her at the meeting other to introduce myself when she arrived a few minutes late.

The morning of the start came around and everyone gathered at the truck at 7am in order to set off. I noticed Janet was not there. We waited a further ten minutes or so and then one of the girls in the group, knowing which hotel and room Janet was in, went to fetch her. The hotel was nearby so the girl came back within a short time, came to me and said, “ She is just putting on her make-up, she will be ready soon.”

But it still took a further 20 minutes until she did in fact meet us. I had a feeling from then on that she would be a problem.
Janet was dressed as though she was to take a Sunday drive through the country, stopping off for a short walk with her dog and finding small country pubs to have a glass of wine at.
She had on an expensive silk blouse with matching scarf, slacks that cost enough to feed a family of four on for a week and leather shoes that looked as though they had been bought from a special edition of Home and Garden magazine advertised as the ideal footwear for safaris in the deepest darkest wilderness but in reality were probably designed by someone who the closest they had gotten to Asia was to step in a puddle on their way in to Marks and Spencers to buy a ready prepared Chicken Tikka Masala.

She wore earrings, necklace, a gold watch and plenty of make up.
We all stood around in beat up T shirts, travelling trousers and either solid hiking boots or the more favourable open sandals with thick soles and Velcro fastenings. The contrast was quite stark.
When a member of the group stands out so much I try and make a mental list of what I think their character is like and the causes of it. Sort of an instant judgement of who they are.
As the trip progresses and I find out more about them I compare what I thought to what is reality.

The more I did this the more accurate I became. With Janet I found I was virtually spot on.
I decided that she was divorced but that had been a couple of years ago. She had a child who had now settled elsewhere. Her ex husband was in middle or upper management and she had lived a middle class life with two cars, dinner parties and holidays in rented villas around Europe. When raising a family became less time consuming she obtained a job for something to do, probably as a small time PA or secretary but eventually bored of this or was made redundant.

She had sat around for many months with time on her hands, financially secure from her divorce and on a whim, after seeing a documentary on the television, decided to undertake a great adventure. She was a tall thin woman who when younger would have been quite attractive but was now fading fast.
Too many sessions on the sun bed and exposure to the summer sun had left her with more wrinkles than usual.
These and other deficiencies she tried to hide with the make up. I felt she would offer opinions on everything she could to try and monopolise the attention even when she clearly had no idea what she was talking about.

She would like to cut a figure, did so in the past but was more and more frustrated at the passage of time. She liked the attention of men to help her feel young but would become jealous when the younger men in the group paid more attention to the younger females, as you would expect they did. She was used to others making the decisions for her but now on her own would rather be seen to be making a decision than not.

Then if it turned out to be a bad one she would blame anyone else than herself. She would fuss around with a great flurry of activity but achieve nothing. She would feel that what she was doing at any one time was more important than what anyone else was doing and would try and monopolise me to sort out some minor problem when she knew that there were more major things for the rest of the group that needed solving.

I think I may have overdone the character assassination there, but anyway.

[onlymark]

Each group member had a responsibility to ensure the smooth running of the trip. Hers was to each evening pass out the anti malaria tablets for who had not brought their own. I found out later on that she was in fact not taking any at all. She had decided on her own that she didn’t need to for some reason. Also she was supposed to be taking hormone replacement therapy tablets that she had not told anyone about.

Again, at the start of the trip she had decided she didn’t need these either. I didn’t find out about these either until weeks later even though at the start of any trip I would ask each member to tell me of what medication they were taking or what allergies they had, if any, in case there was a problem.
I had to rely on their honesty to let me know.

One other factor became apparent as well.
She was virtually an alcoholic. One girl happened to see inside her large bag. Janet had one very large bag, a large make up case, a large camera bag and a day rucksack. I always saw Janet struggling to move her large bag around and had helped her with it at times. It was very heavy. The reason being that it had numerous bottles of spirits in it and every evening she would spend time in her tent taking gulps of gin or vodka. This I knew would be a problem when we entered the dry countries of Pakistan and Iran.

Apart from her attention seeking all was well until we arrived in Pakistan. She had
drunk all her supplies and was finding it difficult to get them replenished. As with most alcoholics she was very secretive about it. Also the lack of controlling tablets for her hormones resulted in wild mood swings.
Eventually she fell ill one night with vomiting and diarrhoea. As most people had off days now and then we made sure she was hydrated as best we could and left her to sleep the day away. It was usual that out of a group of twenty people there would be the odd one or two who, because of the heat and food, would at times be dehydrated and have regular trips to the toilet for a day or two.
The next morning she said she felt a little better so we carried on with the journey.

She was off her food so we tried to make sure she kept drinking a re- hydration solution and we arrived in Quetta. Janet was obviously weak but kept sticking to saying she was OK. In Quetta she again seemed ill so I arranged for a doctor to see her.
He said she was just dehydrated and said she would be fit to continue the next day if kept in a cool room and fed lightly with soup and easily digestible food, with plenty of fluids. Janet again said she was feeling better the next day but I knew it was a risk continuing as it would be several days before we reached Iran and a large enough town to have a good doctor.

After talking it over with her she assured me she was feeling fitter as the hours passed and in fact the rest seemed to do her some good as she was walking about quite well. So we carried on and crossed in to Iran.

But Janet was still weak as we entered a town called Bam. There I arranged for her to see another doctor. He again said she was ok, just dehydrated but took some blood for a test. Again Janet stayed in a cool room I had arranged and ate a little and seemed to drink enough.
But she was fooling us. When someone was with her she would regularly take sips of water and the re-hydration solution. But as soon as she was on her own she would tip mostof it down the toilet or somewhere else. So when a group member or I would return it appeared that she had drunk enough.

She was keeping a fine balancing act between being well enough that a doctor said she was fit enough to travel and ill enough to keep attention focused on her.
We stayed two days in Bam until the doctor returned and said she predictably was fit enough to continue and there were no problems with her blood. I was unable with the language problem to find out for sure what tests he had done.
I had wanted a stool test done but the doctor said there were no facilities there to do it.

One male in the group also came to me at that time and said that when he had just gone for a crap he noticed that, even though he felt no pain, the toilet was covered in blood and all his stools were red. He was very worried and so was I as it could easily be a symptom of something very serious. He was in a very agitated state and I got him to sit down while we talked about it. I watched him as he did so and he sat straight down without thinking about it.

I asked, “No pain when you did that then?” He said, “No.” We talked about what he had had to eat in the last 48 hours, he said his appetite was not affected. After a long list of food he came to the, “Oh, and nearly a whole jarof pickled beetroot.”
I said, “Maybe you are not actually ill, you have just dyed your shit red for a day or two. What do you think?”
He went off feeling a lot happier and suffered no ill effects!

The next large town on our agenda was Esfahen, two days away. Most of the group by this time had had enough of Janet and had left to travel for a day or two around Iran on their own where transport was cheap. I arranged to meet them in Esfahen and one girl decided she would come with me to look after Janet.
On the way there Janet became worse, bad enough that she was sleeping all the time and the girl had to clean her where she had soiled the camp bed.

[onlymark]

We rushed to a hotel I knew in Esfahen where again a doctor was called. He arranged to take her to a hospital to find out what the problem was.
It was there that the nurses found her to be tipping away the fluids. I decided that she must fly home to England for proper treatment so I contacted her medical insurance company in England to arrange for her to go.
The doctor in Esfahen said he would do stool tests but it would take over a week to get a result as they had to be sent to Tehran. He said that in a day or two, now she was taking fluids properly, she would be fit to travel on. The problem was that the Insurance company would only re-imburse her for flying home if a doctor said she was unfit to continue with the trip.

Janet had said she wasn’t going to go home and the doctor said if she was fit enough to travel home then surely she was fit enough to continue with the trip. Hence he wouldn’t tell the Insurance company she was unfit to travel and hence they would not pay for her re-patriation.
The group were getting extremely pissed off with the situation and felt rightly so that they were missing out on the trip because of one stubborn old woman. Something had to be done.

I collared the doctor in charge of her and took him to the truck. I showed him how it was we were travelling, how physically demanding it could be, how there were no facilities for an infirm person, how heavy things were like the full cutlery draw with enough for twenty four people and so on.
Eventually he was convinced that she would be fit enough to travel home on a plane but not fit enough to travel as we were doing. Luckily he spoke English as he had been trained in America.

I then took him to the phone, contacted Janet's’ Insurance company and got him to tell them the situation. Once that obstacle was overcome they authorised reimbursement for her flight home.
The hospital released Janet into our care and I explained that she would not be out of pocket if she now flew home but she persisted in saying she was not going to go. Luckily one of the group was a Travel Agent from Australia. He had travelled extensively and had his head screwed on the right way. I explained the problem to him and enlisted his help in the plan I had.

He was perfectly willing to help. We got Janet dressed in the hotel and told her we were going for some fresh air. Near the hotel was an airline office so we took her into there and talking over her protests, which were getting weaker and weaker as she realised the true extent of our determination to make her go home, we got her to pay for a flight from Esfahen to Tehran for her and the Aussie lad, a return for him back to Esfahen, one way for her, and then a flight for her back to England.

This was to leave the next day, so he took her to Tehran and saw her on a plane home, he flew back to meet us and her brother who I had contacted in England met her. Janet was not strong enough to do the journey by herself so I had to enlist the Aussie lad to accompany her and ensure she was safely on the plane home. Problem solved.

It turned out that she went straight to a hospital at home, arranged on my advice by her brother, where she stayed for two weeks. She had to have ten pints of blood transfused into her and was suffering from malaria and dysentery. She admitted then that she had been not taking her medication prescribed to her for the hormone problem, which we knew nothing about anyway, that she had not been taking her antimalarial tablets or had been secretly spitting out those and any other medication given in Pakistan and Iran, plus pouring away the fluids when ever she could get away with it.

One totally mixed up woman.

[mickthecactus]

Jun 3, 2011 14:11:06 GMT onlyMark said:

Couldn't someone just phone up the co-op though and get it?

Philistine...

Great thread though..

[bixaorellana]

Dammit, Mark!

I need to go somewhere, but thought I'd just take a tiny peek at this thread. Of course I wound up reading all the new posts.

Actually, I read them with a fair amount of fury, since I know someone like Janet. She's now ten years older than Janet is in your story, and what she's done to herself is not pretty -- grotesque, really.

I wonder what would possess someone like that to choose such a journey. She must have watched those movies with the handsome brooding safari leader & envisioned herself heatedly rolling around with some khaki-clad stud, or better yet, pursued by a bevy of them.

[onlymark]

Jun 3, 2011 16:02:20 GMT bixaorellana said:

....the handsome brooding safari leader & envisioned herself heatedly rolling around with some khaki-clad stud

You called?

[Deleted]

I was finally able to catch up on this story, because unfortunately I have been out of the office where I would have had plenty of time to read it.

This is really great stuff, Mark, and at the same time each anecdote is exactly how I expect such a trip to be. I have read so many journey logs that both the extreme situations (none of which you have related yet) and the extreme characters (I have seen a lot of those nut cases all over the world but not yet on an adventure journey).

I'm pretty sure that I would have loved to have such a job myself, but the real test would have been the training period, to see if I could really find an aptitude and an interest in mechanicam matters, since there have not really been many occasions in my life for this vocation to flourish. Every (rare) time that I have to change a tyre (keep in mind that in my life I have never owned a vehicle of any sort, not even a bicycle), I consider it a major exploit. I remember getting a flat in Key Largo once and not even being able to loosen the nuts on the wheel. After an hour of failure, I called the rental car company, which got in contact with a nearby service station. Two people ('real men') arrived, swaggering, and they could not loosen anything either. Ha ha, looks like you have to spend the night here. This enraged me so much that I grabbed the tyre iron, and the adrenaline rushing through my body allowed me to suddenly loosen everything within 5 minutes and get the tyre changed.

So perhaps I do have unexpected resources when necessary.

How laughable. Changing a tyre. Big deal.

Carry on.

[onlymark]

Philistine,mick?

Neanderthal philistine, if you don't mind.

[onlymark]

We all have talents k2, some are buried until later on in life, some fall from interest. Unfortunately sheer brute force is possibly not one of them? No?
Changing a tyre should be practised from birth and if you succeeded than it puts you ahead of many who have no idea.

However, there were a number of Leaders I knew who had very little mechanical ability. They learned things by rote and applied a certain set logic at times.
These were usually the ones though who had difficulty improvising, were more often than not stuck at the side of the road and having to go off to the nearest town for help, plus they were 'unsympathetic' drivers.

They often were also though a lot better with people than me. I collected many complaints over the years, mainly due to my pull your socks up and get on with it attitude, my what the bloody hell did you expect attitude and my you're in (insert third world country/continent) and you want what? Fizzy water? get real, get a life and thank your lucky stars for what you have at home.

I got so pissed off with one couple moaning all the time I took them to the house/shack/mud hut of a guide we had in Malawi (I told him I was arranging something with him, which I was. I often nipped out to him to prepare him for the next days activities where I needed him) but told the couple to look and listen and see how he lived.
They stopped moaning for all of a week but it soon started again.

k2, I'll relate a couple of bad situations further, but there are a few more people who I want to share with you first.