So... the Bali/Thai trip was full of horror and terror:

• Diana was attacked by an elephant
• Alan was attacked by monkeys
• Alan came within 2 feet of a lethally poisonous snake in the water while snorkeling
• We endured a couple of life threatening massages.
• Alan now has red hair.
• Diana survived the odyssey that was Alan’s bike trip.  This meticulously planned adventure was to be a gentle and peaceful glide from the top of the island through the quiet villages of the interior and along the mostly flat coastline... ummm...

And... we learned new things:

• Alan’s previously pure vocabulary has now been embellished with some interesting new colloquialisms that seemed to be necessary to use to communicate the concept that “No. No really: No. Really, really: no. Not interested. No, no, no. Watch the word form on my lips: "Nnnno." Let’s be clear: no, no, no. We are not going to buy the genuine Rolex watches and finest quality Oakley sunglasses etc... No. Hear me: no. Got it? No. Non. Niet. Nyet. Nada. Tedak.”
• Dying your hair may sound like a good idea at $5 or so but this will mean that your hair will be red and you will be mercilessly mocked for the next 6 months in the locker rooms and workplaces in which the 'do' is observed.
• If you are still planning to have kids, always ask for the bike seats that they would use for the President of Indonesia or visiting royalty. Nothing less. Be firm about this... so to speak.
• Alan has now learned that there’s a certain look in his wife’s eye that is clearly saying “I’m going to die. Either that or I’m going to kill you. If you ascribe any value to your testicles, stop that (more interesting colloquialisms) truck now and load these (M.I.C.) bikes on it and we are going to a (M.I.C) hotel”. Gosh. Is it ever neat to know that even after 30 years, there’s always so much fun stuff to learn in a marriage?!
• We had a “Thai Massage” and lived to tell the story. “Thai Massage” is a quaint Thai expression for an attempt to yank your limbs off. We had another 'relaxing' massage that was so thorough that Diana had significant bruising the the next day and Alan lost several handfuls of body hair. The massage was far from relaxing but we should have known what we were in for when the “practitioner” (Who was also the hotel manager, waiter, hotel cook and cleaning staff) mitigated some of the initial illusions of decadent luxury by releasing several loud, long and obviously intentional bursts of flatulence.

Some massages were better than others...

Elephants/Thailand:
The raison d'etre of this trip  was to unite the souls of the elephants and Diana who, by some mystery of the universe, had been born on separate continents.   But Diana had seen pictures... and knew from deep within that she needed to commune with these altruistic beasts.  So... as this was a celebration of milestones (30 years of marriage and 50 years of life), this was the year we needed to spend the big er, ,,,Aeroplan miles... and go to Thailand.

We had a trip planned to go hiking into the villages that were accessible only by trails, then ride an elephant and then raft down the Mai Something river.  Kind of typical Chiang Mai stuff, actually.  Anyways, we had a few days around that so we took a Thai cooking course and went to an elephant farm.  At the farm, we got to feed bananas to them.  The Cosmic Karma resonated throughout the universe as Diana fed her dear beasts.  This Karmic Buzz did not seem to sink in to one teen aged elephant who became upset when Diana walked away to bless other elephants with her bananas.  This youngster seemed to have the idea that the world revolved around him and so, like a cat swatting at a bug, he snapped Diana right across the neck.

I'd like to say that I gallantly dove into save her from further attacks by the savage beast but we both just looked at each other in stunned dismay for a couple of seconds and (both) quickly retreated.  Diana had a sore neck for a couple of hours.   Considering that elephants use their trunks to rip out trees from the ground, we realized that he just wanted to make his point in a teenager kind of way.  We couldn't quite pin it down but something inside was telling us that we'd seen that  behaviour somewhere else before...

The hike/ride/raft was definitely a high light.  It was really hot... but that made the swim in the Mai Something river b-e-a-utifull.  While we were swimming an elephant randomly walked across the river just below us which made us realize that the universe was back in order...
We saw snakes and Tarantula spiders.  Alan was very careful to tuck in his netting so that all the mosquitoes were well trapped inside with him for the night... so he got the full value of his Malarone (anti malarial) pills and 3 weeks of scratching.

If this was a video, you would hear Alan saying "Take the #$%&*&@ picture!"

Here's a video of one of the villages we went through.

Here's a clip from the trail on one of the mountains we went over and the village in the distance

Primates in Bali:
We stayed for several days with friends in Kelowna that live there in the winters.  They live in the busy part of the island.  It's the usual big Asian city: jaw dropping traffic (and really neat driving tricks like playing "chicken" with oncoming traffic... and I always thought that those lines painted on the road were something called "lanes"), loud, busy and fun to experience but just for a few days.  This is where we encountered all the hawkers and peddlers that make the Mexican counterparts look like kids at a lemonade stand.  They literally grab you to come into their stores and "No I'm not at all interested" is not nearly adequate.  I began pretending to speak some obscure Slavic language to discourage them.  The only other way to get them to leave you alone is to be rude which is very unpleasant if you're a red blooded Canadian.

We did a day trip that included a trip through a monkey forest.  Here Alan learned that you can't treat wild monkeys the same way you treat a house cat and at the same time, I learned  new ways to communicate with our fellow primates.  I dropped a brochure close to a couple of them and when I went to pick it up, one of them indicated to me that this made the brochure her property.  I found a way to convey that I disagreed and made a "Pssshhht" noise like I would to scare away a cat.

I didn't know it at the time but "Pshhhht" in monkey language apparently means: "Come on you wussy  little monkeys.  I am human and we rule you little overgrown vermin.  I can take you all on and by the way, all your mothers smell like dog butt".  I know it means something like that because the immediate reaction of the one monkey and the three nearby friends was that they all charged at me with teeth bared.  Fortunately, my next (immediate) reaction communicated "Sorry: I am the wuss.  Bali monkeys are way smarter and tougher than all other primates.   Humans are nothing better than putrid chunks of biological sludge. Take the brochure!" I know this because they turned away and seemed quite pleased with themselves.

I wish I could report that my beloved primate partner came to my rescue.  It was not to be. In the end, she was the one that needed to be given medical attention because she couldn't get enough oxygen since she was laughing so hard... for so long.

This would a video of the "Giant Balinese Apes" (Apethisis Gargantuanithicus) that attacked Alan.  There is an interesting optical illusion here that makes these massive beasts look sort of small...

Tour de Bali
Normally when a map shows a road beginning at the top of a mountain and goes down to sea level, you can count on a pleasant and perhaps a gradual glide down on a bike.  The Balinese engineers who designed the roads thought that this would be too easy in case, at some point in time, some westerner might decide to go on a bike trip.  They obviously thought it would be entertaining for residents to watch westerners gasping for breath and shaking with fatigue.  This costly engineering strategy meant that the trip was a bit more aggressive than anticipated but the local villagers certainly got their money's worth.  


It has been confirmed once again that while observing human primates, it can  consistently be shown that aggressive biking is directly proportional to aggressive female behaviours... It was indeed most fascinating to clearly observe this often noted pattern of behaviour be replicated in the wilds of Bali...


Actually, Diana was a real trooper but on the 4th day when we had a flat tire and we were getting behind and Diana was starting to feel sick, we decided to flag down a truck and hitch a ride to the meeting point with the people who rented us the bikes.  We did enjoy being in the back roads though... This was the real Balinese experience for us.

One advantage of biking a nice, flat coastline road is that you (constantly) get to enjoy 

beautiful views from the er, ...more elevated ...flat parts. 

When it's time to relax...
The next day after the bike trip, we went to "Gili Islands" where there are no motorized vehicles.  Instead, they torture horses so they do the work of cars in the searing heat.  Anyways... we walked everywhere because we didn't like the way they treated the horses.  The island took me about 40 minutes to jog around so it's not that big.  It was all beautiful beaches and warm water.  We snorkeled and read books and drank in grass covered huts in the ocean breeze.  Ah yes....

This is where I encountered the snake.  At first I thought it was some debris in the water but as the waves drove me closer I realized it was a snake and tried to move away which wasn't that easy in the waves.  Anyways, when I described the snake to the dive shop guy he said I would've died if it had bit me.

After that it was back to Busy Bali and that's where Alan was whining that he had nothing to do while Diana was getting a facial, manicure and pedicure, etc...  Diana suggested that I dye my hair since it was only going to cost $5 or so.  "You're on holidays", says dearest Diana.  "Do something different!"  The fully trained aesthetician assured me that nobody would know the difference.  I knew I was in trouble when I later met Diana in the shops and she burst out laughing.

Kidding aside, we did have a lot of laughs and it was great to remember all the reasons why we got married those 30 years ago... One of which was certainly not my red hair.

Alan's beautiful head of red(ish) hair.

The happy couple on Gili Island

Pictures And Videos Are Posted

I've downloaded pictures and videos and put them with the stories they more or less match. I have more pictures to come off of Paul's camera which I think will be better. I'll post those on a single site in the next couple of days... for those of you that are interested.

Back to the Developed World

We arrived in Amsterdam and went to the car rental area to find the agency that we booked our car rental through which was to be at the “Amsterdam Airport”. It was, in fact, not at there at all. We went to the phones and after about $5.00 of Euros we, nor the dutch uncle that met us, could figure out how to dial the strange number supplied on the voucher.

We asked the other agencies and they all refused to help us because we had been stupid enough to book at an agency other than theirs. We went to the airport information booth and they weren't too keen because this agency didn't pay the airport any rent. She did allow that they had a van that came by and gave cursory information as to where we could find it.

We went outside and asked all around and nobody had heard of this pick up spot. Anyways, welcome to the developed world. We eventually found the pick up location that took us to the stupid place. It was a half hour away from the airport in a maze of roads and ramps and turns... this was to create a major problem for us when we had to drop off the car but I won't get into that. The moral of the story is: we were in the world which we knew well: if you had the bucks and you gave them out, you were worth helping. Otherwise, you're on your own, sucker.

We had a very warm welcome from Diana's family. All of them went way too far to accomodate us. We had a personal tour of scenic parts of Leiden. We went to the pilgrim church and I showed the kids the plaque for our ancestor, John Robinson, who was the pastor of the Pilgrim church who sent off the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock. Diana's dutch all came back to her and her relatives were all suitably impressed. As usual, they found my attempts amusing. (To my humiliation, I was corrected on some of my improper use of the English language in this blog by my dutch readers...Argh!) We went to an old traditional dutch village (Volendam) and we went to Amsterdam where we stumbled (honest!) into the outer fringes of the Red Light District where the prostitutes show their wares. That became the trip highlight for the kids.

We went on a great bicycle trip for 3 or 4 hours around some smaller villages which became the highlight for the older members of the family. We ate very well so I think all the weight we lost in Africa came back after a couple of days of those irresistable dutch pasteries...

We found our way to visit my niece and her family in Brugge, Belgium. They put us up in their 4 or 5 star boarding room right in the middle of the old city. It was a fabulous break for us and Brugge has stunning old buildings with remarkable architecture.

From there we buzzed off to France to see my uncle's grave site near Cintheaux south of Caen. He was with the Montreal Regiment of the Black Watch and I have always been inspired by his sacrifice to preserve the good things that we have attained in this world: freedom of speech, democracy, individual rights, etc... A lot of these things are beginning to crumble away in my opinion and I went to be reminded of the cost of these good things.

As I stared at his grave, the emotions began to stir up in me and I began to weep. Of course I never knew the man but I well know the measure of loss it was for my family and then you multiply that by many thousands of lost lives... While I was in these thoughts, a small branch from a tree broke off and jarred me in the shoulder. There was not much wind to speak of and the trees were not that close. I felt like I was being told: “Get on with it. Wake up! Stop your grieving. There are still battles to be fought. Go out and do your part.” Then again, if you're a logical sort of person, it could have been that a tree branch simply broke off and hit me...

From there we took the secondary roads (France charges you through the nose to drive on their good highways: $80 of tolls in 8 hours of driving...) to Paris where we saw the Eiffle Tower, Montmartre and Champs Elysee ..all in one (wretched!) day. After fighting Paris traffic, it was basically a blur to get back to the Amsterdam airport to fly home.

I'll be adding some pictures in the next couple of days but to end the journey, I'll close with the faded words that can yet be read on the stone at the grave of my uncle, Lieut. Alan R.W. Robinson:



There is music
In the midst of desolation
And a glory
That shines upon our tears.

Entebbe and the Jets

We got off our bus from the raft trip and all seemed well with me despite the quantities of the refreshing waters of the Nile in my system. We met Bubby and we all went into a Matatoo bus to our hotel in Entebbe. Bubby was off early in the morning and we were not off until the next day. We used the time to go to the Botanical Gardens, the Zoo and an island refuge for Chimpanzees... and now we had to deal with some digestive difficulties for those of us that might have some traces of the refreshing waters of the Nile in their system.

The Botanical Garden was very peaceful. Great big trees, wide open grass and the shores of Lake Victoria. We even saw monkeys at very close range. It was all very beautiful for the others. Although the effects of my plunges into the Nile, were now upon me, I was happy because they had toilets spaced not too terribly far apart... but there was some room for improvement in that regard in my personal and unbiased opinion.

That afternoon we went to a the zoo... and well, we saw animals there. Good zoo... lots of open space for roaming for the animals ...and the toilets were the proper kind and always nearby. A good time was had by all.

The next day we hopped aboard a boat that did not have any toilets but this was okay because the Nile had run its course. We took a 45 minute trip out to a remote island in Lake Victoria and watched the feeding of a ... a... pod(?) of chimpanzees. All of these chimps had been rescued from some sort of abusive situation.

It was fascinating to watch the politics of the er... group unfold. The girls in heat are the territory of the lone alpha male but the subject of much interest from the other males. This lead to a great deal of conflict and resolution and was most entertaining. Only the alpha male gets to do the wild thing with any of the “Chimpettes”. Needless to say, there is great incentive to aspire to be the alpha male in a tribe(?) of chimpanzees. There have been three overthrows of the alpha males in the past 4 months...

We came back at mid day, packed, spent the last of our shillings and we went to the airport and lifted off as darkness fell on the land. We looked down on all the orange specks of light from the open fires that we could see below and knew we were saying good bye to Africa.

Time To Start Heading Home...

Our time was up and it was time to say good bye to all our new friends and a completely different world. As fate would have it, we left in the middle of the Saturday time with the Children of Peace. We knew it would be hard to leave but leaving in the midst of a hundred or so orphans who we had come to love would be tougher than we could handle.

They gave us the usual grand ceremony saying good bye through songs and dances and the tradition is to always say “See you tomorrow” to people you don't want to say good bye to who are actually leaving right now. So they were all saying “See you tomorrow”.

As we waved to hundreds of kids, teachers and people in the community... every one of them had a place in our heart... it was just too much. The girls bawled for an hour and the men... well, there were no actual tears that were witnessed but on the other hand, neither of us would face anybody for several minutes despite the girls attempts to look into our eyes. We admit to nothing...

The night before we left, the local Pentecostal church decided to hold a hootenanny or something. They thought that the non Pentecostals would benefit from their religious fervour if they turned the loudspeakers out towards the rest of the community so we could hear their loud worship service and the ranting of their very, very enthusiastic pastor. At about 3 am., in the midst of my internal debating about joining them or going on a rant of my own calling the church into repentance for their inconsideration. By this time, I had worked up a full sermon based on the second most important commandment: “Love thy neighbour as thyself” followed by a few nasty quotes from the epistles of Paul about living peaceably, etc... Anyways, it started to rain so they stopped and we'll never know whether the congregation was spared the sight of my dancing to the bongo drums or my religious indignation.

The end result of the above is that most of us passed out in the car on the way to Jinja where we planned to raft down the Nile. When we got to our destination, we had landed back into the world of Mizoongo excess. It was a backpacker type of place with a happening and very outdoor bar. It was Saturday night so this bar planned it's less spiritual version of its own hootenanny. This one went on to about the same time. The next morning I woke up early and went and surveyed the remains of the riotous evening and found 3 pairs of ladies underwear and one bra...

I say all this to explain that I was very sleep deprived when I stepped into the raft. Maybe that's why I agreed to go with Paul into “Aggressive” rafters category. It may also explain why I was well on track for setting a record for the number of times a rafter fell out of the stupid raft into all manner of froth which is something similar to water except you don't float in it...

They carefully explained to me what I should do in case you fell out. Feet pointing downstream, hold on to the raft if possible, don't gasp for air when you come up, etc... They might as well have taught me how to play pool while submerged in a large washing machine. Point my feet downstream: hah! The only thing that new what direction was what was my life jacket which, fortunately, knew the way up. As for gasping when you come up... riiight. You go 20 or 30 seconds not knowing which way is what or if you will ever see another sunrise... and you come up into something that's more air than water for a fraction of a second and you gasp gentle reader, ...you desperately gasp at any wisps of hope of survival. This means the inhaling and drinking of more of the raw waters of Nile than is advisable from Health Canada.

Gentle reader: I'm sure you know where this is going by now. My famous question to the burly Aussie guide at about mid day when I had fallen into the raging waters five times (Several class 5 rapids, a 12 foot waterfall... I even fell out on a class 2 rapid much to the consternation of the leader): “Gee, do people get sick after falling in so much?” The lecherous leader was not so inclined to give me a serious answer since he was much more attentive to the other bikini clad customers -but he kindly threw back his reply: “Naw. Not a problem mate.” I wondered how he would know because this company picks you off the river, gives you a right skookum barbie and then hurries you off into the bus to Kampala. Once you're in Kampala, they don't have to worry about you. Now it's the responsibility of the unfortunate hotel and the Kampala sanitary sewers to look after your needs...

Anyways, before we went onto the Nile, we had a beautiful dinner (with meat!) in a restaurant overlooking the river. In the middle of the supper, Paul (our 17 year old) made a short but formal speech to us saying that in spite of the fact that he did not want to come to Africa... he gave us an eloquent and heartfelt thank you and acknowledged that it would be one of the best experiences of his life. We were flabbergasted. Diana and I could only glow. The trip exceeded what we had only hoped for. The kids had completely bought into the work and into the community in which we had found ourselves. These third world needs were now no longer conceptual. These people we had met were now their friends and they were in dire need. It has impacted them (and us) in a way that has changed our very outlook on life.

The Bagisu Tribe

The people we live amongst are the Bagisu tribe. They are one of 48 tribes that live in Uganda. Their language apparently has Bantu roots but they have no more understanding of other Bantu related languages than I do.

The Bagisu are renown for their circumcision rite. Every two years (maybe 4) they choose the lucky boys who they assess to be ready to er,... become men. These lucky young lads are usually around 14 or so but they could be younger or older depending on their behaviour. Once they have been given the nod, they go up a mountain and think about things (There's a lot to think about... like “Why am I doing this? Do I really want to be Man?”) and then they come down to the valley where they get the ends of their private parts lopped off in a public ceremony. If they go through the process without showing any discomfort, they are highly esteemed by their people.

If I were a Bagisu, I'd act very childish for a long, long, time.

If I read between the lines correctly, this tribe is not on the ruling government's gravy train. The ruling party is mainly from the population dominant tribe called the Bugandans. Whatever the case, this is a very poor part of the country.

Everybody goes to some kind of church. There are frequent references to God and Faith in their day to day lives. They are very kind and warm hearted people and they love to have visitors like us around. It is a completely agrarian world...with the exception of a few teachers and shopkeepers. There are kids everywhere. In the 5 km to the nearest village, there are 4 primary schools all with over 500 students.

The plan for the Bagisu is to have lots of kids. Often one or two die of malaria or something so the plan is to procreate. Lots of kids also mean lots of help in doing the family chores. Most importantly, kids grow up to be adults who can look after you in the off chance that you reach old age. This kind of thinking I believe is at the heart of this country's problems.

The emphasis in families is respect for parents and discipline from the parents. This, in and of itself, is not so bad but there is no noticeable effort made to communicate love back down to the kids. They are very hard on them and don't have any time to invest in them... especially when you have 10 or so to look after on little or no salary. I know that they do love their kids. It's just not expressed through many kind words or hugs.

The above applies to the families that have stayed intact with two parents. So many kids are born outside of the family environment and so many don't have both parents or any parents, the lack of attention to the developing children creates a dysfunctional world. The children reach puberty and they are desperate for love, affection and any kind of attention. The result is lots of very young kids engaging in the intimacy of casual sex, lots of babies and lots of AIDS... which of course feeds back into the loop of more unwanted children not getting enough affection from loving parents.

Diana was teaching about sexuality and she was told that talking about abstinence and fidelity was a waste of time. She talked about it anyways because it is the real problem. AIDS is horrible but virtually all the children are effected by this pervasive and debilitating lack of attention. Maybe this sound too conservative but sorry, generations of affection deprived children is clearly much more insidious than AIDS in my opinion. I don't think we need to pull any punches about safe sex or anything... I just think the emphasis has to be on fidelity, smaller families and less... much less... sex outside of long term relationships.

The other thing is that divorce is easy as pie if you're a man. If you get tired of wife 1, you divorce her and find wife 2. There is no such thing as splitting the family assets. It all goes to the guy. Easy peasy. If you don't want to divorce, you can keep wife 1 around while you pick up wife 2 ...and 3. Polygamy is legal and acceptable here.

The girl looking after our house had a father with three wives. The first wife was taking a lot of in-law heat because she was unable to have kids. She began to look around to find a suitable wife for her man. She found one and the surprised husband was very pleased with new addition to the family. She bore him several children. The whole idea seemed very acceptable to this man so he went out and found wife number 3 ... this time without the assistance of #1 and 2. Nobody raised an eyebrow. The daughter actually seemed perplexed by our questions about the matter.

I make these wonderful people sound so strange and immoral. It's not true. They are not perfect but my ranting has more to do with my strong opinion about the source of the problem for the Bagisu (and Africa?). We are very safe here. There is an incredible sense of community. They all know each other and each others' families for miles around. They all seem to get along well in spite of living so close together with wayward chickens and cows munching on each other's property, etc... They have this thing called humility that is oh-so-foreign in our world. It is so refreshing to be living in that kind of environment. Of course they work hard... and although the women may do the majority of work, it is not so pronounced as I hear about other parts of Africa.

They are full of joy and love to laugh. Big, white smiles & unabashed laughter...it is medicine for the soul to be around them. It's also particularly wonderful for me because now I actually have found people to laugh at my jokes.

As a father of teen aged kids, I can vouch that this is has been most therapeutic indeed.

Things About Africa

Things That Are Now Normal To Us...
-An inch of mud on our shoes, mud everywhere on our clothes.
-Making cheery chit chat with a group of people carrying AK 47's
-Walking confidently through herds of cattle and hitting their backsides if they get in the way.
-Falling asleep in (or being generally comfortable in) cars that are ready to fall apart and being driven by maniacal drivers in maniacal traffic.
-Waking up at 5 a.m. with the sun ...and the rooster.
-Having people we've never met call out our names: “Mama Diana! Mr. Alan! How are you?”
-Being asked for money by strangers. Getting long letters from people we've just met that tell us 1)They are glad they are now our very best friends. 2)Life is difficult for them. 3)Could we please give them a couple of hundred bucks to tie them over.
-Saying “no” to people who truly need money.
-Old women with no teeth carrying 60 lbs on their heads up mountain paths.
-Talking to people who are picking their noses.
-Having to wait 15 minutes while a vendor asks his neighbour, his brother, the store across the street to get change for the 50¢ purchase you just made.
-Roosters crossing the stage during graduation ceremonies and nobody batting an eyelash.
-Remembering to carry toilet paper where ever you go, at all times.
-Having muscle bound, rugged (straight) men come up to you saying that they really like you, holding your hand and walking down a path saying that they are so glad you are their friend.
-Chickens laying eggs on our beds.
-Bargaining for everything, everywhere at all times.
-Drinking warm beer, warm wine and warm coke.
-Eating the same meal for every lunch: beans, posho, cabbage, and rice... most of which we also have for supper.

Things We Are Most Thankful For in Africa
-The fine people who invented what we now call “Pink Gold” (AKA: Pepto Bismol)
-Thankful for any decrepit toilet as long as it can be sat upon.
-Mouthwatering, succulent fruit.
-60¢ beer in 500 ml bottles.

Things That Surprised Us About Africa
-No man eating bugs or actually not that many bugs at all.
-Everybody has cell phones.
-Cold nights and mornings where you can see your breath... right here on the equator!
-Joy in the midst of hardship