It is Sunday morning here in Dar-es-Salaam and I'm feeling a little like Garcin in No Exit. I remember Sartre’s quote: "l'enfer, c'est les autres" – Hell is other people. There are days that sentiment matches my mood in Tanzania. Thankfully those thoughts are an extreme – and they pass. Extremes must be momentary or they will consume us.
There are more days that equate Samuel Beckett’s plot-line in Waiting for Godot: Estragon wants to leave but he can’t; he has to wait for Godot. Godot never arrives. It is the absolute of never that chills me or maybe it is a slight case of malaria.
If metaphorically the two plays are joined into the reality of my time in Tanzania, Sartre trumps Beckett hands-down: There must be hope; even Garcin got out; how many months did he endure in that room? How many months will I? Good question but no answer. It is still better than the tomorrow that Godot promised and the promise he never kept. C'est l'enfer.
Waiting is such a part of life here in this dusty and lately rainy East African city. Waiting for people, predictable, as after all this is Tanzania, but also waiting for endorsements and agreements and even expected criticisms. Censure I can and have endured; it arrived quickly and was actually humorous – something about Troy New York and math majors. That aside, I must strive, as Beckett so aptly says, “to hold the terrible silence at bay”, more so since my sole colleague set out for home.
So, what is all this about? Well, pictures tell stories, yes? Here stories must make pictures.
It is breakfast, this very Sunday morning, breakfast with Duck. He eats very little; truth be told he eats nothing. What he does and does so well is connect me to home. You see, over the last ten years, Duck and I have travelled more miles than most people let alone ducks and always together.
We “met” at our parish fair in St Pete where I used a drop curve to knock ersatz milk bottles off a platform. Marge says it was luck but I am sticking to the cross seam curve story. Whatever, he entered our life that evening and spent the next few months on a book shelf in our office.
Suddenly his world changed as I was called by WHO to the Kosovo Conflict and Duck found himself, courtesy of Marge and unknowing to me, in my duffel. He became my mascot in that cold and damp place; a piece of home where there was no other. Duck and I survived and returned home. We had become a team.
Every time I have been assigned since then, Duck has joined me: in the Egypt I love so; in beautiful Jordan and in not so beautiful Indonesia (memory-wise) where together we heard and felt the horrors of 9/11. Through it all he travelled well - most often in my back pack - a fact that necessitated at times an explanation to airport security. Try that in Singapore.
Another war, Iraq, summer of 2003 and again he came with me and lived through a summer of heat and tragedy. There were some good times; he met some furry friends courtesy of our security chief. Here we were, a humanitarian Team Leader and an ex SAS officer both holding on to what my daughter Hilary discourteously calls a stuffed animal. Alan’s were two small dogs. All of us endured the heat and the bullets and bombs and the RPG’s and what was called food and most of all thanked God for the good graces of the regiment safeguarding us. We came through when so many others did not. Duck came home again. I think I left something behind.
I promised Marge and Duck no more wars and to date have kept my pledge. After all, what conflict wants a gray haired sixty (plus) year old public health guy that travels with a slightly shop-worn duck?
Duck has had good trips: cruises to Alaska and Central America replete with black-tie dinners. He dresses accordingly.He has dined on the Queen Mary crossing to and from England and been to Casablanca and Rome and Monaco. He joined Marge and me in London and Paris and Bruges. He even went to the game parks in Tanzania and travelled the mountains of Swaziland.
He has met special companions like himself. On a flight to Zurich, the attendant looked at Duck sitting on my arm rest and brought back her bag to show me a stuffed dog. He had belonged to a soldier in the 101st Airborne, a soldier wounded and being flown back to Walter Reed. The soldier has asked her to keep it for him. She has. We both cried a little.
So here we are having breakfast. Must have been a good omen as the hotel uncovered a stash of Earl Grey tea just as my last remaining bag was lowered into the requisite daily pot.
Duck and I will do what we have to do here because that is what we do. We cope and strive and push and cajole but we, he and I, will succeed. If I did not believe that I would not be here.
He has to keep reminding me that it will end and we will go home and that is certain. So, do we conclude Sartre was right about other people? I do seem to do better with Duck.
I wonder what ever happened to Garcin and Estragon.
Maybe if they had a duck?
Written originally at the Movenpick Hotel; Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania; 3 May 2008 and modified (slightly) recently.
