Shoots in South Africa

Jakarta

2009-08-10T08:11:00.002-06:00

I'm still feeling a few of the effects of jet lag on the trip over to Jakata. Indonesia is pretty much exaclty around the world from the US, so there is just no easy way to deal with the time change and the travel.

Yesterday we had a pretty slow day. I got to meet up with Erick Peterson, a roommate from college. We visited and went shopping for Bahtik's, the traditional Indonesian formal dress shirt. You have love a culuture where one shirt can replace a suit and tie.

Today we had meetings at a Women's organiztion, the US embassy, the Ministry of Defense, and with the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia. They were all quite informative. Some of the highlights:

One of Barak Obama's classmates at school in Indonesia now runs the National Airline of Jakarta, Guarada.

Barak used to spend quite a bit of time in the library at the embassy, while his mom was taking classes next door. It was a way for him to keep in touch with American culutre while living her. He would read the magazines and newspapers from America to keep in touch with what was going on there.

The slogan of Indondeisa is Unity and Diversity. Not so different from out slogan of From Many One.

On a different note, the weather was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. It wouldn't be my favorite weather of all time, but better than I expected.

There are a lot of cars in Jakarta and ever more motobikes and mopeds. A lot. More than you would think is possible.

Indonesia

2009-08-06T15:08:00.001-06:00

As some of you may be aware, about a month ago, I was contacted by the American Council of Young Political Leader’s (ACYPL) (http://www.acypl.org/) about taking on the role of escort for their delegation headed to Indonesia in August. I checked my schedule and checked in with the boss and when everything turned out to fall in my favor, I accepted to take over for another escort that had to drop out. Last summer I was lucky enough to get to travel to South Africa with an ACYPL delegation and so I was very excited to get another chance to work with that organization. As it happens, my brother had just come back from a great trip to Indonesia, so my curiosity about country and the serendipity getting a call to go to Indonesia was too much to resist.

Instead of starting a whole new blog, I decided I would just add on to my South Africa blog and not create a new web address.

I took off from Billings yesterday and had a very close connection in Denver, as we were late flying out of Billings. Everything made it OK, but I did end up reading most of the book I brought along for the trip. I started Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West (http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Your-Ponies-Stanley-West/dp/0965624781) and have most of the book read at this point. It is a page turner, but I may have all the pages turned before I get on my long flight to Indonesia. I brought along a couple other books, but may look for some additional reading material at the airport.

Today was an orientation for our trip to Indonesia. We spent most of the day in briefings trying to get us orientated to get the most out of our trip to Indonesia. The first meeting of the day was at the ACYPL office. They are sponsoring the trip and that meeting consisted mostly of what to expect on the trip and what was expected of us. The second meeting was at the US Dept of State to discuss the exchange program and to get an overview of Indonesia.

We moved onto the US-Indonesia Society (http://www.usindo.org/index.php) where he had lunch and a good discussion about many topics in Indonesia. US relations with that country have been good, but low profile, with not many Americans much aware of Indonesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html). As you can read in that information, Indonesia had a strong dictator for many years, but has recently become a very open democracy. It is the third largest democracy in the world, after India and the United States. It has almost as many people as the US and the geography is bigger if you include the entire ocean between the islands of Indonesia.

Every one we talked to today was very upbeat about where US-Indonesia relations are going, especially because President Obama used to live in Indonesia. There are plenty of opportunities to grow that relationship, which has stayed relatively dormant considering the size of the two countries. Part of that is due to the US’s reluctance to meddle in Southeast Asia after our withdrawal from Vietnam. Throughout the day we were able to ask questions about the security in the country (pretty good), the politics of the place (fairly complex, but what politics aren’t), the diversity of the islands, the sensitive subjects, how the history has shaped the place, the natural resources, the environment, the education system, and how long it takes to get to Indonesia.

The final meeting of the day was at the Indonesian Embassy. We met with the ambassador and got a tour of their very cool embassy. They bought the place in 1951 from the people that owned the Hope Diamond. They paid around $370,000 and spent $30,000 on renovations. I’m sure that the return on that investment would be well into the millions at this point.

The final part of our day is a dinner at the Old Ebbit Grille in DC. Should be a good chance to get to know everyone better. Our group has a state legislator from Wyoming and Minnesota, a city council member from New York, an aide to the minority leader in Puerto Rico, and a lobbyist from Tennessee.

Tomorrow we leave from Reagan airport and fly to Minneapolis (2 hours). Minneapolis to Tokyo (14 hours), Tokyo to Bangkok (6 hours), spend a few short hours in Bangkok and arrive in Jakarta on Sunday. Not really looking forward to the flight, but I can’t wait to get to Jakarta.

Pictures

2008-08-03T13:56:00.001-06:00

Here is the link to some photos from my trip. Due to limits, I can only upload these photos at this point.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoots1/

Home

2008-08-01T09:45:00.001-06:00

I did make it home yesterday. The day before was quite a long trip as I was in transit for about 32 hours from the time I got to the airport in Cape Town until I got to the hotel in Washington, DC. I spent the night there and visited a friend before getting on the plane to Billings yesterday.

My niece is visiting, so I spent most of yesterday over at my folks' house.

I will get pictures up once I get organized and unpacked.

Last Day

2008-07-28T15:23:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow is our last day in South Africa. After a couple of meetings with the Provincial parliament in the morning, we are headed to the airport in the afternoon.

Today's meetings were at the National Parliament and were fairly interesting. We met with several different party leaders and had lunch with the Deputy Mayor of Cape Town. They were having a speaker on the American Presidential election. He didn't add anything new to what we already knew about the election, however I would have liked to be able to stay for questions. Unfortunately, we had to leave to get back to an appointment.

I'm sure tomorrow will be a very similar day. And then the long flights home. I'm hoping to sleep quite a while on the plane from Johannesburg to Amsterdam. We'll see how that goes.

I'm guessing I won't have time to post again before I get home. Most of the rest of my week will be running somewhere or another.

Cape Town

2008-07-27T09:53:00.002-06:00

We made the successfully journey from Durban to Cape Town. We are having a very nice weekend in Cape Town. The city is absolutely gorgeous and we’ve had a pretty relaxed schedule thus far. There is a great waterfront area not too far from the hotel and we’ve spent a lot of time there. We were not able to go to Robben Island because the weather was too bad and we were not able to take the cable trolley up Table Mountain because it is under maintenance. However, we have found other activities to fill in the time.

Yesterday we went to Long Street and shopped at a flea market. In the evening we took a drive up the coast and ate at Hout Bay. Today we drove up the coast again, over the mountain and visited a winery. We start back again with meetings at Parliament on Monday.

You can definitely see the end of the trip coming. We were talking about the long day ahead on Tuesday/Wednesday. That is the day we are traveling back to the States. I’m wishing we had a couple more days in South Africa. I would have really liked one more day in Durban and probably one more in Cape Town. But I can’t complain, it has been a great trip so far.

I do have to say that getting Internet access is harder in South Africa than I thought and it is much more expensive than most places. This is due to the isolation of South Africa, ie it is not on the way to anywhere as far as the Internet is concerned. However, I have heard that they are in the process of laying some new fiber optic cable to South Africa and they will be much more connected in the future. That doesn't help me much.

Durban

2008-07-24T15:04:00.001-06:00

Well it doesn’t seem like I have been in Durban very long and we are already headed to Cape Town tomorrow. I am very impressed with Durban. It is a beautiful city right on the ocean with a great sky line in the background. It’s a bit humid for my taste, but since it is winter here, I’m still pretty happy with the weather. They city has 3.5 million residents and is the third largest city in South Africa. It has the largest sea port in Africa.

When we arrived we had a presentation to attend. It was not the best and we skipped out a little early to get settled into the hotel. We are staying at a hotel and casino, so it is pretty nice. The beach is right next door, but unfortunately, we don’t have any time built into our schedule to spend time on the beach. Instead, we have the weekend in Cape Town to do fun stuff.

Today was another really good day on the trip. We traveled to Pietermatrinsburg, the capital of the Province of KwaZulu Natal. We met with the speaker of the Parliament. We had a pretty frank discussion with him about the problems in his province and the politics of his province. It was nice to have that honesty, as politicians are usually fairly hesitant to say too much in meetings with us. I can’t blame them, I would be the same way, especially when the media is there.

From the Parliament building, we traveled to a medical clinic at Soihizo. The take care of AIDS orphans and try to do outreach to the community. We got to mingle and play with the kinds and they danced for us. It was wonderful to see the kids/teenagers perform traditional Zulu dances for us.

After about an hour, we walked through part of the village near the medical station. I don’t have words for what we say. Or if I did, I would take me a long time to think about what we saw and how to describe it. Although it was not all that remote from traveling to an Indian reservation, but with an African twist. The poverty level was quite high and most of the people living around there are subsistence farmers. The houses are very small and several people live in them. There are not roads, running water, and there is an outhouse at each house.

Beyond that, I just don’t have the worlds to describe the experience at this point. It was definitely a highlight of the trip and something I would never have gotten to do elsewhere. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The landscape was very beautiful and the walk was interesting.

One the way home and throughout the evening, we all commented on the impact that the trip through the village had on all of us. There wasn’t anyone that wasn’t moved by what we saw and the poverty they live in.

It will be a long time before I can forget that afternoon.

Tomorrow we visit an AIDS clinic, meet with the City Council, and travel to Cape Town. I may not have access to the Internet tomorrow also.

A Really Great Day

2008-07-22T13:01:00.002-06:00

Today we headed out to the City of Mogale (pronounced Moe-hall-ee) for a meeting with several members of the City Council. They have 64 members of the city council, so we met with about 20. Many of the members were from the young ranks of the council.

We had a presentation on local government that did a wonderful job of explaining how local government works in South Africa. There were some similarities and some differences. I would say they have some advantages and we have some advantages. I don’t know that one system is better than the other, just different. Just like the City of Billings, they have several wishes that their provisional government would work better with them similar to our wish for the state government to pass laws that would benefit the city.

After our meeting, we toured city hall and the cities museum. Then we headed out to the Marepang to visit the Cradle of Humankind museum ADD LINK. Marepang means to “revisit the footsteps of your ancestors” in the African dialect that is prevalent in the region. Once the formal meeting was over, we got to visit and socialize with the young elected leaders from the Mogale city council. We had lunch with them and toured the museum with them.

That was the real highlight of the day. Getting to spend time with people like us and trying to visit, compare and contrast, ask questions, and really bond with leaders that are a reflection of our group in South Africa. There was a great dialog and exchange of ideas and the highlight of the day was getting to spend the day with a peer group from South Africa. I felt like a real connection was made and I got a real sense of South Africa from this group. I had a really great time all day discussing a vast range of issues.

Tomorrow we are at the Constitutional Court and then we fly to Durban. I’m not sure what the situation will be in Durban, so I’m not exactly sure when I’ll post next. Hopefully tomorrow, but it may be the next day.

Cheetah

2008-07-21T16:07:00.002-06:00

We had a great day of meetings and exploration of South Africa. The day started at IDASA a non-profit group that is dedicated to promoting democracy. They started during the negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa and have now grown to include work not only in South Africa, but also in neighboring countries. They have a number of great programs that deal with the problems of a young democracy.

We had an interesting discussion about democracy and education. One of their speakers had noted that education is not all that integral to democracy. Of course one of the members of our delegation started to ask questions about that theory, as most of us Americans assumed that education would be at the heart of democracy. After all, the stereotype in America is that it is mostly educated people that are involved in civic activities.

He stated their research had shown in South Africa, that it was primarily the poor, uneducated people that voted and that the educated people tend not to vote. He noted that education wasn’t required for democracy, just the willingness to be involved and educated about the process. What I drew from that showed the difference in age of our democracies. In South Africa, democracy is only 14 years old, in America, well over 200 years old. Perhaps how we see being in involved in government has a lot to do with their brief and our long history in that type of government. Anyway, it made for an intriguing and thought provoking discussion.

We got a great overview of the structure of government in South Africa and had some insight into the FIFA World Cup I had mentioned last time. Not only does South Africa see the World Cup as a chance to show off to the world, but the government is also using the World Cup as an economic stimulus plan for the country. The South African government runs a pretty good surplus and they thought this was a good way to inject some much needed government dollars into the economy. While they have been shy about doing that for ongoing entitlement dollars, they felt that putting money in the economy for material and construction of the soccer stadiums would be a good, short term, one-time infusion of money into the economy with out creating government programs that will have to be funded long into the future.

We had an absolutely great talk about Zimbabwe and what is going on in that country. If you have been following it, I have because I was coming to South Africa, we got some great insight into the history of the current conflict, an overview of the players involved, and an update on what is going in the present. If you haven’t been following, I probably can’t summarize well and it’s a little too late in the evening for me to try. Most everyone in the group found that to be the highlight of the day.

Our last speaker at IDASA talked to us about his program for civic leadership. South Africa and other emerging democracies have had trouble with leadership in civil society and out side the government. What tends to happen is that the people that were the leaders and organizers of the protests and opposition to the government tend to move into the government, once democracy takes hold. This leaves a void of leadership in community organizations, trade unions, churches, and many other places. They are working on a program to try to motivate members of society to become leaders in those groups.

After lunch, we headed out to the De Wildt Cheetah preserve. They have many different animals they take care of and breed in captivity for release into the wild. It was a great little tour through their place. We got to see cheetahs, wild dogs, hyenas, impala, ostrich, and ngala. It was a great little trip and it felt like a mini-safari.

Dinner was a traditional South African Boer meal. I thought I was going to have the bobotie, but settled for a springbok stew that was just wonderful. I had a taste of the bobotie and hope to get to order a meal of my own soon. It is a favorite in South Africa, so I’m sure I’ll have a chance again. When push came to shove, I did have to have the springbok stew and I wasn’t disappointed.

Tomorrow is a meeting with a city council and a trip to the Cradle of Mankind.

Springbok

2008-07-20T23:37:00.005-06:00

Our first full day in South Africa was a nice introduction to the country. We all met in the lobby at 8 AM to head to breakfast. We had breakfast at this great little bakery, not all that different from something you might find in the States. It is located in one of the massive malls in South Africa. The malls here are huge and usually there are two or three right next to each other. They certainly are as big as any mall in a large American city and some are much larger.

We found an ATM and a grocery store and we stocked up on everything from water to SIM cards for cell phones. Then it was off to the Apartheid museum .

The museum is a great place to get a better feel for what apartheid was, how it came about and how it ended. It was great to have the book I mentioned in the earlier post to set the stage for the museum. I have to be honest and say I still can’t get my mind around apartheid. It seems surreal and, while I know it happened, I have trouble believing something so horrible could take place. It is something I have had to read about and go to a museum to even being to imagine what it must have been like. Words really do fail me when I try to describe how I’m ingesting the information about apartheid. I’m sure that baseline will be with me throughout the trip.

Another item I found interesting at the museum was the display on Johannesburg. It grew up as a mining town and I could see some similarities with Butte. They started mining Gold in Johannesburg in 1887 and nine years later the city was responsible for producing 27% of the worlds gold. This brought both black and white mine workers to the city in incredible numbers and the city grew extremely quickly. Mining is still big business in South Africa.

We took off for lunch at another mall in Soweto . Just driving to the mall you got a sense of the townships in and around Johannesburg. This was another one of these massive malls they have here. After lunch we drove around Soweto to have a closer look at the township. You could get an even better sense of the ghetto that existed before and how it is changing. I’ve a couple of people say that can’t believe how much the place has changed in just a few years. There were some very nice homes in Soweto and there were some not so great homes.

They are building a new soccer stadium in Soweto as part of their effort to host the 2010 FIFA World Soccer Championships . There are currently building 9 different stadiums throughout South Africa. A lot of people are worried they won’t be ready in time for the championship and are comparing it to the Athens Olympics. Which means it will be close, but they will pull it off and be ready. South Africa sees the coming World Cup similarly to how the Chinese see the Olympics. It is there chance to show off to the world how well their country is doing.

Dinner was a great restaurant in Mellville. It was on a great street with a number of restaurants and a nice walking district.

I ordered the Springbok. It is a South Africa animal that would be similar to an antelope. The meal was delicious. The springbok was slow roasted and I found it to be a nice cross between antelope and venison. A couple of others in the group ordered ostrich. I tried a bite and it was also very good. I’m looking forward to ordering ostrich at some point in the near future.

Tomorrow we visit a think tank and then on to the Cheetah preserve.

A Long Day

2008-07-20T15:20:00.002-06:00

I wasn’t able to get on the computer yesterday or the day before because it was such a long day that all ran together. We had some good meetings in DC and got a nice base layer of information about South Africa. However, I couldn’t stop thinking that while this was great, I wasn’t going to have a real feel for the place till we arrived.

We headed out to Dulles Airport in the early afternoon. We were well early for the flight, but we needed to eat lunch and one of the members of our delegation was flying out on an earlier flight. It was a good chance for the group to spend some more time getting to know each other.

The flight to Amsterdam left about 5:30 PM and we chased the sun around the Earth to the Netherlands. It did get dark for a few hours on the plane, but the sun we peaking up before you knew it. We arrived in Amsterdam at 7:30 AM the next day. In actual Billings time that was around 11:30 PM, my usual bed time. We had some breakfast in a nice Irish Pub in the airport and then waited to board the flight to Johannesburg. There were lots of people going to Jo-burg and, for some unknown reason, we had to go through a separate security line.

I’ve had a good book to read while I was on the plane. It is “Kaffir” and it is a memoir of a gentleman that grew up under apartheid. It is hard to believe how bad the conditions were during that time and the book was a great primer on the visit we would later make to the museum on apartheid.

Let me just say that before I got on the plane to Jo-burg, my butt was pretty numb. I’m pretty sure I left my butt somewhere over Africa, because I could not feel it when I got off the plane. I was planning on not sleeping so that I would go to sleep when we finally arrived. But I was doing the head bobs of sleep and couldn’t stop myself from going to sleep on the plane. It turned out to be the best thing. I was still tired when we got here, had a good nights sleep and I haven’t felt any ill effects of jet lag.

I probably slept the first half of the flight. I did get a chance to get up and walk around when we were flying over the Sahara Desert. It was really great to look out and view the desert from up high. Since we were headed to the South Hemisphere and winter, it did get dark pretty early on the flight. I think it was dark by 6 PM. When we did land, so did the Air France flight and it took forever to get through passport control. One of our delegates didn’t have a bag arrive, so it took quite some time to get out of the airport.

We arrived at a great hotel and it took quite a while to check in. Most everything we do takes quite a while, but that is just group dynamics.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to get on the Internet until now. I’m hoping that now that we are here, I will have much better access to the Internet. Sunday was spent at the Apartheid Museum and touring parts of Soweto. I will update that shortly.

The First Day

2008-07-17T14:37:00.007-06:00

Things got off to a very early start this morning as I left for the airport about 5 AM. Things went pretty smooth on the flight to Minneapolis. When I got there, my flight to DC was delayed 30 minutes and then we had to sit on the runway for another 30 minutes as it was raining in Minneapolis and things were backed up a little bit. All in all, for a Northwest flight, it went pretty well. I'm not a huge fan of Northwest Airlines. They do OK, but I would rather fly other airlines if I had a chance. This time around however, the Northwest flight is the one that worked best for me to get to DC.

I jumped on the METRO after picking up my bag and took it from the airport to the Farragut West stop. There were two guys sitting by me that had hats that pertained to Montana. One guy had his University of Montana hat on and another had a Ted's Montana Grill hat. I'm guessing most of you know the University of Montana, but for those of you that don't now, Ted's Montana Grill was stated by Ted Turner as a way for him to serve the buffalo that he raises in Montana and elsewhere. You can check out more on Ted's Montana Grill by clicking on that link.

One interesting tidbit about Ted is that through Turner Enterprises, he owns 15 ranches in Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Totaling 1,910,000 acres (7,700 km²), his US land-holdings make Turner the largest individual landowner in North America.

I thought it was a neat little coincidence that there were two people sporting hats with Montana references on my METRO ride. It's a smaller world than you think.

Most to the METRO ride is underground, so you don't get to see much of the surrounding area. But I think the METRO is a great way to get around out here, and always use it when I'm in DC. When we did go past the stop at Arlington Cemetery you did see the typical summer DC tourists. There are tired, hot, and sweaty from the DC summer. Having lived here for the summer, it is a scene I remember well. It was not overwhelmingly hot in DC (about 90, pretty close to back home), but is always that humidity that gets folks like me from the arid west. And you can definitely see it on the tourists.

One thing I'm quite happy about is that it will be winter in South Africa. The forecast is for 50 to 65 degrees when I'm there and that suits me just fine.

Once I reached my final destination, I somehow managed to come out of the METRO in the wrong place, even though I took extra time to make sure I didn't. It was only a block extra to the hotel, and I have a nice little room here at Club Quarters. It is just south of Farragut Square, a nice little park with a statue of Admiral David Farragut.

Check in at the hotel was done by using an electronic kiosk. I like using stuff like that, but it was the first time I had check into a hotel using just a machine. We had our little welcome packet waiting and I ironed my clothes for tomorrow. I don't have the best view in the world, just the construction of the building next to me. Before you know it, it was time for dinner.

The group boarded the bus for a nice, quiet dinner/get-to-know-you evening at a restaurant that was otherwise closed. We ate up stairs, family style. The food was wonderful, good Italian with pasta, eggplant, and flank steak. We had one guest from South Africa, so the conversation was quite good between meeting people and hearing from her about South Africa.

After dinner we came back to the hotel. I needed to take a walk an since we are only a few block for the White House I decided I would take a jaunt around the west end of the National Mall. I always loving going down there to look at the monuments and walk among the memorials. My pictures of the evenings are here.

Made it back to the hotel around 11 PM DC time and 8 PM Billings time. I should be going to sleep cause we have an early start tomorrow. We are visiting the ACYPL headquarters for an orientation, the Department of State and their South Africa Desk, and the Embassy of South Africa. Should be lots of fun. Then we get on a plane for Amsterdam. With a packed day, I probably wont be able to write until very late tomorrow evening. Or early in Amsterdam as it where.

Conference Call

2008-07-14T22:18:00.001-06:00

Today in the afternoon we had a conference call with the group to speak with a gentleman who was on the last ACYPL delegation to South Africa. It was a good information session about what to expect, how to pack, what to look for, and other tidbits of information about the trip.

The ACYPL is still waiting on a hard and fast itinerary, but I do know that we will be going to Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durbin, and Cape Town.

I do know that I’m going with 5 other people and a trip coordinator. The group includes a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, a city councilman from Columbus, OH, a city council woman from, New York City, a county commission member from Washtenaw, MI, and a member of the Texas Commission on the Arts.

A Little Light Reading

2008-07-14T22:10:00.005-06:00

In one of the discussions I had about going to South Africa a gentleman mentioned that I should read “The Covenant” by James Michener. I love a good book and was curious about this particular one. I checked online to see if the Parmly Billings Library had a copy, and sure enough, there was a copy I could check out. So I headed down to the library to check out the book.

I found it on the shelf and was a bit surprised at the size. It is a couple of inches thick and comes in just under 880 pages. I should have known as much considering that Michener was the author, but I didn’t put two and two together until I saw the book on the shelf. At that point, I decided I would get through as much of the book as possible before I left. I briefly considered bringing the book with me on the plane, but I decided I didn’t want to have to carry the book with me on the trip. Much better to take a few small paperbacks.

Since I have started reading the book, I have really enjoyed it. It is a novelized account of the history of South Africa. It is my kind of history book, mixing a good story with the history of the place. It really puts a human face on the history, but does a great job of covering how South Africa became a country. I’m only about half way through and I won’t make it through the whole book before I leave. However, I think it will be fun to come back to the book after spending time in the country.

Here is the link to the book on Amazon

Here is the link to the book in Wikipedia

Welcome

2008-07-13T23:36:00.002-06:00

For those of you that didn't follow my blog when I visited Europe last summer I wanted to add a quick note about what I'm trying to accomplish.

While I'm away, I try to post each day about what is happening on my trip. So there are a few posts on the blog now, and they will continue to grow as the trip continues. Some days, there isn't anything new due to my inability to get to a computer, but I do my best.

There may not be much at the moment, but each day the blog will grow a little. And I think i will be able to have some pictures from this trip.

For a good flavor of what to expect, click on the link on the right for my European Blog.

European Fellows

2008-07-01T23:05:00.004-06:00

As many of you know, I traveled to Europe last summer as part of the Marshall Memorial Fellowship. I was very honored to be a part of that trip and had a wonderful cultural experience. So when I got a call this spring to host a group of fellows coming from Europe to America, I jumped at the chance to host them.

Their stay in Billings is the part of their trip that exposes them to rural America. It is called the “Farm Stay” and they are supposed to spend a couple of days on a farm in rural America. However, they will be visiting over the 4^th of July and I didn’t think staying on the farm would be all that interesting over the 4^th. Most of the farmers/ranchers I know come into town to celebrate the 4^th, so why send a group out when they would just be coming back to town.

Instead I have been working to get them a place to stay in Red Lodge over the 4^th. Red Lodge is the quintessential small town America 4^th of July celebration. It has a rodeo, parade, and the town gets all dolled up for the celebration. I think it will be a fine slice of Americana.

I have several other ideas planned for their stay. I hope it works out OK. This is my first try at hosting a group, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m sure there will be a few bugs, but nothing we can’t get through.

Update: The trip through Montana with the European Fellows went quite well. We had a great time and they seemed to really enjoy Montana.

Here is a link to the Billings Gazette Story about the Fellows

Here is the link to their itinerary while in Billings

The CDC

2008-06-30T23:04:00.002-06:00

One of the pieces of information I received prior to starting my journey to South Africa was a website set up by the Center for Disease Control (The CDC) for travelers. I looked up the website and found out about the immunizations that I need for the trip. Then I called to schedule a routine yearly physical. I haven’t been to see the doc for a yearly physical in about 18 months, so I thought it would be a good time to both get a physical and get a booster immunization shot.

One immunization that is recommended that is not part of the regular booster routine is for typhoid. Typhoid is a water borne disease that was devastating to central water systems in the later 19^th and early 20^th century. Until the doctors figured out it was the water system that was spreading typhoid, it hit urban areas very hard. Once they figure out what was going on, the chlorination of water was utilized effectively to stop the spread of typhoid in the water systems. However, it can be a problem is some countries and thus the recommendation to use the typhoid vaccine.

I figured that typhoid was one vaccine that probably wouldn’t be at the regular doctor’s office, so I headed down to the City County Health Center to pick up the vaccine. It cost me $72 for 4 pills that I have to take every other day. That should make the vaccine effective by the time I leave and for 5 years after.

I thought the nurse that gave me the medicine looked familiar and when I read her name tag, it dawned on me that she was in the production of Doubt at Billings Studio Theatre. We visited for a little while about the show and I recommended that she audition for A Flea in Her Ear this coming season. Then I headed back to work with the air conditioner turned way up because my vaccine needed to be refrigerated and it was quite warm out today.

I’ve tried calling the nurse at the doctor’s office where my physical is scheduled, but she wasn’t in today. I wanted to know if I could get my other shots I needed at that office or if I needed to go back down to the City County Health Department to have the shots. When I did get a hold of the nurse, she told me they did have the booster shot I needed and could give me the Hepatitis shot I wanted. I am scheduled to get the booster and first shot right before I leave.

I did a little more check at the CDC website and I probably should have had my shots for the trip to Europe last summer. I turned out OK, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I will be a little more prepared this time around.

If you want to catch up on my trip to Europe last summer, I posted a link on the right side of the website.

It was a Tuesday

2008-06-29T23:03:00.004-06:00

It was a Tuesday and it did not start as a particularly good Tuesday. I was still a little worn down from the City Council meeting the night before. We had had a “Goldie Locks” meeting that Monday night. It was not that bad, but not really that great either. It was better than I had expected it to be considering we were taking on changing the sexually oriented business ordinance due to the recent emergence of a juice bar/strip club downtown.

The entrepreneurs of this establishment had decided to move forward exploiting a loophole in our current ordinance, which prompted the council into pondering an interim ordinance to close the loophole. I expected a fairly heated public comment period on the ordinance, but turned out to be a surprisingly subdued hearing and we got out of our meeting at about 10:30 PM, our average closing time for a city council meeting.

The meetings are always a little draining and facing work on Tuesday is never all that much fun. I did my best to get as much accomplished on Tuesday morning as I could, but I was checking the clock every half hour waiting till it was lunch time. Lunch is always a demarcation point in my day. It means I only have a half a day left. Well that may not mean much to others, to me, that is how I mark my progress through the day. I had the usual lunch at Subway and upon returning to the office I saw that my voice mailbox held a message.

What I heard when I checked that message gave me a shot of adrenaline that stayed with me for three days. It was a voice message from the American Council of Young Political Leaders asking me if I would like to take part as a delegate in an exchange they were organizing. If I was interested, I should give them a call back and we would visit.

Of course I called the woman back to find out about the exchange. There were a couple of different trips in which I could participate. I checked my schedule, and even though it was coming up quickly, the exchange to South Africa worked best with my schedule. I confirmed that I would be very happy to join the delegation. That evening when I got home, there was an e-mail in my inbox that had some paper work to fill out. I completed the paper work in short order and faxed it out the next day to officially confirm my participation in the exchange.

Hearing about being a part of the delegation to South Africa definitely changed my dreary Tuesday into a Tuesday I will remember.

The link below show the Wikipedia information on South Africa.

South Africa