Saturday, July 23d, 2005

The common idea about nomad life is that it is simple: you possess the bare minimum of necessities, which you carry on your back, you mule, or, a slight degeneration, on your ox-drawn wagon, or even in the caravan behind your car to your next place of stay. I know this type of life from Europe, where I sold my house and lived in a moveable cabin with a car for almost a year. The logistics is a simple recipe: pack and go. It seems something rather for the muscles than for the brains.

I am building a dhow in Mwanza. It should become my sailing house-boat, so I hope to be back to such simple nomadism in half a year. In the meantime, you may not believe it, but my nomadism requires a serious mathematical logic. Consider the list of transport phases I had to cope with while on the move:

1. Move out of the 2 Friends boys quarters Jinja,

   1. sort personal effects in

      1. take on flight to Europe

      2. store in my container marked: for use during dhow building in Mwanza

      3. store in my container marked: for use in the dhow after it is ready of habitation

      4. sell

      5. give away

      6. destroy

   2. Store the container (also containing the pickup truck)

2. On arrival in Europe, take European car and moveable cabin to Puy Chevrol (France), to store the cabin there at a friend's holiday house. There:

   1. Sort personal effects in:

      1. store in cabin

      2. put in car for its use as a micro camper (coffee pot, cool box etc, the car is equipped with a good bed, a foldable desk and storage shelves, 230 V converter)

      3. put in car for transport to The Netherlands

      4. put in car for transport to Mwanza

      5. give away

      6. destroy

   2. Store the cabin itself

3. On arrival in The Netherlands

   1. Shop for dhow (depth meter, autopilot, mariphone, kitchen and toilet water outlets, cigars and other bare necessities.)

   2. Sort personal effects in:

      1. Leave in car

      2. pack for separate flight baggage

      3. pack for cabin flight baggage

      4. Give away

   3. Store car

4. On arrival back in Jinja:

   1. Put personal effects in pickup truck

   2. Store remaining personal effects with friends

   3. Organize selling of container

Philosophical Digression  on the Fundamental Principles of Nomad Logistics

Any logic of distribution and packing to which, I trust, no attempts have been made as yet, should proceed, I have discovered in these skirmishes, from two inconsistent principles. At the start of packing, one tends to follow the Classification in Sedentary Circumstances: in sedentary circumstances, one distinguishes, for example, between kitchen tools, office equipment, music and music playing hardware, clothing, etc. However! Right from the start one should properly apply exceptions due to considerations of proper packing order. Packing order, for instance, requires the postponement of the packing of hardware later needed to pack other hardware. Think of tools needed to dismantle hardware, screw objects from walls, find phone numbers to notify you are leaving, clean your ass when during packing long calls urge etc.
The moment suprme of the packing order comes when you are closing the last box. Here is something like a logical paradox: you have packed everything with a roll of tape and a pair of scissors. But how to pack those last two objects? There is only a fuzzy solution to this: one cuts pieces of tape of the required length and sticks them at one end, hanging down, at the front side of a shelve, or something else if you have packed all shelves. Then one throws the scissors and tape roll in the box, and seals it with the prepared tape strips.
John, in his Apocalypse, has the same problem where he writes that God destroyed heaven and earth, and all souls were waiting for the final judgment. After that, we read in Apocalypse, God created a new heaven and a new earth, and let the heavenly Jerusalem sink down from the new heaven on the new earth. The mortal soul asks himself: where was this queue of waiting souls between the destruction of the old heaven and earth and the creation of the new??? And where was that pool of fire in which the rejected souls were thrown? Of course, for God, such things are peanuts, but He created us mortals such that we are necessarily left with some headaches after being given John's Apocalyptic message. We might - or am I too frivolous? - raise the question whether God really wished John to bring this message to man, knowing that to man it is incomprehensible. Then why tell us? (For further details read Apocalypse, it is far better than anything you see on TV, or click on Apocalypse)

Back on Earth

Let me not write a book about the details and limit myself to noting that in the whole operation until Bukoba I lost a tooth brush and I left a battery charger in the moveable cabin in Puy Chevrol that should have been left in the car. There was another hitch: my airline office (SN) at Kampala sold me a return ticket Entebbe-Brussels-Lyon saying that if I notified by phone some days before, on the way back I could embark at Brussels. But in that phone call (from The Netherlands), that was flatly refused and I was required to embark at Lyon. So, my car did not get stored in the Netherlands, as planned, but on the compound of the farmer near Alpe d'Huez where I had collected it some weeks before. Can't win them all. Not too bad for an overall result.

Leaving Jinja slightly overloaded and rolling like a ship over my toiling springs after every road irregularity I headed Southwest (map) to my next hurdle, the Mutukula border to Tanzania. I had been at that shady spot before and was nervously and aggressively prepared to deal with all the unofficial and official thugs that would start trying to milk me a bit. I planned to counter questions like "Where are you going" by saying: "I came here to help you Sir, I am a clearing agent. Are you crossing?". I planned to tell all little thugs for their own safety to keep a free kick distance from my car. I planned to park my car with the rear close to the clearing offices so I could keep observing its three penetrable sides. I was thinking of how to avoid the shady officials, hoping I would propose to avoid it by offering some money, to demand full detailed inspection of my personal effects, as they did in Kampala with my crates arriving from Europe ("OK, you will waste a lot of time and effort without getting a shilling and you risk me filing a complaint and having you fired, I will try hard and I know powerful people").
But it all went differently. Last time I was required to visit 6 different offices (Uganda Police, Uganda Immigration, Uganda Customs, Tanzania Customs, Tanzania Immigration and Tanzania Police). The number of hurdles now had increased with three extra's (hereunder called extra 1, extra 2 and extra 3) to nine.
First there was Uganda police. I went through a thorough interrogation, interrupted by some phone calls by, I guessed, girlfriends. Finally I got frank with the guy and said I was, as he now thoroughly knew, on my way from Jinja to Mwanza and had not come to kill his time. That was effective. I was out in a minute. But then came the extra 1: I policewoman invited me through a corridor to another wing of the shabby police building for what she called "registration". My door was to the right at the end. The opposite door had an opening with firm steel bars through which a man was talking into the dark interior. Some seconds later I saw, for the first time in my life, a prisoner in his ceremonially appropriate quarters. I had no trouble recognizing it because the quod looked exactly like the ones you see in cowboy movies, up to the inhabitant's facial expression. I was somewhat disappointed not to scent dirty smells coming out, but for all the rest it was not the place you would fancy yourself to be. Thus I, the tourist, was led through the opposite door to another desk where one did exactly the same registration as in the room I just had freed myself of, only without interrogation and quicker.
Do you remember me? A woman asked me.
I looked at her trying hard and she said: I am Mai, last time you missed me and did your own customs clearing.
She looked nice and honest, not in the least trying me out or putting pressure on me. Though I did not remember her, the details of her story could not be invented, the woman's name had been Mai and she now repeated it in front of three policemen who apparently knew her well and showed no surprise.
She offered to take my papers to the Uganda customs, so I could do the Ugandan immigration and wait there for her. She did not ask for any money. I did not know whether she was a customs officer or something else but I gave her my papers. After all, this was all in front of real policemen in a police office holding a real prisoner.
Mai disappeared with the papers of my car and cargo, and I went with my passport to the Uganda immigration. Another surprise: no self proclaimed "clearing agents" or illicit money changers there today. Nevertheless, I  parked my car as planned and did my Uganda immigration formalities:

Photo:
above: how to park at a border office (all penetrable sides in sight from the immigration counter)
detail below: a spontaneous and remarkable effort of nature conservation (without any help nor even awareness of donor countries)

With Mai, corruption just seems paying someone for something he deserves: a friend gives a present to a friend. An appreciation for his good service of not using the power given to him by the government to annoy you.

Then, at the exit of the Tanzanian clearing area, the policeman who saw me coming closed the bar. He demanded full detailed inspection of my cargo (extra 3).
If you insist, I said, I only go back and file a complaint.
Smiling, he shook my hand and opened the gate.
At the Tanzanian side, the scarcely inhabited savanna begins almost immediately.
No gnus there, however.

(Yes I know: neither in Europe.)