Kono mosque at dusk (looking from the balcony of my guesthouse)
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Tag Archives: danger
Everyone around the tables was friendly. I remember having 3 shots with them and that’s it … until I remember stumbling and falling from weakness on gravel somewhere in the countryside amid early morning sunlight. Didn’t know where the fuck I was but it certainly wasn’t in the city. It dawned on me that I had been drugged, robbed, abducted and ditched on a road in the countryside.
A cold beer never felt so freeing; only two hours ago I was busted for grass and sweating it in a Colombian police station …
So there I was finishing photographing the huge Spanish-colonial San Felipe fortress from the old city walls of Caribbean Cartagena shortly as dusk collided with the rushing traffic and three teenagers smoking pot on the riverside walls, having left this scene as a dodgy dude approached me and decided to give him the berth before I lost my entire camera bag when a cop on a motorbike sees me, slows, turns and is suddenly searching me and then a flash from fuckin’ last night.
Hooker and that small but obvious stash and papers in my Marlboro box and after my left pocket searched the gear is found. He grins or was it a growl, I dunno cos I knew I was in the shit having carried it around all day having forgotten all about it. BUSTED.
For a few minutes I tried to reason with him that I had fuck-all dope but he kept insisting I get on the back of his motorbike and go to the station and after he threatened to handcuff me on the street, traffic and bunged up buses slowing for the spectacle, I agreed to go for a ride.
I remember my unsmiling resigned expression mirrored on astonished locals watching as we whizzed down alleys avoiding the rush hour.
At the small station it was all go as he showed another officer his catch, his small haul equal to a joint or so. They searched my camera bag thoroughly, taking interest my condoms and quizzing the crystal silica bags and I knew it was getting bad cos I had two expensive Sony digital cameras for them to play with, ponder, plunder; one guy wanted-to know how it worked and away he was outside with the video camera and I was seriously wondering how insurance would respond to the claim of busted for drugs, both cameras stolen by the cops.
But seriously the searched me extensively for more gear and were pretty shitty but when they couldn’t find any more they still talked about 5 days jail and that was a relief; thought it would be longer.
They asked for my passport and they were amused when I didn’t even have a copy (it’s illegal here not to carry ID) which I wasn’t carrying but they they seemed to warm to me when I showed them some of my tourist history books of their city and when they found out I was from Nueva Zealandia I felt hope at paying my way out trouble but with such expensive cameras on me I had no way of pleading poverty.
Yet my poor Spanish really helped me faint incomprehension but the word PROHIBITO is very clear. I agreed, Si Si.
They asked, how much I paid for it and where it was bought and I had to tell them a pro had bought for us and that it was only a small packet for around 5000 pesos – less than $2.
The other cop returned from outside my camera for me and I knew things would improve as they found no more gear and the measley amount wasn’t worth their time.
He asked if I wanted libertadade for a price. I emptied my pocket of local cash expecting to be stripped of everything before official processing began and to my surprise he handed back my dope and I left the station complete with cameras but minus about $US 15 in local pesos.
I guess my friendliness, the tiny amount, maybe simply their money making activities saw my release … I thanked him and gave him the nice one / everything’s okay Brazilian thumbs up gesture and with a sense of life again and a bewildered smile I walked stunned by my escape, down the street.
I smoked that menacing, forgotten joint back in the guesthouse courtyard and now, reflect … never has a cold beer felt so freeing.
> photos of Cartagena & Colombia
What jumping out of a plane didn’t achieve for me, jumping out of a moving car in Buenos Aires has … checked back into reality: maybe I’ll stay a while.
It started as a quiet beer on Saturday night with Murray (a Scotsman I’d met in Bolivia 3 months ago) but into the evening someone notified us that it was officially the first day of Spring and hence a huge party would consume the city all night.
He was right: 4 am and people pumping in the street, even homeless folks wasted in happy huddles. From the pub I progressed to The Big One – not talking penis size but BsAs biggest discotheque to see the UK DJ collective: The Ministry of Sound. Crowds from teenagers to transsexuals, business looks to punk. An din this 3 storied-cathedral I E-ed my way across the morning til the finish at 10 am to then taxi across BA to an after-hours (BA has numerous after hours clubs, open 10 am – 10 pm).
Drunk beer on a comfortable couch upon a sunny rooftop glasshouse of the club that Sunday, amid stark-eyed smiley clubbers and everyone, it seemed, was snorting coke or smoking grass or drinking; or all three.
I met an English-speaking Argentine of Syrian decent – we talked of my experiences there in ‘89 – and his friend, a big guy – looked Samoan - from somewhere I forget in the Pacific. They were loaded with stuff, which they shared, and I returned their generosity by buying them rounds of beer.
Over the hours, tons of people joined our sofa area, including a – seemingly, small time – mafia boss, and a pock-marked, dark shades, sinister hitman-looking guy. (Both guys looked like shady movie roles). And over the hours many men and woman came over and paid their respects, check-kissing this boss, and introductions to them for me, them dudes asking which woman I wanted, I declined and was happy to just get wasted, for the moment. But substance offers were accepted across the afternoon.
I happily offered to keep buying beers, big bottles shared out among a growing crowd around me. Strange mix of middle-age cool dudes, old surfers, oldish sluts, young skins and techno teens. People came and went as did the hours because next I remember being in an underground club located in an old mansion. Must have gotten there with the two shady types but don’t remember how … got talking with a range of people including this nice chick who wanted me to return home with her and her boyfriend for a threesome. I agreed.
We left the club together but so did those two shady guys but now also with a large skinhead.
So there we were waiting in the deserted street for a taxi. Six of us. I asked what was going on and they said maybe something to the effect of sharing the taxi home, dunno exactly.
After about 10 minutes we got a taxi but the driver was only willing to take 5 passengers. Two taxis would have been the obvious solution. But no, it left empty, and I don’t know what was said but the boyfriend, coerced, I suspect, left for the club and I got very suspicious and now, somewhat bored and concerned with these thuggish characters. I’d decided (around 1.30 am) it had been time to leave back in the club when I gave the boss money to buy beer and he didn’t return (equal to about $US 20) the change; when challenged he said that he’d returned it.
Now a police car passed and I flagged it down, and the chick followed me across to the car, and speaking in English she asked what the fuck I was doing. (Most Argentineans don’t trust the cops here, who had been linked to various kidnappings and other crimes in BA since the economic crisis hit last December.) I said it was to protect her; I didn’t trust the potential of a rape. Her reasoning convinced me to back away from the cops, that she didn’t seem worried. The cops took off and the guys now looked at me. What you do that for, the boss asked. I apologized, by dismissing it, “Sometimes I get crazy …”; “cops often give you a ride in NZ”.
So another taxi came and we all got in. I made sure that I was beside the door, with the chick to my right. Not sure if I had said that I want to get out or stop or what.
But my intuition set off the final alarm bell so I opened the door as we drove down a deserted main street, around 2 am. The chick grabbed the door, the bald bouncer also, and locked to the lock. “What you doing; are you crazy? I thought you were intelligent …” she said.
Can’t remember answer or how soon before I next reacted but I think seconds as we turned – hence slowed, into another deserted main street. My light said: GO. Everything so fast. I whacked the big guys arms away from the lock, somehow opened the door and leaped from the moving car to land running and wobbling but somehow still upright.
How’s it possible – upright. Stood stunned, wow, what happened, staring at the taxi stopped about 40m ahead with its red rear lights staring back at me … then it drove off … I don’t know how I landed unscathed or how I got the nerve but just reacted – there was no thought beyond OUT NOW. I remember saying as I exited: “Bye Bye. Fuck you!”
Less than 24 hours later and I’m still trying to recall the exact patterns of thoughts and movements but they are lost to the speed of things. It wasn’t a dream. Be easy to explain if it was … But seems like it. Rushing with crazy, confused adrenaline I couldn’t believe what had happened as I sat in another cab heading into the downtown for some comfort in a club girl.
I was so fuckin’ hyped; shocked; disbelieving. What with no sleep for 40 hours, taken Es, and an ongoing menu of dope, drink and coke, no food, you could say that I had an active imagination; but then amid the haze came that gut clarity that said, Danger, GO.
It ended with whisky and a lovely, dark-haired Peruvian woman, 23. She was wonderful fun, and very beautiful. We shared loud, simultaneous orgasms across Monday morning.
Now, Tuesday: woken from a deep sleep and have changed down a gear or two as I wonder which direction is next … after weeks in BsAs am bored by the clubs, cocaine, and sex-for-money chicks … need a new hit – for a few weeks, anyway.
This latest misadventure has encouraged me to Hit the Road – time for some fresh air, time to travel again, maybe a back-to-nature trip; cos cities can make people crazy …
Outside a church disassembling its Sunday mass a self-declared “Christian” approached me. He wanted to talk life. I thought okay, what-the-hell. He asked many questions as he led me to a quiet, outdoor cafe. There he told me his story.
He, a Rwandan who’d trekked across mountains to escape the tribal massacres, was on a Kenyan transit visa and needed to get to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he’d an uncle at the university who could help him. He asked me for money – $40 – so he could continue his journey, and I was replying no, sorry, when two men approached our table. One guy in a suit; the other dressed casual. Neither smiling.
They flashed ID – SECURITY / POLICE !
I thought – What-the-fuck? The bulky, casually-dressed dude took the Christian away as the other smaller, suited guy declared that the guy had been arrested. That he was a wanted terrorist! I thought this some kinda bad joke. And scoffed. The officer got shitty. He demanded to see my passport. I told him it was back at the hotel. He started asking questions: What was our business? What had we talked about? How did I know this man? He got aggressive; threatening me to take this situation seriously, to co-operate.
The big man returned. They said they’d been watching us with binoculars from that tall circular tower – Nairobi’s landmark. They accused me of supplying him with false traveller’s cheques, then of giving him drugs. I started to shit myself: corrupt cops who wanna frame me for anything that pays.
The small, shrewd copper told me of the marijuana penalties. I replied I didn’t smoke. ”Not even cigarettes?!” demanded the other. ”No.” They inspected my hands. No stains. I couldn’t fathom whether they were convincing con men or corrupt cops.
And was that “Christian” part of it? They told me to stop lying, threatening – “Do you want to talk here or at the station.” I replied “Here”; knowing that if these guys were cops it’d be very
difficult / very expensive getting released from a station, especially if they began the paperwork. I continued being polite, patient but firm.
Maybe I can get rid of them with a small bribe?
They insisted I show my traveller’s cheques, to compare mine with the suspects. If they didn’t match, then I was clear. I didn’t trust them. And was reluctant to reveal my hidden moneybelt (luckily, I’d left my visible moneybelt with my passport back in the hotel). I didn’t budge. I was to be charged.
They asked how I felt about spending time in a cell.
As they escorted me across the park another man appeared. The boss. I went through my story again. He too demanded to see my traveller’s cheques. A car was now waiting. I knew if I got in the car – or was forced, I was in for some serious trouble whether these guys were cops or con men. I then decided to show them my stash, and with their permission I walked alittle way off and out of their view I pulled a $20 cheque from my hidden moneybelt. I reckoned I could handle losing 20 bucks. I showed them the Amex cheque, a distinctively Australasian issue because it had – Westpac Bank – printed across it in red. This I pointed out: that the suspect couldn’t possibly have the same issue. It stumped them.
They wanted a couple of bucks – for beer, then said I was free to go.
During that hour I remained uncertain of their real identity. It seemed likely they were con men yet, as corrupt cops they fitted that ruthless stereotype typical of Hollywood movies depicting the Third World. Either possibility seemed plausible …
*
PS: a clipping from a Kenyan paper I came across while there: The Daily Nation: letters to the editor: POLICE MARRED HAPPY TOUR
[I and a fellow Kenyan recently toured Tanzania for five days ... as might be expected, we bought a few things, including three t-shirts, five cloth materials, a food mixer and a souvenir. We set off for Nairobi ... our luggage and papers were checked at the border and okayed by immigration officials. We then boarded a matatu (taxi-van) for Nairobi. We got to a road block in Kajiado and were asked to open our bags - only my friend and I. The police found in our bags the items earlier mentioned and asked us to produce "permits" for them, which, of course, we did not have. They asked the driver to leave us behind but he instead pleaded with them to have mercy on us. The police said they would consider it if my friend and I bribed them with Sh500 each. My friend and I were scared ... the police finally conceded a Sh100 discount and accepted Sh400 from each of us. The second nightmare came just after Maasai Girl's School, where we found another road block. The same process followed and bags were turned upside down again. Two policemen took Sh300 from us ...]
> photos of Nairobi & Kenya
travel article 1997 / travels 1991
IN BANGLADESH, Mother Earth fluctuates fast between friend and foe: the mighty rivers that flow from the Himalayas give life, while seasonal storms reap death.
What happens in faraway lands is usually irrelevant when watched on telly in New Zealand. However with recent storms in Bangladesh and New Zealand, such headlines jolted me back to when I was caught in one of Bangladesh’s worse-ever cyclones.
While the world witnessed it on T.V: I’d watched from a window within its path.
Bangladesh is roughly half the size of New Zealand but home to 117 million people, making it the world’s most-densely populated country, with 813 people per sq km! Located between India, Burma and the Bay of Bengal – where monsoonal winds whip in from the west, often devastating the southern coast of Bangladesh.
Most of the country is flat, with the crowded deltaic lowlands supporting much of the population. Here the great rivers of the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna flood to replenish the intensively-cropped land. From the Ganga River alone, over 1.4 billion tonnes of silt is washed down from the Himalayas each year – nearly fives times that of the Amazon. Upon these low-laying deltas and islands of fertile mud, farming (and fishing) communities thrive, but it is these areas that are most prone to cyclones.
The rivers and their many tributaries are the main mode of transportation in Bangladesh and so in the city of Khulna, I boarded a battered colonial steamboat to Dacca, capital of Bangladesh.
The journey took 28 hours.
Amongst the masses on the upper deck was like a street scene from Calcutta. People filled every space: babies crying, women cooking, goats bleating, hawkers shouting, Muslim males praying as others slept, as the engine droned endlessly. It proved impossible to sit anywhere, until an old man offered me some space on his cardboard – it kept our butts off the damp, rusting deck.
Beside us an elderly Muslim couple shaded from the sun beneath a sheet, tied between the railing and a wall peg. The woman was asleep, slouched against her husband, shrouded by black cloth and veil, only her henna-laced hands exposed to the outsider’s eyes.
It is the Muslim dominance of Bangladesh – at 86% of the population, that saw the country’s creation. Following the Partition of Hindu-dominated India in 1947, East Bengal (as Bangladesh was once called) united with Muslim Pakistan to become East Pakistan. But tensions between dominant West Pakistan and Bengali East Pakistan later ignited into unrest and war in 1970. Supported by India, East Pakistan soon gained independence to become Bangladesh.
Since then military regimes have dominated government, until 1991, when democracy arrived with the change from a Presidential to a Parliamentary system, ushering in Bangladesh’s first female Prime Minster, Begum Khaleda. (Sheikh Hasina, another woman, leads Muslim Bangladesh today.)
COX’S BAZAAR began as a colonial town on the east coast of Bangladesh, founded in 1798 by Lieutenant Hiram Cox of the British East India Company. In recent times it has become a quiet holiday town, noted for the world’s longest sandy beach – stretching 120 kilometres to the Burmese border. I had reckoned on some laziness in the sun, but it wasn’t meant to be …
On the day of my arrival, April 29th 1991, it began to rain. During the evening it sharpened to a Wellington Southerly -torrents of rain and gale-force winds. Gusts shook the old hotel, rattling windows. Outside, palm trees buckled and flapped. Roofing iron clattered, bits crashing, things cracking. Along the corridor windows broke as roaring wind accelerated like a Jumbo jet. The windows in my room ripped free – shattering glass; wooden frames bashing, curtains sucked out, as wind and rain and leaves flew inside. Wave after wave of shrieking winds, that lasted 3 or 4 hours, reaching its zenith about midnight.
Next morning I woke confused, surrounded by water and leaves – the windows broken, the concrete floor like an autumn swimming pool. This was no dream. The wreckage beyond my room was immense.
A gentle breeze caressed Cox’s Bazaar as I wandered damaged streets, where bloated cows lay stiff, where children looked frightened. Banana plantations were shredded. Palm trees torn loose or bent like spiked umbrellas. Buildings had walls ruined, iron roofing scattered. A shed that was a shop sat on its side; thrown down a riverbank.
On the edge of town whole settlements had been washed away by huge tidal surges. Boys waded chest-deep through swamped areas, clutching salvaged bamboo beams. The pristine beach was littered with debris; scores of fishing trawlers sat wedged amid homes; dense rows of mature pines were snapped like matchsticks. Two women wept as they searched the sand, their fingers mining where their home had been. They found a pot.
Days later there was still no electricity, no running water in the hotel. I washed from well-drawn water, and drunk the same mucky brown stuff – aided by purifying tablets. Meantime the locals began repairs; the clang of hammers across the tranquillity.
I now realised the enormity of the storm having read a Bengali English-language newspaper: “Wind speeds averaging 120 km per hour and peaking at 250 km per hour; 139,000 dead; 1.7 million made homeless.”
The pressure of Bangladesh’s increasing population and the resilience of the human spirit ensures people return to rebuild and take their chances in this, a hazardous yet fertile land, where cyclones and rivers shape the rhythms of life.
I’d crossed the West Bank from Jordan to arrive in Jerusalem two days after the second anniversary of the first Intifada – uprising.
Palestinians had demonstrated in the streets and two young men had been killed by Israeli soldiers. This day I stubbled into the riot that followed the men’s funeral.
Soldiers
One, experienced
a mean-looking guy who’d seen fist-fights
riots and wars
He whistles, raising his baton
then barks the orders
Another man in green is nervous
terrified
see his eyes
watch his hand
–shake
finger squeezing an M16
barrel held @ 75 degrees
Warning shots
Pushing, running, shrieking
women, men
Soldiers
Stones
Now, an empty street
of discarded banners
shoes
scarves
and an abandoned coffin.
It happened fast – Israeli soldiers threatened me & my camera if I took photos. Disturbed by the experience, I returned to my guesthouse in Arab East Jerusalem; the owner listened to what I’d just seen – then told me a young-Israeli-female soldier had just been stabbed-dead in the old city.
Illusive peace – Jerusalem, Palestine/Israel, 1989 (c) MRP ART
Extract from story - Hitching to Baghdad:
A cloudless sky overlaps the receding morning grey. On the streets of Rutbah the potholes are puddles and asphalt glossy as I stroll in a dream state: absorbing the very first impressions of my first day in Iraq.
Before Rutbah: hitching the desert across Jordan and Iraq on a gasoline tanker, 1989
I, am, away with it. Still tired. And I don’t even notice the Nissan pick-up slow up beside me. But I soon accept a lift; he speaks no English but lets me out 400 metres later – in the slow centre of town.
I sip sweet black tea outside a basic café and dwell – so this is Iraq, it’s okay – yeah, quiet, people seem friendly, and super-curious for sure. Across from me rows of flat-roofed, sun-bleached, bland concrete buildings border the dusty asphalt mainstreet. Many have a half-completed look, with bricks and rusting steel exposed, awaiting an optimistic additional storey. A few people are out and about but it’s not busy. Shops display modern clothing, Adidas bags and other goods hanging from pinned-back steel doors, where wooden crates and heaped sacks clutter their entrances.
Basically a scene not worth writing about but to bring it alive suddenly – a man balancing a tray of tiny glasses on his fingertips says “You are welcome to Iraq. Most welcome!” “Thank you. It’s good to be here.” And I ask him how much I owe him. “No. This okay, no money.” “No money? Free?” “Yes free for you. You like more?” He replaces my empty glass with another fresh glass of tea then darts between tables, serving others while still shouting out questions at me: Which country you from? Your name is? You are tourist, yes? Where you go after here? How long you stay Iraq, friend?
During this tea talk a hell-of-a-noise emerges from down the mainstreet to be loads of schoolchildren marching and chanting. Three boys lead the crowd holding Saddam portraits. Followed by two lads with a large-scripted Arabic banner. Two girls in camouflage frocks carrying colorful bouquets. Two boys troop flags. The Iraqi national flag flutters limply in the light breeze as columns of school boys – flanked by unsmiling teachers – follow on mass. I see two lads giggle and jostle – to get scolded by a serious man.
I ask the guy standing beside me “What’s this for?” Another man replies “Holy-day” Well, it wasn’t Ramadan (the Muslim holy month), that I did know. I asked him again “A holiday for what?” “Our president, Saddam.” Really? Weird way to spend a holiday.
But I’m intrigued so I follow the parade – since I’m heading out of town to hitch, anyway. On traffic island a huge mural of Saddam’s head and shoulders – in military uniform and shades – dominates the passing kids. Several children call to me and I take their photo.
Pro-Saddam march by school kids in Rutbah, 1989
Soon the parade merges with adults gathered in a parched park shaded by Eucalyptus trees. There on a stage are wreaths of color, more presidential portraits, more Iraqi flags. In fact the entire stage is a parcel of Iraqi tri-colours – of red, white with green stars and black ribbons wrapping everything and everybody, adding an authorative splash of official color to the drab-suited dignitaries seated by the speaker’s podium.
Raspy, amplified Arabic shrieks over the crowd to reach across the street to where I stand watching; not wanting to be intrusive I purposely keep a distance because already I’ve been the reason for too many bewildered stares.
I’m crouched down rewinding my film, about to put a new one in the camera when I gaze up to see many faces staring and pointing over at me? At me !!!
A wildfire ignites before my eyes as Arabs whisper to one another as the murmuring spreads to crackling as more faces turn to stare at me.
The speaker is losing his audience – his words no longer of interest as 100s of Arabs now stare at me. Fuck. Shit. Feeling uncomfortable I leave but before a half-metre a guy in suit-and-tie is beside me, identifying himself as “Security.”
I forget about the million stares on me as he glares down and barks “You have no right to be here! No photos allowed! Why are you here?” “I’m a tourist.” “You have visa?” “Yeah.” “You have permission for camera?” “Whose permission?” “You must have a letter from from the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad” “But I haven’t reached Baghdad yet!”
He thrust his hand forward – “Give your film to me!” “No! I’m not losing my photos of Jordan.” And shoving my camera into my bag I walk away raving madly. “I’m a tourist! I’m a tourist! Tourists carry cameras!” To my surprise he leaves me alone.
The incident makes me uneasy. Time to leave town – quick.
I decide against hitching further and instead backtrack to the bus station where I join three Iraqis in a shared taxi to Ramadi …
In the backstreets of Baghdad, 1989
