Introduction
In the fall of 1968, I drove overland with others on a trip that begin in London, but officially left from Belgium all the way to Bombay, India through Europe and the Middle East. I then lived in India and Nepal for the next two years. This journal remembers some of that adventure looking back 55 years ago. Before the war destroyed a lot of what I saw.
I had flown from New York that June and spent a summer on a blitz team in France with a short-term youth organization. Our team travelled along the Riviera from Italy to the Spanish border, helping to give out a million tracts and witnessing for Jesus. Those hot beaches beside a gorgeous Mediterranean Sea, even nude ones back then which certainly shocked me not a little, were beautiful. It was fun walking, even running some times, stopping to chat with folk and then moving in the truck to the next area to do it again, mile after mile. We women slept in the back of the truck while the guys found a spot outside nearby.
The best stop was the morning I awoke to the pounding of horses’ hooves racing by, and someone yelled. So I looked outside to find us on the outer ring of a race track in Marseilles. I am horse nut, by the way, and everyone knew it, and why they yelled for me to wake up. Yes, life was exciting for a Canadian farm girl from Ontario.
I remember Monte Carlo. I boldly walked into a casino just to see what it was about. Now that was a shocking thing to do for a very conservative Christian, but perhaps gives a touch on insight at the same time. How life has changed. I later was handing out tracts in the streets when a policeman approached me, took my piece of paper, and immediately arrested me.
At the police station the officers had been rounding up the rest of the team I was on. Little did we know then that the Communist Party had caused quite an upset not long before our arrival. I tried to translate the French conversation for our team leader, and to communicate our goal and purpose back to the officials, simply sharing our faith. The tract we were handing out, however, was titled, Spiritual Revolution. It referred to an inner change in a person that occurs through faith in Jesus.
We were escorted to the border, and quietly left . Nothing bad happened to us, as I later crossed many other borders in a life-time. It was an introduction for me to a bigger world than I had ever known.
By the end of that summer, I joined the others at a month long conference in London, England, held at one of its largest churches. I was stirred by the messages, and decided to join the team that would leave for two years in India. But I no money at all after finishing college. My Mom was a widow on a pension, and so I faced the reality that I could go nowhere (even back to Canada!) unless God intervened. So I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed, as only the desperate will pray, needing a miracle.
After the conference ended we were sent to various homes of team members’ families, and I was sent to Birmingham. A woman doctor was ministering to the Indians of that city. She took me to work with her and taught me how to read a fundus (growing baby) in a mother’s tummy, and other things. I just put on a lab coat and watched and learned a lot.
But it was time to return to London, as everyone was leaving England for the headquarters in Belgium. There were five trucks waiting and I climbed into the back of the last one. The trucks began to leave. Someone raced out from the office and stopped my driver. We were sent across the city back to the church where the conference had been held. We would be here awhile, I was told, so I went inside.
Someone recognized me and told me there was mail for me on the mantel of the fireplace. I walked over and picked up the letters and starting opening them. Every one had money in it. The first one was an inheritance of several thousand dollars, and I had my money for India. God made sure I had my miracle. One of the greatest of my life.
There was no way that mail would have reached me in time if forwarded, before the teams left. I learned more from that moment than almost any other in my life. God sees us, understands our thoughts, and longs to love us in practical ways. His Love– the greatest gift in life.
Now I understand the loveliness of being someone else’s miracle, as they were to me. Figuratively, God’s money is our money; His hands our hands–being kind and generous; His voice our voice– never cursing, never slandering. His feet our feet–willing to go another mile for someone in need. Let’s be someone’s miracle today. But keep the details secret. Jesus taught us that. Who does God want you to help today?
I watched the white cliffs of Dover disappear in the distance in England from a ship crossing the English Channel, and I arrived at Zaventem.
A few days later. I walked outside one early morning to stare at the big truck I was to climb into and live in for the next month. I felt shy meeting the others. The truck was three/quarters filled with supplies, then mattresses on top where we would live. We could barely sit up, but it was okay, although the climb in wasn’t easy. The back door closed, the driver got in the front, and we left for Asia
Women’s Team to India 1968: Left to Right: Norma Gillespie, back row: Betty Cooper, Rachel, Valerie, Mandy Bellamy, Collette. Front: Jeanette Watson holding Paul, Hannah, Alison
On Our Way
I remember we drove night and day most of the way and it was a month on the road in late September into October. The drive through Germany and Austria was lovely. But once we reached Yugoslavia, that long stretch was very depressing, as I felt so sad for the people. Grey is the word that stands out in my mind…grey clothes, grey buildings. Bulgaria was better, but now I was excited as we approached the Middle East. We crossed the Bosporus on a bridge and arrived in Turkey. I liked Istanbul. We girls enjoyed freshening up in a modern IBM building, and I am chuckling as I pen these words. I’d like to return there. One of those moments I’d love to develop, but let’s move on.
I vaguely remember briefly stopping in Ankara when I tried to use an outhouse, but laughing little faces appeared in the tiny window to watch. There were miles and miles of dirt and rocky soil and miles of boredom, but it seemed most of the trip was like that. The daily grind of dust and driving was distracted for a long time when I spotted Mt Ararat, where Noah’s ark rested after the great Flood. Finally we were nearing the Iran border.
We arrived around 5pm and there was only a little hut and a bar across the dirt track, to stop arrivals. That is the only border crossing that really stands out in my mind. As we got out of the trucks and approached, the official slammed down his window and rushed away. We parked there all night, sleeping in the truck as usual, but when he returned the next morning, he stamped our dozen or so passports. We drove away, heading to Tabriz. On to Iran’s capital for a much-needed three-day rest.
Lots of times on this journey there was no road, only a track in the soil to follow. Once a villager pointed to the mountains ahead telling us there was a pass there somewhere. We forded rivers. There were no bridges in the wilderness where we drove. No wonder our truck carried 15 tires, and must have had its own stored gas supply cause I don’t remember stopping at gas stations. I dont remember gas stations in the Middle East, but must have been in the two cities we passed through. It was major stop to deal with a flat tire, but I don’t remember any of those times. It is hard now to keep events in correct order, as they are blurred in my memory a bit as to what happened where.
I loved fresh, hot, flat bread in the markets and hot chai (tea boiled in milk sometimes with seasonings; occasionally clear). We simply stopped on the side of the road to make lunch sandwiches from those slabs of wonderful bread. This photo is from another team’s trip, but same as ours otherwise.
It was confusing to wake up at in the darkness of night wondering what country I was in and what side of the road we were supposed to drive on. That was especially true as we approached any round-a-bouts….but they disappeared when roads became a single tract. I liked the people in the villages, children on donkeys, curious of us as we were of them.
In the truck, individuals would read, study Hindi phrases, chat with others. But someone might be sleeping because we girls took turns sitting with the driver overnight, changing every four hours to help him stay awake and sharp. I only realize now I never saw him sleep, so one of the guys from the second truck must have come forward to relieve him some of the time while I was sleeping myself.
There were no public toilets, and no trees to hide in, so we women would take a blanket, walk a ways from the trucks, and take turns hunkering down in the middle of that blanket barrier for relief.
A roll of toilet paper became more precious than anything once we left Europe, and you could not buy any in the market even in India except for a small fortune. Two squares had to do. Imagine that. I am not trying to be obnoxious but awake you to the reality that life we experienced was outside our own experience. We just adjusted. It was new to all of us, but a good preparation for my years in India and Nepal that lay ahead.
Finally Tehran. In this more current photo, this is not the Tehran I remember. I remember looking for an English newspaper in the market because I wanted to know who had won the Canadian Federal Election – Trudeau, the father.
Those mountains in the photo we climbed. It was a very dangerous trip and only I didn’t realize it until an incident that showed me just how unaware I was. In the middle of the night somewhere we stopped. A simple sign lay against a pile of sand, but no one could read its squiggles. The drivers got out and walked ahead a short distance and found that an avalanche had wiped out the road ahead of us. No barrier in place to warn us and we would have driven off the edge in a few moments. The road just disappeared into a huge, black void.
A construction crew had made a narrow dirt track against the left mountain wall. Our two trucks, one by one, slowly turned and inched forward, tight against the mountain, until we finally got past that black, empty space. I was sitting up front with the driver in the lead truck and probably shut my eyes. Tense? Oh yeh. The trucks stayed far apart in case the soil collapsed under us.
It was bumpy, tough journey to the Caspian Sea shoreline and I feel now that the hardest part had been in Iran. I was disappointed at the sea, which looked lovely, but a long stretch of muddy flats prevented us from walking in the water. An empty land afterwards guided us to the Afghan border.
Suddenly a beautiful, modern highway stretched out in front of us. It was a delightful shock, as good as any highway at home. Built by the Russians I later discovered. A comfortable, smooth ride now as the miles passed under our wheels.
At Herat we stopped at the little village. I can still see us four Western young women eating a meal at a table in the centre of the room. But a group of turbaned Afghan men arrived, who settled on a raised platform around the walls of the room. They laid their rifles on their laps, and stared at us. We got out there. I watched the old fort a long time, as we drove away, I was thinking of Genghis Khan passing this way many lifetimes ago.
Kandahar and a wonderful bathhouse. We rented the whole place, and I had a marvellous hot shower, the first I remember of the whole trip. But surely in Tehran I must have had one. Funny what you remember, or don’t, after 50 or so years.
Kabul (pronouned Kaabull) and a stop at the the university, where the trucks parked in a back alley. Another girl and I waited in our vehicle. Suddenly we became alarmed, quickly locked the doors and slid down out of sight to hide. A group of maybe 15 young radicals came up the alley, swarmed the vehicle, pounding with sticks against the windows and walls, and rocking the 2 1/2 ton truck a bit. Just as suddenly, they were gone.
The Khyber Pass – driving on a modern paved highway through the mountains to Peshawar and heading to the next border crossing – on into Pakistan. We stopped briefly for a break in the pass, so I studied a dirt trail far below, the ruts made by passing camels over the years no doubt. Did I not see two of the trails? There were five used by caravans moving back and forth through that valley, but I seem to remember one went further north….I expect they are all blown to bits by now. I later planned to return to Afghanistan through government channels, but it was not to be.
I didn’t know I was experiencing history and a brief period of quietness that that no longer exists. I wish I could have had a camera with me. I’m glad I got to see the country before it was torn apart.
As the sun came up, we girls would get out and run ahead of the truck, just for the exercise to greet the dawn. A lovely memory to cherish. I long to retrace that route, but it is too dangerous to consider. The mind might say go anyway, but the old body simply disobeys. Ah, memories. Glad I have good ones. Norma
That’s me on the left, reaching for the toddler.
The Khyber Pass – I’m at the back row of three, extreme right, or just behind Alison wearing a black sweater on her shoulders.
As we approached Peshawar and the Pakistan border, I was told there had been a mix-up before we left, and I had no Visa to enter Pakistan. It was quite a sudden shock to be dropped off alone in no man’s land, on the other side of the world, and watch the others drive away. I looked around, and started walking.
There was a fair distance from leaving Afghanistan’s border, and entering another country. There was a village in the middle. I had to find an official to get my Visa, and then to find a local bus going to Pakistan so I could catch up. They told me they would wait for me ahead, was it Rawalpindi or Lahore? Somehow I did it. Was I relieved to be safe and back with the others in that old vehicle. Sounds simple. It wasn’t.
Norma & toddler Paul Watson somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan
How come we women now had to put on a burka in public? Long cloth gown with only a few slits for a face mask. The gown completely covered me, and was it hot and stuffy. I never saw any pretty ‘blue’ ones. Ours were dirty white ones. Horrible. Fortunately that didn’t last too long, and we were back in our usual Western dress for the rest of the trip.
The land had flattened by now, as we left the mountains. Bullock carts moved slowly on the streets ahead of us, so we slowed considerably. It was muggy and hot, but still lots of local markets in passing. I don’t remember much about Pakistan. Brahma cattle became more common I think, with their massive humps on their shoulders. I would later have direct involvement with one of them in India, when it tried to gore me, but that’s a memory for another time. I remember the first time I saw a Palm tree as the landscape changed again.
Finally, about 8,000 miles from when we began, we crossed that the last border. INDIA. Coming down through Punjab, the first thing I saw was a pack of dogs tearing at the carcass of a bloated, water buffalo. Yuck. The area was very pretty and green I remember, but anyone heading to the hot plains of India soon feels that never ending heat. And people—people everywhere! India is people.
The trucks carried supplies for the OM office in Bombay, but I don’t remember that last day arriving there. I always see the curve of the bay in Bombay in my mind and the ocean. Two of us girls were to stay in the Bombay office, but the others left, and I never saw them again……..except big Betty back in Canada years later, the second truck driver who did a terrific job of crossing those miles of wilderness. Life in India for me was just beginning. It would be an exhausting, challenging, emotionally traumatic experience, but these memories are enough for now.
A NEW LIFE
That I survived Asia during the next two years was another miracle. The India I knew is not the India of today from what I’ve seen of it on U-tube and other programs. It still had the flair of the British Empire.
But first I had to survive a year in Bombay, which I will quickly pass over. We hid for about a week when riots broke out in the streets, and I remember seeing a bus burning. My Mom read about it in the newspaper in Canada and phoned the International Leader who then contacted me. What was I to say? I didn’t want to worry her.
I could spend hours telling her about rats the size of cats that our neighbour fed every day as part of his worship. They were every where. That is why we slept on our office desk and never the floor, until we got screens on the windows. Then I learned bedbugs didn’t bite me, but sure did the others sleeping on the floor in the same room, cause many nights the girls were up spraying to kill them, and hitting our sleeping bags with anything they could find.
I was in charge of the postal department in the main office, but went out witnessing building by building every weekend, or holding Bible studies with students.
Water was such a precious thing. We had a barrel at both ends of our office area that collected water from a tap that started dripping for an hour every morning and evening, for five million people. It was a horrible moment to hear a splash and to find a big rat swimming in the kitchen barrel. I was to cook breakfast, while it scratched trying to get out right behind me.
Our garbage, and everyone else’s was thrown down a shute out in the hallway. I learned about the lowest class of Indians, who helped move that smelly mess away, or sorted it for their own use….hard to remember details I would rather forget.
I was surrounded by masses of peoples on the city streets. For thousands in Bombay their only home was a simple mat on the concrete ground and maybe a few possession beside them. I had to step over sleeping bodies every day going and coming from our apartment.
Someone’s radio would turn on full blast at 5 am, and the mullah would call the faithful to prayer over a loud speaker from the Muslim mosque nearby. I wasn’t getting enough sleep, which began to take its toll, adding to the unending heat and filth, and struggles just to keep going day after day.
Divali celebration arrived and people happily threw purple dye at me all along the route to and from work. It sometimes stung, and certainly ruined clothes, and I rushed to escape them.
I had tried shopping in the market. There were at least a dozen stalls with the same food you had to work your way down to get it at the price that in time you learned it should be. It might take me 15 minutes to get a bunch of bananas from the first stall, who always demanded too much until I was about three stalls away, and then he found a way to persuade me to come back. I learned the price and he knew I knew it, but didn’t matter. I might have a dozen things on my shopping list that day, and one had to bargain for just about everything.
We had ration cards for things like bags of rice. So in time, we hired someone to take care of things like this. He spent his days shopping for our food, or getting train tickets for someone, another long line-up to endure. He wasn’t in any hurry; it was all part of his normal daily life and he was being paid.
No one said ‘please’ or ‘thank you,‘ which is part of my cultural background. Even so, I liked the people of India, and still do, just not my physical surroundings and that terrible heat.
What shook me the most in the market was turning and finding a python, its little tongue flickering out at me, dangling maybe two feet away from the neck of an Indian man . He would be asking for some dood, (milk in Hindi). I would freeze, then flee.
I am absolutely terrified of snakes to this day. Much later up north, I had a cobra follow me one time in the grass when I made the mistake of crossing a grassy strip between buildings in a compound. Others came to my rescue yelling, and I leaped onto the platform that united all the buildings, and fled.
The only relief I found was a delightful little garden in the biggest and richest hotel in Bombay. I would walk in there like I owned the place, to sit in that tiny garden by myself for maybe a half an hour. I am a gardener. The loveliness of the place was like a balm on my emotional wounds.
However, I finally had enough of India, and rebelled. I was deeply, deeply unhappy. I felt trapped and helpless, like someone God had put on a shelf and then had deserted. I was suffering and struggling to cope. I desperately needed a change and the leaders recognized my strain.
Gladly I took a train south and spend the next few months in a smaller city, Bangalore , which I liked. I worked in the office and made friends within the community. All was fine, until I watched a man throw himself in front of a passing train that cut him in half. Had I just walked a bit faster, paid attention, done something he might still alive, I kept thinking to myself. I was there and God was there, but I felt I had failed my mission in life. A man died horribly, and I didn’t do a thing, couldn’t do a thing to save him. It happened so fast.
I would read later in the newspaper that he was a 37 year old clerk, whose business had failed. I had been walking home so happy with an Indian girl, chatting away as I watched him coming towards me. He stopped suddenly, threw down his bike and raced towards the approaching train. I froze in horror as the train’s brakes squealed and squealed, until the train finally stopped. I ran up to where the man lay underneath, with just a tiny piece of skin holding him together…..and stared and stared…..
The Indian girl with me pulled my hand and we left in a daze as people came running. It didn’t help that a few moments later a Brahma cow tried to kill me. I had paused to tell someone about the incident. The cow blocked my way and without thinking, I slapped her on the rump to get her to move. She lunged at me with her huge horns that I grabbed. I yelled and kicked her in the face. She paused, and I leaped over a gate and inside a fenced area. I waited until she finally move away but my stomach felt very, very sick. I hurried back to our our residence. The train whistle blew all that day, as I laid there in shock listening to it.
The next day I had to cross those same tracks to get to work and back and forth for days afterwards. I am so grateful for the girl who went with me and tried to distract me, as I approached those tracks. I froze again at the crossing as another train rolled by, but this time it did not stop.
A missionary reassured me it wasn’t my fault, putting into words what I already knew mentally. But I was internally shaken. I had come to India to help people and felt I had failed my mission completely.
Another person might have reacted completely differently than I did, even just tossing it off, but in life, we each have our own sensitivity level, our ability to cope with the trauma we face.
My healing came in stages. I was sent me to Nepal for three months to rest. I helped with the production of the book, Black and Free as it was redrafted for the Asian market. I now wore Western dress again, drove a vehicle to pick up or deliver visitors to the airport. I rode a bicycle miles and miles in that wonderful valley past temples and villages, happily exploring its nooks and crannies. I was free at last to enjoy Asia, and I did.
I love Nepal to this day, even though the tragedies of violence and bloodshed, and landslides since have destroyed much of what I knew. The King’s elephants, in colourful rich coverings, were regularly exercised, often walking by our house. I enjoyed wonderful Bible studies and fellowship with others. It remains in my mind as my happiest period in Asia. No wonder Nepal is my favourite country to this day.
As a Canadian, I was invited to celebrate the Queen’s birthday at the Embassy, and I wore Indian sari to the formal gathering. I remember when the King of Nepal and his family came in and took the seat of prominence. But soon afterwards I felt a deep chill as the Chinese representatives arrived in full military uniform. China was a closed country. It was my first formal event of that magnitude. The Japanese Ambassador’s wife enjoyed our conversation, and invited me to their residence the next day. It, also, was a lovely moment.
I was keenly interested in China by that time, and wanted to get involved in distributing those little red books that all Chinese carried. Not with the words of their Emperor, but rather words of the Bible transcribed and hidden under a similar cover. A Christian leader I will not name came to Nepal to encourage us to find ways to witness like this. I was reading Jeffery Bull’s book about Tibet, longing to go there myself.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s political and spiritual leader, fled to India in 1958 when the Chinese took over his country .
Nepal is the only Hindu kingdom of the world with the constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy. It is a mountainous country situated between India and China.
A group of us decided to drive to the Chinese border with Tibet in the mountains just to see it. We picked up a guard en route as we passed checkpoints along the way. Deep in the mountains we reached the border. I got out of the vehicle to stare at a huge pink bridge spanning a roaring river underneath. A Chinese guard stood at attention on the far side, rifle at side. We didn’t stay long.
I have never lost my desire to visit Tibet, especially Lhasa and the forbidden city. That there is a modern train service there today from a major Chinese port, makes it more convenient for those groups who get permission to visit. I returned to living in a British guest house in Kathmandu with Tibetan servants, who shared their stories about fleeing the countries barely 10 years before my arrival.
Sadly, the day came when I had to return to India. I took a plane ride over the mountains to Bihar, on the plains of Northern India. I got a taxi to take me to the train station, where I planned to continue on to Delhi. There was a massive crowd of men outside the station, all waving red flags, arousing my curiosity.
I had barely walked inside the station when the head man grabbed me and pulled me into the women’s washroom. He opened the door to a tiny broom closet, yanked some things out and shoved me inside, covering me with the mops and brooms while explaining there was a riot about to erupt. The men outside were going to attack a military train due to arrive to put down the Communist uprising across the State. He fled.
I hid in that closet for 15 hours, terrified the whole time what might happen to me if the men found me there. I only remember the hours and hours of silence. Were there shouts and bangs and a barrage of fire? All trains were stopped, and still the silence went on. I wet myself in desperation, fearful of opening that door.
When morning dawned, a train arrived, and I jerked open the door and raced to the platform, and leaped aboard. It didn’t linger, and soon I moved eastward, so glad to be moving again. Things quieted down for awhile.
I now joined a women’s team in Punjab, Gujarat and Rajasthan. We did a multitude of things to witness to others about Jesus. I even spoke at a Theosophical Meeting, gave musical concerts, and helped with answering a correspondence course. Some of these events are blurred in my memory as to when they took place. Of course our main work was going door to door to meet the people, offering them Christian literature. I remember how cool and lovely it was sleeping upstairs on a flat roof enjoying the evening breeze.
One time I hired a man at a station to carry my things, pausing briefly for a moment to chat with someone, and he walked off with everything I owned. Living in the villages now meant having two saris I alternated, and washing them and myself in a half a pail of water every day that I had to draw from a well somewhere, unless I could find a tap.
The land grew hotter and drier, the earth broke open in large cracks, until suddenly one day it began to rain. Monsoon season began. It kept raining day after day until the streets were flooded like rivers, and it became dangerous to try to cross them. The sun might shine one moment and then the rain started again in the same day, but the rain continued every day for months. Suddenly they ended abruptly and the land became a beautiful green spread of abundance, and the cycle began all over again.
I remember staying with Indian families, sleeping on the floor with everyone else, from father, mother, maybe teenage son, daughter, children of all ages, and me at the end. In their tiny backroom stayed the chickens, maybe a goat, or whatever animals needed protection overnight. They cooked over a tiny primus stove, but were so generous and kind hosting me. I am deeply grateful.
I stood in a long line in India to get a BCG vaccination for Tuberculosis. The man used the same needle for everyone ahead of me, maybe 30 to 50 people, just flipping the needle into a bunsen burner for a few seconds to cleanse it. When he got to me, I insisted he hold it in the flame for a few minutes. He was furious and jabbed me hard for my shot.
Always we ate with the fingers of our right hand, never silverware except in the richest homes. Those times caused me confusion when I was given a knife and a large spoon, no fork anywhere.
Depending on whether one was in the north or south, the meal changed slightly. I really enjoyed freshly baked chapattis, but grew tired of rice and more rice every day almost every meal (that had to be cleaned of stones and worms every evening). Sometimes we might have a hot curry with goat meat and daal, a mixture of crushed beans, peas and lentils. In the north I loved the big round balls of some kind of sweet.
I can still remember that Christmas as we four girls sat on the concrete floor on our sleeping bags. It was a simple room three quarters filled with books for sale. A single light bulb in the ceiling gave us a bit of light. No tree. No decorations. No turkey dinner. It about 103 F outside in the daytime shade. No fan. I can see a simple cotton handkerchief I received as the Christmas gift. I was grateful. It is in the simple times that we find precious moments.
Living with Indian girls gave me a new perspective. In particular, several of the girls had to go home because their parents had arranged their marriage. Most got to meet their life partner at least once before the ceremony, I never heard of any who refused it. But I felt a great sadness for an Anglo-Indian, beautiful woman that was half British and half Indian. She struggled with deciding to which side she belonged. I later heard she married a British OMer and moved to England.
One day our team got a telegram that the men’s team was coming to our town and we had to leave. Karin, our leader, found out it would cost 30 rupees to move all of us by train to a nearby community. So, everyone but she and I went back out trying to sell some books to earn some money. We had very little. Karin sent a telegram to Bombay asking them to wire us funds. She and I had just received a negative reply, and were in prayer, wondering what to do. I can mentally still see us standing there in the shade of overhanging trees. We were on the second floor of a business building. The breeze was so nice.
An Indian man rode up on his bike. He walked up to Karin to say that he had sold some books the men’s team had given him, and he handed her exactly 30 rupees. Now you know why I believe in miracles. I experienced them again and again.
FINAL THOUGHTS
By this time I really wasn’t well physically. Something was sapping my strength. It was time to leave as my two-year contract was finally over. I boarded a prop plane and flew to Aden. I had an hour’s wait at the airport, and enjoyed the air conditioning. I opened a back door to look out over that vast desert and the heat nearly knocked me down.
Somewhere after the Arabian desert, I remember looking down from the skies over that jutting arm of Somalia and Ethiopia in Africa as the plane headed to Alexandria. My brief stop in Egypt was uneventful. I remember my flight took 22 hours and then I was over Europe and landing in Brussels.
When I walked into the main area, the chrome blinded my eyes and everything was spotlessly clean. In a women’s washroom, I turned on a tap and started to cry at the gush of clean, beautiful, unending water. I shut that tap off as fast as I could. Water was too precious to waste. That was the reaction I would have for some time to come in the reverse culture shock of returning to the western world.
I had another long flight ahead of me to the United States, and then a bus ride to Buffalo and home to Ontario sometime in 1970, a life-time ago.
Two years later, I was finally treated by the Tropical Health Unit in Georgia for filaria, a tropical blood worm I brought back with me from Asia.
Ah, life in one’s youth. All true, and much more as well.
