Tired Road Warrior

It is estimated that 8,000 homes in the Navajo Nation are without reliable water.  And many are without commercial power.  The Indian Health Service (IHS) and Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) will not be able to provide services to many of these homes anytime in the foreseeable future because of geographic isolation and cost constraints.  At stake is the traditional culture of the Navajos.  As they move into subdivision to get “modern” conveniences, they are increasingly separated from their pastoral heritage.

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On June 12, represenatives from several NGOs and I arrived in Kampala, Uganda.  Our plane trip took way too long:  4 separate flights that covered 4 continents and took 48 nearly-sleepless hours.  Our Africa hotel was overbooked, so a friend and I had to stay in a nearby hotel.  We were staying in old Kampala, a working-class portion of the city.  That night after visiting an Internet cafe, I started to walk alone back to my hotel room over a route I wasn’t familiar with.  I wandered slightly of course and fell into a deep stone-and-mortar-lined ditch.  I cut my head and lost consciousness.  There was urban runoff flowing down the open sewer.  The rest of the story I have pieced together from witnesses I could find.

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National Geograph claims they have found the remains and burial site of folk- and cult-hero Everett Ruess.  Ruess disappeared in southern Utah in 1934.  He was 20-years old at the time of his disappearance.

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I haven’t been skiing much since I damaged my right knee long-boarding 2 1/2 years ago.  But, at the invitation of my son, I’ve gone twice this month . . . both times at “mom-and-pop” resorts.

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I just got back from a whirlwind tour of orphanage/schools, technical secondary schools, and several villages in rural Uganda.  We saw much of country in a little over two weeks.  Between traveling and visiting, we put in 12-hour days, visiting Masaka, Kabale, Bubwa Island (in Lake Victoria), Katosi, Iganga, Tororo, Kaberamaido, Lira, Gulu, and Karuma Falls.  The poverty is overwelming, but the Ugandan spirit endures.

School children near Tororo

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Forty years ago in Madrid’s Prado Art Museum, I discovered the early 19th-century Black Paintings of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (Goya).  They were deeply disturbing, but also incredibly intriguing.  I wondered about their message and their meaning.  Why had he painted them?  I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the Spanish artist had gone mad in his old age, or at least flirted with serious depression and/or insanity.

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In the past, I’ve never been a travel trailer person.  But I’ve recently wondered about having a mobile communication and entertainment center (I love movies), toy hauler, primitive kitchen, and inside bed.  I’ve finally found what I think I need . . . an Airstream BaseCamp (see below).

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Roger and son Michael are somewhere in the Great Midwest bringing home an Airstream Basecamp trailer.  Here is the beast in transit:

Here are images of the Basecamp from Airstream’s website:

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I love to travel, whether its in my home state of Utah or somewhere globally . . . it just does not matter . . . I just like to travel. But standard tourism doesn’t hold much interest for me. Its always the goofy stuff that leaves a lasting impression on me. And I love to walk, and the world is becoming very walk-friendly. Werner Herzog’s (German writer/director of Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn) dictums is: “Tourism is sin, and travel on foot, virtue.” Now there is a man after my own heart.

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I had been in Egypt for almost 3 weeks and was not feeling well, my head was suffering flu-like symptoms. But there were still a lot of sites in Cairo that I wanted to visit before returning home the next day. I didn’t feel like traveling around Cairo alone, so I asked the grumpy hotel manager to line me up with a guide. I was a little leary about what I might get, given the price quoted was so low.

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