April 10, 2009: Final thoughts

The trip home was mostly uneventful. My experience with the Georgetown airport was not a good one. There are many, many layers of security checks. Apparently Guyana is the #1 exporter of cocaine to Europe. I (with a couple dozen others) was selected to have my check on hand searched. We had to wait in a line because for some reason we had to be present for the check. The guy told me that it was the large books that he had to look at. Apparently in X-RAY, City of God looks like it could command a small fortune on the streets of Amsterdam.

I got into NY at 10:30 pm and stayed at an airport hotel (for the government rate). It was midnight before I got to bed and my wakeup call was at 4:30 for a 5:00 shuttle. 4.5 hours in a NY airport hotel cost more than 4 nights at the Grand Costal in Guyana. I contemplated just crashing in the terminal, but I wanted to be as rested as possible for my family this weekend, and I did end up sleeping soundly for the 4.5 hours.

On the final leg (the 1.5 hour Salt Lake City to Sacramento flight) I got upgraded. This seems almost comical, but isn’t a bad way to end the trip, and I got extremely lucky for booking so late…In 6 flights I didn’t have a single middle seat.

So I have a few random pictures and a list of random thoughts I wanted to expand upon to wrap things up:

The other engineer (who is Korean and grew up in Asia) remarked how surprised he was to se almost no one smoking during our entire time in Guyana. He was right. My experience with Asia, Africa and even Europe is that smoking is more common than not. I did not see a single person smoke and, in the abundant trash, cigarette butts were conspicuously absent.

I was generally quiet during the meals. There were up to ten of us, and half were very extroverted and knew each other. They also came from a military culture that was pretty foreign to me. One of them didn’t even know that you could get a Federal job without being military first. But on the field trip I told a story that became a recurring joke and I was asked to retell like a party trick. I mentioned how I didn’t think I would ever buy a Kindle (Amazon’s digital book technology). I just liked books too much. I like how the look and feel and, especially smell. One of my favorite things is to get a book out of the library and discover that in the last 40 years it has only been checked out 3 times[1]. The musty smell of a book like that is the aroma of rarified knowledge…the scent of an intellectual frontier…a sensory affirmation of mastering a topic. I was just telling a story…but to them it was a comedy routine. I might as well have been Mitch Hedberg.

This was the most military thing I have done in my career of receiving paychecks from the DOD (something I have always been just a little uncomfortable with). I was comforted by the idea that there was no possible way we could have a military interest in Guyana and that, even though I wasn’t working for USAID (like the other trips), it was as if I was. Well after many drinks one evening, the group started talking about why Guyana is actually a hugely strategic ally. Turns out there is a really important military reason we are cultivating an alliance with Guyana. You know what…I’m ok with that. Whether or not you agree with our strategic maneuvering, I am doing helpful work for a people who need it with military funds…I call stuff like this ‘riding with the Pirates.’ One of my favorite figures in Church History was Francis Xavier.[2] Xavier traveled the Portuguese empire with reckless abandon. Sometimes, to get where he felt God wanted him, he would hitch a ride with Pirates…actual Pirates. So, whenever I forge pragmatic alliances that I feel mildly uncomfortable with (though I mostly support our military alliance with Guyana) Amanda and I have come to call it ‘riding with the Pirates.’

I had cheesecake every night while in Guyana…Most of the time with cinnamon chocolate pudding. It was fantastic.

Horse pulled trailers were pretty common in Guyana. One of the Guyanese engineers pointed at one and said ‘this is our version of green vehicles.’ Jokes were made about methane emissions and horse power limitations…but he has a point. Hybrid SUV’s are placebos for the yuppie conscience.

The last evening our dinner conversation revolved around hiring a lawyer, ceasing mortgage payments, and leveraging military credibility to renegotiate mortgage principal with your lender (not only for a primary residence but also for rental property). One of my co-workers had done this and at least 5 others were very interested – including 3 rental properties. I was uncomfortable with the whole conversation. Federal bailout funds are making up the difference. Which means that Charis will be paying these mortgages. I understand we have to keep things from collapsing (I think I understand, actually, I have very little idea what is going on despite doing a lot of work to understand it) but it seems that it is not just AIG that is privatizing profits and socializing costs.[3] This disincentives the last shred of fiscal restraint our culture has. I think, even Nic could admit that this is evidence that I still have at least one conservative impulse left.

The hotel played music from the 80’s and 90’s every night loud enough that I could hear it in my room. I wish that we could all just agree to put the vast majority of what was on the radio while I was growing up in a soundproof box somewhere in Nevada. Its really really horrible stuff.

I overheard one of my co-workers describe his recent conversion to Christianity to another one. The story listener asked ‘so would you consider yourself ‘born again?’’ The story teller, obviously unfamiliar with the terminology, replied ‘no it was the first time.’ This made me smile.

The story listener was a really interesting guy. He has a Masters Degree in Literary Criticism[4]. He said that when he was getting it he took a lot of slack for acquiring a ‘useless degree.’ But when he got his first espionage job he knew I had been a good choice. He said that critical, investigative reading (often for subtext) formed the vast majority of his job as an intelligence officer. He recommends studying literature as perfect training for military intelligence.

Ok, with that, I’ll wrap things up. I’ll revive this blog if I go back in July. Otherwise, thanks for joining me to the country that sounds like it should be in Africa but isn’t. It is an honor that you took time to read this little journal.

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[1] This was back when they used to stamp the due date on the inside flap. Computers have almost entirely augmented the library experience…except for this idiosyncratic hobby of mine.
[2] We struggled wildly to come up with girl names, but we have had a boy name for years. If we had had a boy, his name would have been Xavier.
[3] Heads I win, Tails you loose…as this phenomenon has recently been called.
[4] He was also recently divorced and spoke better of his ex-wife than most guys speak of their actual wives.