Meetings

Yesterday we attended a gathering for international workers here in this part of the world. We also visited the U.S. Military base later on yesterday evening.

At these places, we made several contacts which will help the efforts here for the current school Doris founded. We also learned that the military can distribute school supplies, food and clothes which were donated from the U.S..

The challenges for distributing supplies is that they tend to get over run with people if they're not careful about how they go about it. The commander in charge of the project told us they hand out tickets ahead of time, then return to distribute at a later date which seems to work OK. The only snag is that word spreads so quickly here, that neighboring people who are also just as deserving find out. The military always takes more material than tickets to help with this, but no matter what, there's never enough to go around.

The plan today is to set up a place and time for this in the slums and to locate potential buildings to open medical clinics with Dr. Hadi. Through our contacts here locally we will be able to gain access in these areas.

More later. Time to hit the road.

Hamid

Doris's right hand man is Hamid (Hah-mead). He's in charge of running the WTTW school here.



In this country, it's very unusual for this culture for a male to be in a role like this. You see, males cannot teach or be in charge of women while inside (like in a school setting for instance) but it might be OK to be in charge of a group of women working in the fields, like harvesting crops outside. There are lots of interesting cultural normality's here that just aren't typical in the U.S..

Getting back to Hamid, he's also an aspiring medical student and snazy dresser. He's definitely got style. He drives a red Toyota Corolla with a German sticker on the back. Gip thinks he looks like James Bond. He also speaks excellent English and carries himself well. He's the kind of person you want to know in a place like this.


Driving:
Since there are no street names, lights or anything at all for people, drivers, bikers or animals wandering the streets to be aware of what your doing while your driving, it's a LITTLE bit hectic.


Hamid has driven us throughout the city a lot and is an excellent driver. I asked him how he deals with all this insanity and his explanation was "Corey, you must consider that everyone else is crazy and you are the only one which is not". Well, it must work, because his car is dent free. I think I could probably apply that bit of knowledge in other areas of my life as well.


Thanks Hamid.

The Journey

The journey to our final destination has been long, but full of unique meetings and opportunity. Regardless of how experienced you are as a traveler, the adventure of seeing new destinations is always exciting. I guess that's why we do it.

There are 4 of us traveling from the U.S. together. Doris: the founder of Women to the World, Gip: a horticulturist, Dr. Hadi: a medical doctor from the middle east currently living in the United States and myself, traveling as a filmmaker to document the ongoing work in the middle east.

There are a lot reasons for the trip which will be described as they unfold. For now, I'm shooting the surroundings to tell the story. Specifics of our whereabouts will be kept general for security reasons. Any close friends and family reading this will already know where we are anyway.

We arrived Tuesday evening (we left Georgia on Sunday).

On Wednesday, we started our first actual day at about 4:30 am. The comforting sound of the rooster next door made me feel at home. (We currently have 29 chickens at my house in GA).

Accomodations are good and our new friends here are taking care of us extremely well.

For those in "the biz", here's a list of equipment:

An HVX200, mac laptop, 220 power converter and a Terabyte hard drive. Shooting on P2 Cards and downloading when and where it's safe. Nice and mobile....and acceptable as "carry on" baggage internationally.

Details on the trip from the begining.

Travel Log:

SUNDAY

Lexington, GA

9:00 am - 3:30 last minute packing (as usual for me). Along with finishing up the repairs on the truck with my dad. (thank god he was there)

3:31 meet with 2 members of our group at Doris's house for the trip to ATL airport.

Atlanta, GA

6:30-7:00 arrive at the airport in Atlanta and meet with Dr. Hadi who flew in from Washington D.C.

9:00 Get on the plane. (Delta, which I believe is short for "don't even let them aboard")

We find our seats, which were carefully planned out so we could work and have meetings throughout the flight (all aisle seats). What happens? We get asked to move around so a "family" can be together for the journey. OK, sure. Now the fun begins...musical chairs.

Doris gets bumped to first class and I get some more leg room just behind business class (woo!), Dr. Hadi politely moves to the back of the plane and poor Gip gets stuck with "the family" with crying babies (the whole trip). He'll get a medal for that I'm sure.

I slept like a baby for about 11 of the 14 hours, then strangely enough watched "the kite runner" while talking to the passengers next to me..."Gary" an American truck driver working in Iran (in it for the money) and "Jay" from The Four Horseman International. Nice guys.

11:00pm

We arrive in Dubai, find our bags and take them to a "holding" area so we can reclaim them later on after touring the city on our 12 hour layover. We meet up with Taj, one of Dr. Hadi's friends who took us on a tour of Dubai:

1. Grocery store

2. Cityscape tour including that HUGE hotel shaped like a sailboat. (you know the one, everyone has seen the discovery program I'm sure)

3. FOOD at a really cool buffet style restaurant in a mall at about 1-2am. The view was fantastic and the food was out of this world. (well, it was actually just in Dubai) We also met up with Taj's brother Ahmad there.

4. Return to the airport, claim our bags and sit around until 5am until the security gates open so we can once again recheck our bags for our next flight.

Dr. Hadi runs into a very good friend who also is a Dr. and lives in the U.S. (Whoa!)

I did manage to have a latte and croissant for "breakfast" (also one for Doris, and a bottle of water). Getting the latte reminded me of my wife. This is where I start to miss her and wish she were traveling with me.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you weren't sure if paying 14 dollars for 2 cups of coffee, a bottle of water and a roll was too much money? I've never been good at math, I'm an artist. I didn't know the currency conversion rate so all I did was watch the girl taking my money "cheat" and use a calculator to do the conversion and give me the correct change back...then I asked her (nicely) "are you SURE that's the right amount?" (as if I knew exactly what change I needed in return). After she double checked, I said "OK, thank you". Maybe I got ripped off, maybe not....who knows?

7:30 am

Get on the plane for our final destination (time for another nap).

About 10:00 am.

Land.

WERE HERE!

Travel Bound

Soon, we will embark on a journey to volunteer our time and shoot footage for a non-profit organization called Women to the World.

http://www.womentotheworld.org/

Stop by their website for more information on the work they do worldwide, pass it along, make a donation or just say hi!

We will be uploading pictures, video and blogging along the way. Bookmark this blog and follow us on our journey.