Out of Africa (don't try this if you're over 30, don't even READ it if you're over 60!)

[DFW]

My younger daughter has finally returned from Africa, where
she spent the summer not on safari, but in the armpit of the
continent with the UN war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone.
She left Tuesday evening (Sierra Leone time, i.e. GMT) to fly
to Brussels (no flights from Sierra Leone to Germany, where our
house is).

Her trip back was quite an adventure. She decided to splurge
and pay $65 for the helicopter ride across the water from
the city (Freetown) to the airport. It took seven minutes, where
the usual trip by land and ferry takes from two hours to seven,
depending on what was working on the day you wanted to go.
The helicopters sometimes crash, too, but not this time.
There was no security at all, but I guess even hijackers need
to feel they'll live long enough to do their evil stuff, and this
place didn't offer odds high enough for their liking.

She got to Brussels the next morning (today). No luggage. She
missed her train to Germany, got the airline to promise to
deliver the luggage to Germany, and, having no express
trains for which her ticket was good (she had no Thalys tix)
for the next five hours, decided to head in the direction
of Germany using local trains heading east. She got stuck in
Liège, in eastern Belgium, for three hours. The airline called
her German cell phone, which she had with her, and said the
luggage had been located and would be brought to Germany
tomorrow. They then called back 3 hours later to say that they
had deposited her luggage at our house in Germany, before she
even got there!! We called our neighbors there, with
whom we leave house keys (we have theirs, too), and they
said sure enough, the luggage had been brought all the way
from Belgium (you can tell she did NOT fly with United!). Ours
is a relatively safe neighborhood, but they put it inside anyway.

So, when she gets to our town, totally exhausted after the trip
from Africa with no sleep, does she go straight home?

Hah! Are you kidding? She's 23 and thinks she's immortal.
Some friends of hers are leaving for a vacation, so she takes
a taxi straight to THEIR place, accompanies them to the
Düsseldorf airport, sees them off, and THEN goes home.
First thing she does is take a shower, a luxury she did not
have in Sierra Leone. Then she calls us to say all is well, and
then she gets dressed up to go out on the town with some
former classmates. Tomorrow, she has to get new malaria
medicine (you have to keep taking it for weeks after you
get back, or you still risk getting malaria even if there is
none where you now are), go to the dentist, see some other
doctor, and the Friday fly to New York to get ready for her fall
semester of Law School.

Did I have THAT much energy when I was 23? Or was she
born with an extra gas tank that medical science has
yet to discover? When she was 5, a neighbor once called
her "Madame 10,000 volts." It doesn't look like her battery
has lost any juice in the meantime.

[Karenina]

1. WHAT A GAL!!!

:hug:

[Pierre.Suave]

2. Thats awesome

good for her.

being young and having energy is a great thing!!!

Good for your daughter too, I am sure she had quite an adventure!

[Pierre.Suave]

3. Thats awesome

good for her.

being young and having energy is a great thing!!!

Good for your daughter too, I am sure she had quite an adventure!

[RebelOne]

4. I think all those in their 20s and 30s have that much energy.

When I was that young, I could party all night, go home and catch a couple hours of sleep and then go to work.

[DFW]

6. I guess

I remember one time when I was 28. I was in the Seychelles, then in the space of a
few days, I went from there to Bahrain to London to Germany to Boston to Albuquerque.

I also remember being a wreck afterward!

[BrklynLiberal]

5. She sounds like an incredible person...

I vaguely remember back when I had energy like that....I get tired just thinking about those times.

[DFW]

7. I once told her she should run for elective office when she was older

Her response was basically, "I've got stuff I want to do, who needs that shit?"

[BrklynLiberal]

8. Sad commentary on the perception the young have of government....

No inspiration to be found in what is going on in govt these days.

[DFW]

10. Can you blame her?

She's only been living full-time in the USA since 2001.
Not exactly the best perspective to get.

[BrklynLiberal]

11. Exactly...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. A few years ago, I looked at my diary for the year that I was 24.

I can't believe how much I packed into one day back then.

[MrScorpio]

12. The best way to get around that part of Europe is by car

I had a Benz

Monthly trips to Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland and other places in Germany

The trains are nice, but don't miss them


Me in Holland with my Benz

Africa? God bless your daughter

[DFW]

13. Not any more

The Netherlands is one big traffic jam (or parking lot, at times), and most of
our part of Germany (NRW) is so clogged with traffic, it sometimes takes twice
as long by car to get somewhere as by train.

Of course, it helps if the trains are running. The German train system, once the
very definition of efficiency, has gone way downhill in recent years, with spending
on maintenance down to levels not conducive to punctuality.

My daughter was born in Europe, spent time in the Pacific in high school, went to
undergraduate school in Washington, D.C., and has traveled in Egypt. She is pretty
much a "multi-culti" as they say in Germany, and even though she found Africa way
different from anyplace she had been before, she just took it in stride as one more
place in the world she has learned about and made friends in. "Gotta go back there"
places for her are from Hawai'i to Cape Cod to Catalunya to Sénégal.

I just hope that she doesn't take only low-paying positions when she gets her degree,
because with her friends now spread from Europe to Asia to Africa to America to the
French Caribbean (her best friend while studying in Paris was from Martinique), her
visits to her friends are starting to get expensive for yours truly.

[MrScorpio]

15. I guess a lot has changed in ten years

I loved traveling the world, working at the Pentagon, vacationing in the Philippines and the French Riviera.

Now I'm settled back down in Michigan. I had a great time seeing the world when I was younger

[ghostsofgiants]

14. Damn, I wish I had the chance to do something like that.

I'm incredibly jealous.

[DFW]

19. It's no vacation

You really have to want to do it, because once you get there, you have
to adapt to life in a 3rd world country, where things like running water
and electricity, as well as medical care, are luxuries that are either
in rationed short supply, or non-existent. Different rules apply to life
down there, and you had better be very flexible (as well as healthy!) if
you are even going to contemplate it.

[BreweryYardRat]

16. I'm 20. I sure as hell don't have that much energy.

Working on a war crimes tribunal (even as just a gopher/clerk) sounds kind of cool, though. How'd she get that position?

[DFW]

17. She applied, but that's only the short version

The Law School she's at offers its students the chance to apply. Quite
a few do, but they only select two. She was one of the two. Then the
selected students get their files sent by the school to the UN to apply
for their program. She was selected by the UN. Then she had to go get
dozens of inoculations and show proof of them to the consulate of Sierra
Leone in New York. For some reason, they make it difficult for Americans,
but she is a dual national, so she used her German passport for the visa,
and it sailed through. THEN, we had to find her a flight that went to
Sierra Leone (the UN pays for nothing, and pays nothing. This is all volunteer,
and lots of first year law students prefer to look for paying jobs with law
firms here in the States). There are only 2 flights a week from continental
Europe, where we live most of the year, and they are from Brussels. There
are flights from London, but they cost over 3 times the price!! So we went
over to Brussels (no big deal for me, as I'm there once a week for work anyway)
and she caught a flight down to Freetown the next day.

You have to REALLY want to do this, needless to say.

[applegrove]

18. What a trooper. I once had a day layover in London. I walked to St. James

Park and promptly fell asleep there in it for a few hours. I was 25 or 26.