U. S. Soldiers Home, Washington: during a century of travel (well 78 years!) both in and out of service I have travelled to over 150 countries (I count both North and South Dakota as countries) and for some reason have jotted signs and happenings that I thought funny at the time (and now wonder why). So here is the perfect opportunity to share some of my anecdotes.

In the New Delhi, India YMCA (takes men, women, children etc) a group of travellers travelling together from many different countries arrived. They were part of a project to show different nationalities could travel in peace and work and travel together. There were people from Hawaii, the States, Europe, Philippines etc. By the time they got to India they had formed into cliques and some were not talking to others, and some wanted to share room only with their own nationality etc. None of them trusted the Indian personnel at the front desk and when they found out I had been in India for awhile they came to me with their questions. They asked me if it was safe to drink the water from faucet in courtyard. I had been drinking it with no ill effects and there was a contraption on it that I thought purified the water so I foolishly assured them it was safe. They all got sick. I had been eating with the dining room with them but from them on walked several blocks to the YWCA to avoid their dirty looks!

A friend of mine at the Soldiers Home used to collect business cards so I would try to collect them from all around the world for him. I went into a gift shop in a hotel in New Delhi, India. They had a particularly nice card and so I told a white lie and told them I was a director of a tour group and could I have more than one to give to my clients. I forgot I was going to be in that hotel five days. The next day I was asked when is your tour group arriving? I said “What tour group” I then recovered my self and announced that I had been fired.

An English girl who claimed she had become a Hindu in England told me some of the Hindu temples that required you to be a Hindu (not all) would not let her in as they did not believe her. How do you prove you are a Hindu?

Armd Reg. In prayer that God may bless the souls of those who laid down their lives during India Pakistan War Dec 1971.

Mahatma (Soul) Gandhi is one of my heroes. Mother Teresa is another one (she visited the Soldiers Home. She asked that no collection be taken for her but I think one was.) Gandhi is one of the few lawyers I respect. When he travelled throughout India he often stayed in friend’s homes. In the one he often stayed in Bombay (now called Mumbai) the house has been made into a museum. Along with some of his stuff they have a lending library where you can check out some of the books he wrote. The sign on the desk reads: “Please return out books after reading. For we observe that though people may be very poor accountants they are very good bookkeepers”. At the Jain Temple there was a sign: “Women in menstrual period may not enter”. Our guide says that Jains wear a gauze mask over face so they will not kill any flies or insects accidentally. At the hanging garden the guide explained that Parsees instead of burying dead put them in a Tower of Silence and the vultures eat the meat off the corpse. It takes about twenty minutes. (Unless a fat actor.) Indians like their actors fat so they will look prosperous. (I look very prosperous!) They sometimes make American actors’ pictures on billboards fatter than they are. Paul Newman in one poster looked more like Orson Wells. Back to the Tower of Silence and the vultures. The bones then fall into a pit where lime and charcoal turns them into ashes. I asked how often they do this and was told: “Whenever they die” The Indians are so logical. It was explained to me that there are so few Parsees left that they had to feed the vultures meat in the meanwhile and she looked directly at me or they would become a nuisance in the neighbourhood. There is a water reservoir next door the droppings from the vultures would fall in the water so they covered the top of reservoir and made a hanging garden there. The soil is not deep enough for trees, just bushes and flowers. The Jain religion uses a swastika (a Nazi symbol, only Indians had it first, and the Nazi reversed the symbol) and rice in their ceremony. I will now take up a collection for the vultures.

A rickshaw driver is trying to fix me up with a prostitute. He said she is in the untouchable class. An untouchable prostitute??

Another time I went into a temple and the people went out of the way to welcome me. I asked what kind of temple is was and was told A temple for untouchables, (although I think this was outlawed.)

The other day in India I realized all my coats were missing. My raincoat, nylon jacket, sweater etc. I thought maybe I had left them on the airplane. Then when I went to look for my shoes under the bed and there they all were. My room was so small that I had put them under my bed to get them out of the way.

Some Indians after talking to you when they get ready to leave will say “May I leave now?” I always graciously give them permission

Next month, Mac discusses India again.

If you would like to contact Mac, he can be e-mailed on: macsan400@yahoo.com

What is Chagas disease? Also called American trypanosomiasis, Chagas disease is an infection caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. Chagas disease primarily affects low income people living in rural areas. It is estimated that 16-18 million people are infected with Chagas disease; of those infected, 50,000 will die each year. Chagas disease is locally transmitted in Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

How do I get it? Small critters called “kissing bugs” that live in cracks and holes of substandard housing primarily found in South and Central America. Insects become infected after biting an animal or person who already has Chagas disease. Infection is spread to humans when an infected bug deposits feces on a person’s skin, usually while the person is sleeping at night. The person often accidently rubs the feces into the bite wound, an open cut, the eyes, or mouth.

How do I know if I have it? There are three stages of infection with Chagas disease; each stage has different symptoms. Some people may be infected and never develop symptoms. Acute symptoms only occur in about 1% of cases and most people infected do not seek medical attention. The most recognized symptom of acute Chagas infection is the Romaña’s sign, or swelling of the eye on one side of the face, usually at the bite wound or where feces were rubbed into the eye. Other symptoms are usually not specific for Chagas infection. These symptoms may include fatigue, fever, enlarged liver or spleen, and swollen lymph glands. Sometimes, a rash, loss of appetite, diarrhea, and vomiting occur. In infants and in very young children with acute Chagas disease, swelling of the brain can develop in acute Chagas disease, and this can cause death. In general, symptoms last for 4-8 weeks and then they go away, even without treatment.

What should I do if I have Chagas disease? See your doctor for a blood tests to determine whether there are parasite or antibodies in your blood. Medication for Chagas disease is usually effective when given during the acute stage of infection. Once the disease has progressed to later stages, medication may be less effective. In the chronic stage, treatment involves managing symptoms associated with the disease.

How can I prevent Chagas disease? Avoid sleeping in thatch, mud, or adobe houses, and use insecticides to kill insects and reduce the risk of transmission. There is neither a vaccine nor recommended drug available to prevent Chagas disease.

Iris takes part in a barbecue in Brazil.

We went to a little town called Ouro Preto, in Brazil, which is in the centre of a mining area, which produced gem stones. We visited the museum which shows all the different metals and minerals mined and they have an impressive display of what they produce, including polished stones, although I am convinced the diamonds on display must be paste because they are so big and there are only teenage boys guarding them!!!

After Ouro Preto we did a bit of travelling with a one night stand at a place called Jacaraipe, which was by the coast and was the first of many camp sites which, although not on the beach, were full of sand. (How I have got to hate sand since I’ve been on this last stretch of the trip! It gets everywhere and one seems totally unable to get rid of it entirely and it turns up afterwards in my day sack, in my socks, in my shoes, in my hair, for days on end!)

Then we headed for Itaunas where we spent a couple of nights, arriving at about mid-afternoon and immediately arranging for a barbecue for the evening . We’d bought some pork and beef, and lots of potatoes so that we could roast them in the oven. We had been assured by our leaders that the Brazilians were a barbecue nation, they knew all about barbecuing, so when the owner of the camp site told our revered leader, Heather, that it would be better done on the beach as there weren’t the facilities at the camp site, she readily agreed and at the appointed hour, we packed up the food and also the ingredients for what was going to be a rather lethal vodka punch and headed for the beach.

Itaunas is an unspoilt little village at the edge of the sea, there is no real tourism there and it made me laugh to see those little village shops with their “Visa” and “Mastercard” signs in the window as they weren’t selling anything that would cost more than the odd pound or two! We trekked all the way down the main street, which is really a mud track, over the bridge, and along the track for some 500 metres, and then we had to turn off and start climbing – yes some really big sand dunes with sand that literally could come up to your neck if you trod in the wrong place! The path was marked by the odd rubbish bin and it was quite free of trees (this is important for later) but it was still at least another 300 metres from the beach and the bar we were heading for, but eventually after a half hour walk we were there.

The beach was very narrow and the sea was in. It was also getting dusk by the time we arrived and then Heather had the news – the owner had not yet located the barbecue! Still, we lived in hope. I was part of the cook team for the evening, our actual cook being Alex, a really tall well-built Chinese gentleman who was born in Hong Kong but arrived in England in 1967 to take up a nursing career and now at the age of 55 has retired from nursing (he ended up in an important administrative post in the hospital equivalent to the old matrons) and he is an accomplished chef who thoroughly enjoys cooking and turns out some really tasty meals. He has also a wicked sense of humour and keeps us all amused with his wry remarks.

Anyway, we got on with making the vodka punch (I didn’t participate because I’m not a spirits drinker and so stuck to beer and the odd soft drink) but just about everything was going into the punch. Then came the news, the barbecue had arrived. There were 22 hungry mouths waiting for that food and so you can imagine how many steaks, pork chops and fish steaks we had to cook. The bad news was that our barbecuing host provide us with a little grill which would take 2 steaks at a time!

Out the back of the bar there was a bonfire (burning rubbish) and so it was decided to improvise (it was quite dark by now) and see if the bonfire could be utilised, but the problem was we had no grills to put across it. So our host got his workers to dig a pit and transfer some of the bonfire into it and plus our barbecue coals it seemed that was the way to go, except the only grill they could come up with was the grill which would normally go across the top of a 4-ring gas cooker! Of course it was totally inadequate as well as being totally unsuitable and in the end we had to abandon the idea of a barbecue altogether.

We just used the small barbecue to cook the fish steaks (four) and then Alex set to in the kitchen and with the aid of two big frying pans cooked the pork chops first (which were delicious and so tender – I’ve never tasted such succulent pork chops in my life before), but unfortunately when the beef was cooked it turned out to have died of old age and the cooking just made it tougher and no-one ate the beef!

So what did most people do? They got drunk on the vodka punch! Judith and I decided to leave quite early (around 2200) and so set out with three of the men who were also fed up with the barbecue and just wanted to get back into town and do a bit of drinking there, so we headed off up the sand dunes – but it is surprising how different they looked at night in the pitch dark with no lights to guide us except the odd torch!

We were first of all walking, then scrambling almost on hands and knees up and down steep sand dunes, and continually ending up at dead ends because the other side of the sand dunes there was scrubland and water, lots of it! Judith and I were often left far behind by the men, would lose sight of them and start yelling and then see their lights heading back our way because they’d had to do a U-turn! Eventually we found the right path, more by luck than judgement, and found we had walked a considerable way in the wrong direction which put at least twenty minutes on our journey back to town. On the way we encountered the odd car and van luckily displaying headlights, but then we found we were among a whole crowd of cyclists with no lights at all! It was pretty hairy trying to see and avoid them! All those people in Itaunas must have cats’ eyes!

When we arrived in town, we thanked our men friends for looking after us so well – it was sarcasm really as they had left us way behind once we were on the right path and we only saw them again when we got into town and found them sitting at a bar and one of them, a Korean gentleman we call Young, and who speaks very little English, insisted we join them and have a beer before retiring.

But although we thought we had had an adventure it was nothing that happened to all our friends who had stayed behind to finish off the Vodka punch and other spirits and beer. They all got plastered and every single one of them got lost on the way back with varying effects. One of our leaders, a chap called Martin, got himself steaming drunk, convinced Alex he knew the way home, and promptly led him a merry dance in the pitch dark without torches through scrubland and bushes, so that Alex ended up losing his shoes, his T-shirt and his truck keys, and getting his back and arms and legs scratched by every conceivable thorn and twig. Next day, Heather asked what on earth made them head that way when they knew there were no trees on the path we had originally taken! There was no answer except to admit they were too drunk to know what they were doing! Another of our number lost his trousers and his T-shirt and his camera, and another of us, a lady called Alison, got a badly grazed knee and bruised hip falling about in an unladylike manner!

So in one way it was good we’d had the barbecue on the day of our arrival because we only planned to stay two nights before moving on so everyone had a day to recover from their excesses and attempt to find their lost possessions, but all searches were fruitless as all those possessions were gone the next day (although it is more than probable they were lost on the way home and therefore extremely difficult to find) The most serious loss was of Alex’s truck keys because they open all the padlocks on the truck and we each are issued with a set at the start of the trip and are told to guard them with our lives! Unfortunately also, just prior to Itaunas we had all been issued with new keys as the old padlocks were at the end of their life and so all new padlocks had recently been fitted! I dare say Alex had to pay a fine for losing his and extra to get a new set!

Why is that the low cost airlines don’t offer frequent flier awards? It seems that unlike the US, none of the European low cost carriers have frequent-flier programs. Southwest Airlines, the model for low-cost carriers, including our friends Ryanair, gave away 2.3 million free tickets last year – more than United Airlines – with its online “double bonus” promotion, which means that with four trips you get one free when you reserve on the Web. Is this something we should be demanding?

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Our webmaster noticed that Ryanair offer a telephone service called Ryanair telecom. As we are usually unkind about Ryanair, we thought this month we’d try and find something kind to say about them, so here are the details on their latest special offer. We have not used it and can’t say if it is any good, but were bemused that this was another one of their activities. This is what they say:

We have an offer on at the moment giving away 1,000,000 FREE calls in the form of 50,000 x 20 minute calls. To get your free calls, call+353 1 246 23 33and we will call you back within 15 seconds! You must call from your fixed line phone and register with a Visa or MasterCard credit card. Once you register, you will then receive a free call from your mobile or fixed line phone. You will get a 20 minutes FREE talk time if you call from your fixed line phone to any fixed line phone (premium rate calls excluded) in Europe, Australia, China, North America, South Africa or Russia when you successfully register. This offer applies to touch tone phones and excludes calls made from payphones, switchboard phones or Internet phones. If the call exceeds 20 minutes, you will be charged at prevailing rates. Ryanair Telecom reserves the right to refuse to supply this service and may discontinue this offer or service at anytime. This offer is also subject to our normal terms and conditions .