Around the World in 68 Days

Number of different countries visited: 8
Number of days it took to circle the globe: 68
Total miles flown: 23,374
Actual hours in the air: 40
Hours spent waiting in airports: 24
Number of different airlines flown: 5
Number of hours spent on buses: 10
Number of hours spent on trains: 26
Number of complimentary in-flight bottles of wine consumed: 7
Number of my bags stolen: 1
Number of bribes taken: 2
Number of times hospitalized: 1
Number of different languages I tried to communicate in: 5
Number of times I feared for my life: 2
Number of friends made: Too many to count

I'll be honest with you, after thinking long and hard I have decided that there is no way that I can sum up my trip around the world in words. I honestly wouldn't know what to write. So I think I will sum it up with something I wrote on the back page of my journal as I sat on a boat taking me across the crystal waters of the Gulf of Thailand.

"What is left to say.

The Sun rose every day despite what I had seen the day before.

I helped a lot of people, a lot of people helped me.

I saw the danger of human desire, I saw the beauty of human altruism.

I struggled with despair, I clung to hope.

What I saw made me sick, sometimes it made me cry.

I was afraid for my life, and I stared fear in the eyes.

Sometimes I ran, others I stood.

I was faced with decisions each day, decisions that built me up, and broke me down.

I was asked all the while what it was I really believed about the world.

And I was afraid that my answer would cause me to lose hope.

I haven't lost it yet."

The Honest Traveler

I am in Korea now, but to be honest I’m not sure where my heart is. I keep asking myself, did I leave it somewhere on the dirt streets of Africa? On the white sandy shores of Koh Chang Island? In the jungles in the far north of Chaing Mai, Thailand? I’m not sure.

To be honest with you I have been struggling with a lot lately. This is for another blog, no doubt, but suffice it to say I have been asking questions that are fairly fundamental to living, questions involving how to live, or rather, why to live. It’s a loss of innocence, I suppose. One cannot circle the globe without experiencing it, unless they have lost touch with themselves. The truth is there a certain darkness to the world that we live outside of for the most part, a cruel, wicked thing that preys on our weakest elements. It’s the kind of thing that we are more inclined to believe in when we are young, more perceptive and enraptured by fairy tales. Every child who has ever heard his parents arguing knows it exists. And people analyze the problems that so plague this world and blame them on things like violence on television, socio-economic status, and the like. But the truth as I see it is quite simple really, and this truth has been central to my development as I have traveled; mankind is dark, and I include myself in that statement.

There were times during my travels through Africa when I fundamentally questioned the goodness of people. In fact most of my time there I did. When you are hissed at in the streets, yelled at by the ignorant and thankless, when you see families destroyed and meet survivors of incredible travesty, when you hear of 150 innocent people burned to death in a church miles from your home at the hands of a militia fighting “for God,” it's enough to make you question everything. I think there is a point, at least one that I reached, where simple answers don’t suffice. I couldn’t blame the problems I saw on “a few bad apples,” no, the problems in Africa and in Thailand are endemic of a much greater issue: the issue of man’s selfish and violent inhumanity to man.

In Thailand I was beaten by two drunken Thai men who were out for blood, nothing else. I had done nothing to provoke them, I was guilty of nothing but defending my friend, a good man. And there is a point that I came to when I realized that there is a hatred and an anger that is so reckless and irrational there is nothing rational people can do to stop it. Reason will fail you, as it failed me. So what do you do when reason fails? When hope hangs from a string? How do you react to the unpleasant fact that wickedness and evil are far more rampant than you ever realized? These are questions I fear the answers to.

Two days ago I arrived home to Korea, a few hours later I received a phone call that my 19 year old little brother, whom I love with every facet of my being, was in a car accident and thrown from his vehicle onto the street. The car that hit him drove away and hasn’t been found. He will recover, but it will be long and difficult.

So I ask again, what do you do when reason fails?

I really don’t have time nor do I want to jump further into this issue now, I just wanted to share a bit of what I saw and came to understand. I will write more later, but I don’t want you to read this and get the wrong idea, let me tell you, humanity is worth something. I’m not sure how much, but the very fact that there is so much darkness proves that there is light. And how sweet that light is, if only I could spread it.

I have been listening to Jon Foreman’s song “Equally Skilled.” I think it is true, and it summarizes a bit of how I feel. Listen to it sometime if you can, in the meantime I will leave you with the lyrics:

How miserable I am
I feel like a fruit picker who arrives after the harvest
There's nothing here at all
Nothing at all here that could placate my hunger

The godly people are all gone
There's not one honest soul left here on the planet
We're all murderers and thieves
Setting traps here for even our brothers

And both of our hands
Are equally skilled
At doing evil
Equally skilled
At bribing the judges
Equally skilled
At perverting justice
Both of our hands
Both of our hands

The day of justice comes
And is even now swiftly arriving
Don't trust anyone at all
Not your best friend or even your wife

For the son hates the father
The daughter despises even her mother
Look! Your enemies are right
Right in the room of your very household

And both of their hands
Are equally skilled
At doing evil
Equally skilled
At bribing the judges
Equally skilled
At perverting justice
Both of our hands
Both of our hands


No, don't gloat over me
For though I fall, though I fall
I will rise again
Though I sit here in darkness
The Lord, the Lord alone
He will be my light.

I will be patient as the Lord
Punishes me for the wrongs I've done against Him
After that He'll take my case
Bringing me to light and to justice
For all I have suffered

And both of His hands
Are equally skilled
At ruining evil
Equally skilled
At judging the judges
Equally skilled
At administering justice

Both of His hands
Both of His hands

Are equally skilled
At showing mercy
Equally skilled
At loving the loveless
Equally skilled
At administering justice
Both of His hands
Both of His hands

Hope and Water in the Desert

“This place is hope,” the tall, thin Congolese man standing next to me said as he held his hands out in front of him. “It is like a few drops of water in a vast desert.” A smile crept over his face revealing his white teeth that shown brilliantly against the dark color of his skin. He was taking me on a tour of the Christian Bilingual University in the DRC, a place with great potential but for now consisting of only one building with dirt floors and 90 acres of beautifully dense untouched land. He led me into the building and into the office of Dr. David Kasali, an energetic man with a soft voice and a deep soulful eyes. He showed us a map of his vision, a plan for the University that included dozens of buildings in and around the 90 acres they own. It is a grand vision, one that is slowly coming to fruition. The Congolese way of building is strange from a western perspective, they begin building and build until they run out of money, then they wait and when more money comes they continue building. So the University grounds are scattered with construction, construction that won’t continue until more money is provided. As Dr. Kasali gave us the tour of the University, the students that were on a break from class came and introduced themselves amidst much giggling and laughing as each student prodded the others into introducing themselves. Everyone was so joyful, so full of energy and life, and most had no shoes. Nothing rich about them but the smiles on their faces.

Our tour around the University was the final stop in our haphazard journey to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Emily and I enjoyed an 8 hour layover in London and made the most of our time by going to Tower Bridge, Picadilly Circle and Hyde Park. We came close to missing our flight to Uganda as I had inadvertently set my watch an hour behind the actual time, so it was not until we were on our way back to the airport that I realized my mistake, but thankfully we made it with five minutes to spare. After London we enjoyed another 9 hour flight to Entebbe, Uganda, at which we arrived at 8:30 in the morning. The first thing I noticed was the heat; the oppressive, humid, heat. We made it to our hotel that was a nice place and were greeted by a small quiet woman who spoke mostly through her deep smile. She showed us to our room, and left without a word. We decided that we needed to contact the Kasalis and ask about the status of the violence that had been reported nearby Beni. After wandering the dirt streets nearby looking for a phone to use, we finally found a small booth that people could use to call internationally. None of our numbers worked, and after trying for a while we gave up and decided to go to Kampala, the capital, and look for phones or internet cafes there. To get there we took a cab, or rather a bus packed to capacity with passengers, about an hour. During that time we drove at wild speeds, almost hit multiple people, cars, and bikes, and witnessed at least one collision between a motorcycle and biker. I don’t know much about Kampala, but I will tell you this: it is completely overwhelming. Thousands of people packed the streets, the air was filled with the noise of people yelling, laughing, arguing, bartering. Bota-botas weaved in and out of the people honking and calling for passengers, the air was filled with the hot humid smell of dirt and body odor. Needless to say I was confused. To make a long story short we got a hold of people in Beni, who told us it was safe to go, but we realized that we had to go back to the airport to track down the people who were supposed to fly us to Congo in the morning. So we made one of our sketchiest decisions to date: we decided to take a bota-bota the whole hour long trip to the airport. We knew it might be a little scary, but we were in for an intense ride. If he wasn’t weaving in and out of traffic, our driver was driving as fast as his motorcycle could go, passing cars and other bota drivers on the way. We arrived safely an hour later, having at one point ripped the left rearview mirror completely off of one of the cars we passed. It was close.

The next day we journeyed to Beni, DRC, a small city in the northeastern area of the country. To get there we took a small propeller plane that was deafening from the inside, as I was seated directly between the two propellers. First we flew to a small city called Bunia, a city that has seen a lot of violence in the last few years. As we exited the plane we were met by a beautiful Congolese woman who greeted us with a jovial “Bonjour!” (French is one of the primary languages spoken in the DRC.) She led us past rows of gruff looking soldiers with AK-47s and into a stuffy room marked with a small hand painted sign that read “immigration.” There we received our visas and were led out of the room and back to our plane. Along the way I made eye contact with a particularly rough looking soldier who smiled and said “Jesus” and started laughing. We gained a few more passengers and were informed that we were going to make an unscheduled stop about 45 min away. As we had no say in the matter we simply smiled and consented. 45 min later we bounced onto the runway at our stop, and I looked outside to see that the reason we bounced around so much was that we had landed on a tiny dirt runway. Greeting us this time were 15 armed soldiers next to a sign that read “Avec Joseph Kabila” (with the president.) Emily and I were cautiously surveying these soldiers when Emily asked me “Jon, what are those long stick things they are carrying?” I looked harder and responded “um…those are rocket launchers Em.” Three of the soldiers carried this deadly weapon in such a cavalier fashion that I wondered if they knew what they were holding. Thankfully we didn’t have to leave the plane this time and in a few minutes we continued on to Beni. We arrived and were met by Dr. Kasali’s brother and taken to our residence for the next month. The house we are staying at is more of a compound than a house as it is huge and surrounded by a large brick wall around which large amounts of frighteningly sharp barbed wire is coiled. We have a friendly night security man who patrols the yard with a machine gun, and at any given time there are 10 to 15 people living in the house so its never quiet. We have met tons of people, all of whom are eager to grab our hands, introduce themselves and smile. The level of poverty here is remarkable, many have no shoes, most have no work and nowhere to go so spend their time sitting in the shade of a tree. I am enjoying the Congo immensely, the love and the sense of community Emily and I have experienced thus far is like nothing else. Each day has proved to be an adventure, and I remain excited to experience all those adventures yet to come.