Letter 6

Lyn, Darren & Kathy, Kerri & Garry

Thursday 22nd Nov 2001 – 11:30 AM local time.

Kerri, I got your email dated Wednesday 21st. I have only got a picture of the skyline
from my balcony window so far, but will be taking more. I will bring back some of the
local currency, called Nakfa. You can use it to paper the walls, its not much good for
anything else. I am not even sure they allow you to change it back into $US. I will also
try and go shopping for some local souvenirs

Life is not as eventful the second week, thank goodness.

Power failures over here are pretty common, generally only 5-10 minutes, but yesterday
the power was off for over three hours. Fortunately the Lab has its own generator that
they switch on during these periods. In this respect Eritrea is not much different to
Adelaide.

Talking to the German medical team that I met at the Savanna, and who toured the Lab
on Tuesday afternoon; they have exactly the same problems as I have at the hospital.
Namely, they never know whether they have been understood, or whether the people will
do what they say.

I went out for dinner and a walk around the town the other night with Efrem, the
maintenance manager on Tuesday night. There are a lot of cars in Asmara now and
because a lot of them are pretty old and clapped out, they blow a lot of smoke. Because
there is very little wind up here, the air pollution is pretty bad. Walking around at peak
hour (5 – 7:00 PM) can be a rather choking experience. Efrem tells me that the problem
has only been here for about the last two years. Apparently there were very few cars here
five years ago. Up until then it was all foot, push-bike and horse and cart.

Push-bikes and walking are still very common, along with a few horse and carts. At
night-time it seems that just about every one in Asmara goes out walking. The back
streets are packed with adults and children. The adults stand around in groups talking.
The old women sit in ally-ways or in front of their houses, the kids play in the street.
Even when you are walking back to the hotel at 11:00 PM at night there are still lots of
people every where.

Believe it or not, even white women can walk alone on the back streets of Asmara late at
night without fear of attack. You certainly would not do that in Australia.

There are some beggars on the streets. They seem to sit on street corners, or next to the
entrance to shops and restaurants. I have heard two stories about them. One is that they
really do have to beg. The other is that they are just using it as another way of getting
money. So far I don’t know which story is true.
Because Asmara is near the equator, the length of the day does not vary much throughout
the year. Day break is about 5.45 AM and by 6:15 PM it is dark again. We actually had a
thunderstorm and some rain here on Tuesday afternoon. The rainy season is from June
until September. They had no sooner told that you do not normally get much rain after
September, than the storm started. There was not much rain with it, but they tell me
during the rainy season it is not unusual to get 80 – 100 mm in a day.

We are making some progress with the problems, and I anticipate that they will all be
solved before I am due to leave. As said yesterday, lack of qualified staff is the principal
problem here.

On the subject of TV, I get the CNN News. According to them, nothing happens in the
world apart from Afghanistan.

Lunch time now, so will sign off.

Love to you all

Dennis

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Letter 7

Lyn, Kerri & Garry, Darren & Kathy,

Friday 23rd Nov 2001 – 12:00 AM local time.

Since Ray left last Friday, a group of Germans have moved into his room and the rooms
adjoining it. They are a bunch of inconsiderate bastards. Last night was the end of the
line. I was woken at 2:30 AM by them shouting and yelling, slamming doors and the TV
on. This lasted until 4:00 AM. This morning I went to reception and asked how long they
were staying. The lady I was talking to had only just walked in the front door and had not
yet had time to speak to any of the other staff. She immediately said yes they are very
noisy, and that they had been receiving lots of complaints. I have now moved to another
room on the opposite side of the hotel. Would you believe it, the bloody shower in the
new room has to be fixed. Third world plumbing is something you have to experience to
believe. Hopefully, the hotel management will speak to them, however I don’t hold out
much hope of that.

It is very noisy here, as there are houses all through the area and they all seem to keep
chooks and roosters. The roosters start crowing from about midnight, until dawn, the
bloody junkyard dogs next door talk most of the night, and to cap if off we then added
this inconsiderate pack of bastards.

Add to this the fact that it is not very easy to hold a conversation, without hand signs,
pointing, asking them to repeat it and using drawings, and you will understand that it
certainly has not been any holiday.
It was originally planned to go to Massawa on Saturday 24th, but this has now been
postponed until next weekend. I am still not sure of the reason. I will probably take the
opportunity to look for some souvenirs for everyone instead.

Despite the problems I have enjoyed the trip so far, as the chance for an experience like
this does not happen often. However I have hinted in previous emails that it is not a
holiday, neither is it a tourist destination. Certainly not for a month long holiday.

The Foundation’s work here is important, as are many of the other projects that are going
on. Virtually all of the Europeans in Asmara either work for that corrupt, self serving,
five star luxury organization the UN, or are part of a variety of other organizations that
are actually helping to develop the country.

You can tell who belongs to the UN and who are here to actually help the people. The
people who are actually here to help, stay in the Savanna and similar places, even the
bloody Nyala. The UN people all stay at the five star (and I mean five star)
Intercontinental Hotel, complete with their own electricity generator, water purification
plant and armed guards – and a trough that they can get their front and hind trotters in, as
well their snouts, all at the same time.

The armed guards are particularly pathetic, as this is a country where even white women
can walk the back streets at night without fear. I have never had any time for the UN.
Now that I have actually seen them in action, my contempt for this organization has
reached heights that I cannot express in words.

The problems at the Lab are principally caused by a singular lack of ability to accurately
diagnose the root cause of a problem. This is not necessarily the fault of the people here.
It is after all, a third world country where 80% of the adults cannot read and write. The
children all go to kindergarten and school (the bloody power has just gone down again,
12:30 PM, seems to be a daily occurrence. Good thing the lap-top is fully charged) all
neatly dressed up in uniforms. Literacy problems will be a thing of the past for the next
generation. However this does not solve the current problems.

The only way to solve these problems is to educate the existing people, and recruit more
locally trained engineers. I have told Richard, Ray and Isaias this. (Now we have the
generator starting up, have to listen to the bloody thing all afternoon).

Sending people up from Australia, essentially to try and instill a university level
education on the job will not solve the problem. Neither will having me, or anyone else
come up and physically diagnose and fix the machines be of any real benefit to them.
They have to actually do this themselves. I am only the consultant.

I have made this clear in my short time here. I do not go into the Clean Room Production
facility and actually touch the machine, unless absolutely necessary,. I insist that they do
the work, bring samples of the lenses out to me, we hold a joint diagnostic session, they
then return to the Production facility and carry out what we agreed. This is working pretty
well so far. They are learning (hopefully) something of how to diagnose problems.

They are also learning that I am not available simply to jump on the next plane and spend
45 hours travelling here, then endure one week (at least) of altitude sickness, just because
they have been used to this sort of treatment in the past.

I suspect my mode of operating has come as a bit of a shock to them

There is no reason why this sort of assistance model cannot be conducted directly
between Australia and Eritrea. Hand signs may be a bit of a problem, but with the aid of
the written word and drawings, and some phone calls, this should suffice for all but the
most severe problems. Hopefully I will have solved the major problem in the next day or
so. We have just about cracked it.

It is a fairly sophisticated operation. The fact that it has been established here at all is
something of a minor miracle

Enough for one day

Love to you all, miss you Lyn and wish I was home.
Dennis

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Letter 8

Lyn, Darren & Kathy, Kerri & Garry

Monday 26th Nov 2001 – 12:00 AM local time.

Lyn, from your latest email it seems your life has been somewhat eventful. You probably
should have come over here with me. It is safer!

Kerri, I have been watching Adelaide’s weather on CNN. It looks pretty good to me!

Send Norma my birthday greeting for the 26th. If I remember it correctly, she will be
either 46 or 76. Happy birthday Norma, wish I could have been there for your party.
Perhaps on your next trip abroad, you should come to Eritrea?

The trip to Massawa at the weekend was re-instated. Something was re-scheduled, but I
have no idea what.

We left at 10:30 Saturday morning for the 110 Km trip. They told me it takes three hours
and you experience three seasons in three hours, cool, warm, and hot and humid. Asmara
(7,600 ft altitude) is the cool bit, a town called Ginda which is half way down is the warm
bit and the Red Sea port town of Massawa is the hot and bloody humid bit.
Before we start, they tell me that the road down is now really safe and a huge
improvement over the road before the liberation. Then it was only half as wide, and what
bitumen it had was in very poor repair.

The road drops continuously from Asmara to the coast at Massawa. There was only one
short (few hundred meters) flat stretch in one of the towns. The first leg takes you to
Ginda (the major town along the way, Pop. 2000, and not like a town in Australia.) This
is about 50–55 Km from Asmara and is at the base of the mountains proper. The stretch
of road down to Ginda has a lot of rock falls onto the road. Some rocks are up to about
three quarters of a meter in diameter and are half way across the road. Everybody seems
to think this is normal and just steer around them. You are on the outside lane for about
half of the journey either way. The road from Ginda on is down-hill all the way but is
hills as opposed to bloody great mountains. There are signs along the way warning of
landmines, but you still see goat-herders.and even children in the landscape.

The road down to Ginda is a two lane bitumen road that wends it way down the
mountains in a switch-back pattern. The hair-pin bends connecting each switch-back are
so tight that even cars have to swing out to the lane on the other side of the road to get
around the corner. Need-less to say, they have no fence or safety rail, only a six inch high
stone edge. This is at just the right height, so that the wheels of a car that is sliding
toward the edge will stop, but the rest of the car will keep going out over the edge and on
down a thousand feet or so. These ledges on the side of the road are exactly the same
principle as stretching a rope across a path at ankle height, in the hope that someone will
trip over it. Engineering is not a strong point over here.

The road is used by hundreds of old, clapped out, smoky Fiat trucks. These trucks are not
only from Asmara, but many of them are also from Ethiopia, which has guaranteed
access to the port of Massawa. Being stuck behind one of these as they hang on the gears
down the slope is bloody great fun. If you haven’t got emphysema when you arrive in
Eritrea, you soon will have by the time you have taken the road trip down to Massawa.

The mountains down to Ginda actually have some vegetation. From there down to
Massawa is a moonscape. The Americans could have actually used it to film their Lunar
landings.

Between Ginda and Massawa you find rusty corrugated iron and stick humpies. People
actually live in them. I am buggered if I know where they get any water, as the land is so
parched .The best way to describe it, is to watch the images of Afghanistan on TV. The
people dress the same. There is the odd camel, flocks of goats, people carting things on
donkeys. Quite amazing!

The trip back up the mountains was far more frightening than coming down. These
buggers here would never get a driving license in Australia (I hope). We were in one of
these four seat utilities type of vehicle. They don’t seem to like changing gears.
Consequently when approaching a climbing hair-pin bend at the end of the switch-back,
they go full bore, wait till they are well into the corner, jerk the wheel around, the wheels
squeal (sometimes slip) and honk the horn so anyone coming the other way knows you
are there. (I am buggered if I know what an oncoming car or truck would do anyway, as
there is no time or space to maneuver) This is the standard technique, irrespective of
whether you are on the inside lane or the outside (which alternates at each end of the
switchback). You frequently meet a truck swinging wide around the bend and have to
swing toward the outer edge to miss it. Once around the corner, even though you have
lost speed, and the engine is pinging, you don’t change down unless the engine is on the
verge of stalling. I don’t think there are such things as driving schools here. It’s
apparently learn as you go!

Cars and trucks do go over the edge, as you can see the wrecks down the mountain side.

I have made my ONE AND ONLY road trip to Massawa.

Massawa itself was heavily bombed during the war and much of it was destroyed. In the
last five years a lot of new building is going on, but it is still very much a mixture of old
and new Africa. There are still many of the bombed out buildings there, including Haile
Selassie’s (Ethiopian Emperor) residence and separate office building from the time
before Eritrea’s War of Independence. They were magnificent structures. The old houses
are unbelievable iron and stick slums with no water, power or sewage. There is
unbelievable poverty in this country, as there is throughout Africa.

I will leave the description of Massawa till the next episode, as it is a fascinating place in
its own right, and I want a break before starting work again this afternoon.

Love to you all, miss you Lyn and wish I was home. Over halfway there!

Dennis