Comfort (English)

Dear friends,

As our log appears to end in the scenic environment in Rimini, we feel it's important to post this final log on waarbenjij.nu. Our website www.caretoconnect.nl is still under construction, but will be revamped in the course of the following months. Our return to the Netherlands has not fully effected according to the initial plan.

NOT ENTIRELY ACCORDING TO PLAN
We planned to return from Italy via Switzerland visiting our 'Swiss Connections' in Zurich. And for the final 'home-coming' day we were in the process of organising a get-together with our motor crackhead friends at the Dutch border and ride home in escort – this time without the ordinary pick-up truck cheered-up with the average AK-47 machine gun on top like in Iran and Pakistan.

Nothing of the sort. We got back in the night train from Milano to Arnhem – packed together in a traincompartment like a bunch of sardines. But we made it. And more importantly, we made it back on time. On time to welcome a new member of the family a week after. We tried to plan this journey in a way to be back on time for the birth of Suzanne, our little niece and daughter of my sister Jackelien and her 'terrible' husband Eugene. Hehe, well he's not so terrible as you might think, big guys always get a little smaller when they embrace their little baby for the first time. Needless to say we are proud to welcome little Suzanne as member of our family and we feel endowed to have hold her in our arms just three hours old.. ..such a miracle.

RE-FRESH
It is business as usual again immediately after the trip. The monday after the arrival in Arnhem I launched myself back in the forecastcalls at Cisco. Lisanne was unable to get back to work right ahead, she first had to recover from her concussion and broken shoulder bone. Must confess that the first days were hard as you feel plumeted into a rollercoasting company heading towards the most busy period of the year: fiscal year-end. Limping my way from business appointment to business appointment (I was still on cruches) a shift in mindset and focus had to be made in order to close the fiscal year successfully. This meant that nearly all energy went into, yes: working. Getting back in the working-process only got more challenging after being diagnosed and hospitalized (again) with an infected appendix... In no-time, my experience with hospitals was stretched from nil to two hospital stays in one month. Effectively, it's crazy to realize that you've spent a fifth of the May month in hospitals.. ..let's call it a big refresh.

On the other hand, in reality I felt priviliged to be one of the few people within the Cisco organization to actually have pulled it together to get a leave-of-absence; arguably seen in the company as a CLM, or Career Limiting Move. Be-it-as-it-may, it's probably one of the best decisions made, in particular in combination with giving back to a charity like SOS-Children's Villages.

TRIBUTE TO SOS-QUEEN MOTHER MRS. HASHMI
I realize that we haven't shared a lot of our experiences via waarbenjij.nu concerning one of the most impressive parts of our trip: the visit to the SOS Children's Village in Karachi, Pakistan. We intend to pay tribute to the people at the SOS Children's Village on our caretoconnect.nl website in due time. What we do like to share is that we were amazed by the efforts, love and organization of the SOS Children's Village in Karachi. In particular by it's 'Mother in Chief' Mrs. Hashmi.

We feel greatly privileged of being invited by The Village and Mrs. Hashmi during our stay in Karachi. Despite the fact that we could not exactly say how long we would stay in the Children's Village, they treated us most heartly and we felt embraced by the care of the Children's village, day-in-day-out. The Village in Karachi guards and develops the hearts and minds of about a hundred fifty plus small children, ranging in the ages of three upto sixteen. Every child has a plan and is guided by a purpose from the Village. Children who have the luck to live in the Village have food, love and are taught the valuable concepts of discipline, value and norms. I say 'luck' because not all children are privileged to live in the Village; for reference: Karachi is a city with about 20+ million inhabitants. So what are the odds.

What are the odds that someone starts to have a conversation with your father who is raising you by himself. This someone is trying to convince your father that his son is better off in the protected environment of the Village. The father is an uneducated man, with a high sense of pride that keeps him from taking measures to help himself, or his son. He believes that he has an honourable job working in a cinema day-in-day-out selling candy's and pretzels to the visitors during the show.. ..in the dark. The fact that he himself lives on the same candy's that he sells and that he and his son sparcely see the daylight because of the 'working territory' doesn't encourage the father to take actions. Only until someone sees the little boy, deprived from education and underfed by malnutrition and decides to take action. After living virtually in a cinema for eight years. This boy now lives in the Children's Village.

What are the odds that your aunt eventually takes the courage to bring two of her nieces to The Village. Earlier, her nieces are been trusted to her as their own mother is not capable of taking care of them because her new husband does not approve of them. The biological father of the nieces took off after birth and is no-where to be found. The new husband mistreats the nieces, so the aunt is their best safe-haven. The aunt on her turn tries to nurture her nieces which are occassionally treated by a visit of their own mother – ever-so-often.. But life in Karachi, or Pakistan for that matter is hard. There is no social security, and it's hard enough to take care of your own children. Before the aunt approached the Children's Village both of the nieces heads were shaven bald, for their own hygiene. The nieces looked four years old but actually were about six and eight years old – malnutrition has that effect on children. Those were the things that you could see when looking at the nieces in their deplorative state. What you couldn't see is their absolute lack of selfconciousness, self-image or exposure to care. These girls are now in the Children's Village.

It's in these cases that the Children's village has this amazing organization and stamina. The children's here live together with their 'mothers'; each Children's village mother takes care about ten children. The mother themselves often have experienced a rough time before being selected for the Children's village. They (the mothers) are helped too. The village is all about people. It's all about the social aspect of life. It's all about trying to do the right thing. Each child has a plan. For girls the main objective is to get educated and to get married. For the boys, the main objective is to get educated and to find an honourable, skilled job. The overall objective is to get the children embedded in ordinary life. For you and and me this objective is a no-brainer: we are part of ordinary life on a daily basis. For us, status, salary, esteem, materialism, free time, leisure is luring away our attention as these are arguably aspects of a 'better' ordinary life. Yes, I am saying 'better' and not 'improved'.

But in essence, ordinary life is formed by by matters like education, skills, self-confidence, structure, morals, employment, marriage/vows, norms, fitting-in, respect, culture. These are core substances of comfort.

The Children's Village is creating this structure to the kids. It gives them a feeling of fitting-in, being appreciated. It soughts skills and education. It prepares the children for marriage and employment. All these simple things that matter. Therefore, the village has established a secondary school directly situated next to the village where the Village children can blend with the children from the community; as both children attent this secondary school. The village has a medical post for their own children, but for the people in the community too – make no mistake about it: the Village is by no means an island – it endeavors to be an intricate part of the 'ordinary' community. This helps the children with their transition from the village to the community at later stages in their lives..

Off course, there's more to share about SOS Children's Villages. We will share this in due time on caretoconnect.nl.

RETROSPECT
A small comment must be made about the trip in retrospect. We feel privileged to have travelled the Eurasian axis. Accompanied by some great books along the way, meeting amazing friends and fellow-travellers an experience like this opens up your eyes and heart. Ironically, it would be impossible to venture the same trip right now if we wanted. Our world is continuously in flux. In Xinjiang, the Uyghur's are rioting against the Han-Chinese – a tension that we sensed whilst travelling through Urumqi and Kashgar, but now is breaking-news. In Pakistan, unmanned drones are flying over Quetta on a daily basis and the road from Quetta to Taftan is being used as a front against the fleeing Afghans from the US Helmand-offensive. The border-crossing of Pakistan/Iran at Taftan is closed due to the bombing and perils in Zahedan, Iran. Our friends in Iran report feisty battles with the Iranian authorities for democracy; something that we never suspected to get this far out-of-hand. And Turkish Kurdistan..
..well, that's gonna last a while I guess.

THE AXIS
We never had second thoughts about the trip. It was the best thing that we could endeavor together; we have no kids, no huge fixed expenses and we have no larger responsibilities beyond our selves. Ideal circumstances to experience the world and to give something back whilst being there. Perhaps, when we're going to venture on the other two axes of the world we'll leave the motorbikes for what they are and take a prepped convertible to drive around. Being on motorbikes for seven weeks in a row, under difficult circumstances – topped off with one (or two) road accidents surely has an impact on your physical condition. There will be no marathon for me this year, not even the planned marathon of all marathon in November: the Athens Marathon.. Months after the accident I'm lucky to run 2km's instead of the usual 50km's in the weekends. The year 2009 will not be the great year of sports – luckily we have 2008 to compensate for this with two marathons.

THE AXIS.. ..OR CROSSROADS
Returning to Maslow hierarchy of needs again, you start appreciating the basic elements of life: physiological, health and safety needs provide basis for yourself and are elements that are ingrained in our welfare-states. If you think about it: it's unbelievable that we provide sickleave, health insurance, heathcare facilities (I've got two physiotherapists working the body: speaking of comfort), paid leave and all these aspects of a developed nation that we take for granted. Yes, granted our ancestors worked hard for improving our welbeing. Arguably, if you want to easily assess which countries are doing relatively well, and which countries are still lacking behind, just look at the average working time per inhabitant. In the 19th century, the average (formal) working day of a Dutch employee ranged about 14 to 18 hours – a day. Now, we've minimized this to a mere 8 hour working day – thanks to the rising and revolt of worker's community in the twenties of the 20th century. We have a choice now. Working 8 hours or less a day, or working around the clock.

In many countries, you don't have a choice. There even is no formal working day. Perhaps there is, but the difference lies in the practical enforcement of these judiciary agreements between employers, employees and governments. In short: the shorter your formal working day; the better off you are. Your country should compensate this privilege with competitiveness, value-creation and a flexible and educated workforce. Otherwise this system is too expensive. We should take a lot more pride in this exceptional position in the world – because it is highly exceptional. Additionally, with all the (social) security measures in place we have a great opportunity for enterpreneurship; there's virtually no reason not to take risk, as nearly all risk is compensated by a fantastic level of income; this level of means or income largely overtakes our discretionary spending power in our own states; let alone outside of your country. Come on people let's go with it!

FINAL NOTE
I started this text explaining how priviledge we feel about riding the countries in transition from Hong Kong to Holland. This includes the European countries like Switzerland, Germany and The Netherlands. We should take comfort of the fact that we are better off than the average Pakistani child living on the streets; that our starting-position in the world is profoundly more endowed than elsewhere in the world. We should take pride in the fact that we have a job, we can create value and we can develop ourselves accordingly – if we want. If we do.

Leaving with a personal note, I believe one of the largest dangers in life is not “to live in comfort”. Living in comfort, is like value in the eyes of the beholder and its has large simularities with qualities of luck; it's temporal by nature, it's a representation of wellbeing and it's basically nice. No. The danger lies in what Pink Floyd sings to us: is become 'comfortably numb'; reaching a state of disinterest, apathy and carelessness whilst encrouched within abundantness and comfort. If you want to make things happen, make it now – don't wait too long. Cause waiting only gives your chauffeurs, acting gives you the freedom of driving.