CAUGHT OFF GUARD



Sometimes, things just catch me totally off guard. Yesterday was a good example.



I spent a wonderful week with some colleagues from India. It was their first time there and while we were there on business, we took a couple of day before business started so I could show them a bit of the country. I also had a wonderful time with some of them in Singapore, a city I love and a city none of them had ever been to either.



I really never thought about it, but in retrospect, I spent a lot of time on the preparation. Meetings, phone calls, packing lists, itineraries and lots of other things were all things I tried to help on because I wanted them to have a great trip. It's who I am. I worry about people I care about and am very anal about the level of detail I plan for others.



It's odd since I am pretty loose-goosey with planning for myself or for Cathy and me. I don't need to know every detail and like to just sort of see what unfolds. But for others, I want it locked down tight.



But all of the planning for them never felt like any big deal to me-it's just what I do.



So, yesterday, I was walking along Worpel Avenue in Wimbledon to go find a bottle of wine to have with our pizza last night. We had canceled dinner out as Finn was a little under the weather.



I was checking my email as I walked along and received the email below. It's funny how a little gesture can have such an impact. I was caught completely off guard and this wonderful kindness touched me deeply.



It really made my day. Since several of the people involved read this Blog, thank you.



Dear Grover,
All of us would like to thank you for taking your personal time from your busy schedule to spend with us in India. Not only did you act as our tour guide, you suggested everything from pre-planning, packing list, what shots to get, what drugs to get, VISA applications, business agenda, seating chart for the drives, what to see, where to buy, how to eat, etc., (I know I forget a few things here and there). I know that we all found it helpful and it made the trip pleasurable thanks to you.
The personal time and energy that you dedicated is sincerely appreciated by all of us, and we wanted to find a way to thank you. We have made a donation to Freedom From Hunger in your name, and we all know that nothing could have been more appropriate to you.
Again, we thank you and hope that our small donation will go far in the fight against hunger.
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you,
Warren, Julie, Brinke, Joe, Ryan, Kelli


On a different topic, but still somewhat related to India, we ate at an Indian restaurant in Wimbledon the night before last. Finn was a little unsure about the Samosas so he decided just to sleep in his pram throughout the meal. Although one of his favorite places to sleep is below.








We all thought the food was good but Andrea's was a little crunchier than one would expect. She decided to probe around in her mouth to see what was causing the crunchiness.










Needless to say, she was not impressed that her curry included the plastic top of a tube of super glue or whatever it was. I even thought it could be crystallized Green Fairy that I wrote about in my last post. We could speculate on other possibilities but let's not.

THE GREEN FAIRY





WARNING! ANYONE UNDER 30 YEARS OF AGE SHOULD BE ADVISED THAT READING TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST AND SEEING THE FINAL PHOTO COULD BE DETRIMENTAL TO THEIR EMOTIONAL WELL BEING.

We are staying at the Cannizaro House in Wimbledon Village for a couple of weeks while we help Lee and Andrea with Finn. It is an old country Estate that was built 140 years ago by some Sicilian guy and has a long and deep history.

It is a classic English Inn that charges prices too high for those of us that earn our income in dollars, has a fabulous setting, a very nice staff and incredible grounds and gardens. It has rooms that remind me of the rooms at the Roping Cowboy Motel my parents owned except they were six dollars a night. The Cannizaro oozes character so in exchange for the character you give up the amenities of a modern hotel. I am certain there are a lot of illicit "liaisons" that take place here along with a few permanent guests about the same age as the Inn itself.

I was not sure about it when we first arrived given the price but it sort of grows on you and I have now become quite enamored with it and have even booked it for when we are here in May.

My two favorite parts are coming down early in the morning and sitting (as I am doing right now) in the massive parlor while David, a 6 foot 5 inch guy in his 60's with long white hair, starts a fire in the enormous fireplace. David has sailed the Atlantic from here to the US many times in a small boat and is a very interesting guy. He does small errands for the Inn (lighting the fire, driving the van) for five hours a day five days a week.

Owen, the guy that seems to be in charge of the restaurant in the morning always says "Good morning, Mr. Thomas" as he brings me over a strong pot of coffee with a little creamer and a bowl of sugar lumps on a separate little plate. It is all quite British (except it is coffee instead of tea), quite magical for me and a wonderful way to sit alone and do emails or Blogs. They play wonderful mood music, often the Beatles, over the sound system and it is a great way to wake up.

My second favorite part of the hotel is every evening, after spending the day with Finn, Lee and Andrea, we come back to the Cannizaro from their apartment (5 minutes away)and do something that is totally out of character for us. We stop in their cozy bar and have a drink. It gives us a chance to catch up since with a two week old in the house, much of the time revolves around Finn which is just fine with us.

They have all of these beautiful old bottles of liquor and although I have not drank anything other than wine or an occasional beer in a very long time, I have been sampling different drinks every night as it feels so appropriate given the ambiance of the Inn.

The other night I saw this bottle with this brilliant lime green, almost iridescent liquid in it and thought it waved at me. I walked down and looked at it and saw it was The Green Fairy-Absinthe. Not the Absinthe Substitute we have in the US but the real thing-pure, mind twisting, almost psychedelic absinthe.

The Green Fairy was all the rage in France in the late 19th century and if you were an artist sitting in a cafe in Paris, you were likely drinking Absinthe. Unfortunately, people drank too much, got drunk, did stupid things and it was concluded that the oils from the wormwood that it is made with made you truly crazy. A few people got murdered and some say that Van Gogh went mad after drinking too much Absinthe. So in 1912 the US made it illegal, a precursor I suppose to the Prohibition days and it was even made illegal in France a few years later.

MY HISTORY WITH ABSINTHE

When we lived in New Orleans in the mid-70's we would spend time in the French Quarter and we would always meet our friends, including my friend Mike Newton the Dancing King, at The Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street. I would always order either a Sazerac, the most hideous tasting drink known to man but a traditional New Orleans drink, or an Absinthe, made of course not with the real stuff, but with Absinthe Substitute since that was the only legal version you could get.

Advance forward 25 years. Around 1999, my friend Bill Robinson, who had lived in London many years ago, saw an article about resurgence in Eastern Europe of Absinthe. He kept saying how much he would like to get his hands on some. I searched the internet and found a place you could buy it and ordered two bottles. It was sort of a quasi legitimate Absinthe made in Bratislava or some other Eastern European country.

One night when we were living outside of New York, Bill and I drank one of the bottles with Bill drinking about 75% of it. We had reservations for brunch at a wonderful restaurant in Manhattan the next day and Bill couldn't eat a bite of his food he felt so bad. He just sat there thru the meal in a daze.

The next bottle went down on New Years Eve a couple of years later. We were staying at our home in Destin, Florida but were at Bobby and Cathy Jones's condo with them. Anytime you have anything to be sampled other than meat and you are with Bobby, things are going to happen.

I thought we should do it up in the traditional method, which is to take some ice and put it in a glass, take lumps of sugar in a spoon, hold the spoon over the ice filled glass and pour the Absinthe over the sugar and into the glass. We thought we would try this with a glass each and see what would happen.

It was quite a night and we must have had more than a glass since the next day the bottle was empty.

A year or two later Bill Robinson, who finally had gotten over his hangover, talked Andrea into bringing him a bottle of it back into the US when she returned from some trip. He failed to mention to her that it was illegal until she was back. I think Bill may still have some of it.

THE WIMBLEDON VILLAGE ABSINTHE EXPERIENCE

So we now move forward to this week. The bartender at the Inn is from Poland(referred to as TPB below). I saw the bottle OF REAL ABSINTHE waving at me. Finally I could try the pure, genuine thing. The conversation went like this:

Me: I'd like some Absinthe

TPB: You must be kidding.

Me: No

TPB: Do you know what it is?

Me: Of course (with my haughtiest, worldly air)

TPB: It is 17% alcohol

Me: I know (I didn't but I told Cathy that was only 3-4% more than her glass of wine)

TPB: The Russians (who have most of the wealth in London) drink it as shots. Do you want to do that?

Me: No. I want it on the Rocks.

TPB: On the rocks? Are you sure? (with a weird look on his face)

Me: Yes, I am sure.

TPB: I am from Poland and in Poland we make Absinthe. It is not as good as this and is only 40% alcohol. You need to mix it with water. (I failed to note that he had said "only" 40%).

Me: Bring it on. On the rocks.

So he pours about 2/3 of a glass full over ice.

The rest of the evening is less clear. Cathy sipped her wine and I sipped my real Absinthe, feeling so happy and so worldly to be drinking the real stuff.

Sometime later, I came to the realization that he did not say 17% alcohol as I had originally thought but he had said 70% alcohol, but I was too far down the road at this point. I realized it shortly after becoming anxious when I looked up at Cathy and thought she was seasick as her skin was the color of the green felt on a billiard table.

Then I saw her glasses and hair were the same color which was odd since everything in the room was now that color.

I even wondered for a moment if I was becoming a famous painter like Monet. I had this vision of me leaving my studio on Rue Montard in Paris, my beret perched jauntily at an angle, my smock covered with the pastel splotches of an Impressionist's palate, as I descended down to the local bar at 9am for a Cafe avec Pastis and a Croissant du Chocolat while American tourists were pestering me for my autograph.

It is hard telling what I said to Cathy that evening. I probably promised I was going to travel less, not go on any more Boards and retire next week. She was kind enough not to record anything.

THE NEXT DAY

I noticed the green hue to everything was beginning to dissipate as we took Finn on his first train ride and Tube ride to the Borough Market near the site of the old London Bridge, which in an unusual coincidence was sold to a guy named McCollough in the 60's and moved near my home town of Kingman, Arizona. I think Mr. McCollough had consumed a little too much Absinthe the night before. He actually bought the London Bridge, dismantled it, shipped it to Arizona and rebuilt it in the middle of the desert at a place that was then called Site Six where no one lived. He then built the city of Lake Havasu, Arizona around the bridge. But I digress.

This market is the oldest food market in London, going back to something like 170 BC or so. It has also been voted the best food experience by the readers of one of the local papers. I agree.

And we were headed there with Finn to do two things. The first was to buy sandwiches made of chorizo cooked on an open fire and served on a little ciabatta roll with Arugula (or Rocket as it is called here), olive oil and roasted red peppers. Andrea and Lee swore they were mind-blowingly good. They were. Probably the best sandwich I have ever had. Period.

The second reason we were going there was because they had a Spanish food store that we thought may have some of the prized and hard to find Jamón Jabugo, the highest grade of Jamón from Spain. Of course at about $130 a pound when you can find it, we were only going to have a few slices but it seemed appropriate that at 11 days of age, it was time to take Finn on his first ham hunt.

I have only had Jabugo a few times and have always heard that the top producer for Jabugo is a guy called Joselito (Little Joe)who makes it in such limited quantities, and it is so outrageously expensive that 90% of his ham goes to the famous El Bullirestaurant in the little town of Cala Montjoi Spain. Ferran Adriá, the owner and head chef, is considered in most gourmet circles to be the best chef in the world. El Bulli has been named the world’s best restaurant many different years so it is no surprise that he gets almost all of the Joselito Jabugo ham produced.

So while Lee was ordering the chorizo sandwiches outside, I wandered into the Spanish store and began trembling and shaking all over. I thought it was from the Green Fairy but realized it was because they had Joselito. It was the first time I had ever encountered it and my palms were sweating profusely and my ankles were swelling.

Without thinking through the cost (a leftover effect of The Green Fairy no doubt) I ordered 300 grams to take home. I realized I had drool running down my chin as I watched him lovingly and carefully hand slice every single gram. He said to me "Verdaderamente, conoces el jamón", as I stammered "¡Como no hombre!" I think every cell in my entire body was twitching in anticipation.

We took it home and opened up the lovingly wrapped package as soon as we arrived.

Now, this posting is about my experience with the authentic Green Fairy and what it does to you.

Well, I learned that when you drink it the night before, and then discover a ham you have been lusting after for 20 plus years, strange things can happen.

Yes, that is Jamón Jabugo de Joselito. Note the grease from it on my thumb

In closing, as I considered whether or not I should post this photo, I commented that it took a lot of self confidence for someone to put a photo like this of themselves on the Internet. My wife pointed out that it has nothing to do with self-confidence but it more a function of mental capacity or some such suggestion.

WELCOME FINN




I wanted to finish my posting on my trip before writing about the arrival of our third grandchild, Finlay Reeves Botham at 1:05 pm on Sunday a week ago.

I had just returned from a village in India to my hotel room in Calcutta about 8pm on Sunday, February 10th (2:30 pm London time) when I had a text message from both Cathy and Andrea saying that Finn had arrived. He was 15 days late, 6 pounds and 13 ounces and 20 inches long.

What great news. Nothing has brought more joy into our lives than

Landon and Wes and now we have a third grandson, Finn.

So, in following in his Papi’s love of travel, guess what this photo is below?



You guessed it. It is his passport photo and today, his 9th day in this world, he has had his passport application submitted. I sat with him earlier today and in lieu of a nursery rhyme or a song, spent about twenty minutes telling him about all the countries we can go see over the coming years. We covered the letter "B" today and while I may have missed some, we chatted about Benin, Brunei, Bolivia, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Belarus, Bahamas, Barbados, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Belize, Burundiand Botswana. I could tell he was excited and ready to pack his bag.

They brought him home from the hospital the day after he was born and with the magic of the internet and my webcam, I got to see him live very soon after that. Since arriving in London on Friday, I have been able to hold him a ton, let him sleep on whatever part of me he wanted, fed him, and made it clear to everyone that Papi doesn’t do diapers.

My favorite photo of him so far is below, taken on his second day with us:



Of course, there is not much to report since he doesn’t do much other than sleep, eat, poop, pee and talk with me about other countries. I do most of the talking.

Lee is incredibly good with him for someone that has never been around babies and despite Lee’s protestations to the contrary, he has red hair like his Dad and I think he looks like his Dad. And Andrea has taken to mothering like a duck to water. I am very proud of her-she is going to be a great Mom.

The photo below is of Lee and Finn holding hands.



We will be here with them for another week and he is at that age where we can take him to lunch and dinner and he behaves well by sleeping through the meal.

He is our first dual citizen and dual passport grandchild. I think that is also pretty cool.

In the photo below, Finn and his parents are joined by Linda and Claire, Grandmother and Aunt from Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear in the northeatern part of England. They came down and spent a couple of days with us.




Here Finn is Bonding with Grammy:



So, from Papi to Finn-WELCOME TO OUR WORLD.




OTHER FUN THINGS ABOUT BEING HERE IN WIMBLEDON

1. We were coming back from Starbucks today and there was a fox climbing out of the bars of the fence where Andrea and Lee live.

A fox.

In London.

As it crossed the street an empty plastic bag of crisps (potato chips) was blown by the wind near my feet. I almost knocked Cathy off of the sidewalk it scared me so bad. A minute later she thought she heard something behind us and she flipped her head around and jumped which then prompted me to freak out again.

2. Andrea received the good news today that she now has her Masters of Arts in International Journalism with Merit. Her graduation is in May. She now joins Cris, Dorte, Grover and Gustavo with their Masters degrees. Congratulations, Andrea!!!

3. We took the bus to Starbucks today. One of our Oyster cards (which is the card you use to pay for buses and the Tube) had a balance that was getting low so we walked into the Train station and asked them to reload the card.

They don’t do that at the train station. He was very nice and told me I had to go to the Food and Wine shop across the street. I did that but it seems a little odd you couldn’t refill a transportation card at a transportation place doesn't it?

4. I was lectured by a 50ish guy at a grocery store on the difference between Gammon and Bacon, both of which he said were ham. How I ended up in this situation is too long even for me to type. But he kept saying “Don’t you know ham comes from a pig and so whether it is bacon or gammon, it is ham?” I stifled the urge to comment on someone in their 50’s who works as a grocery clerk wanting to demonstrate his depth of knowledge of pork. But I now know how to buy a ham steak (smoked gammon slab) in the UK.

Just in case he happens to read my Blog, this is what I have to say about his lecturing me:

“I bet you don’t know the difference between Jamón Serrano, Jamón Ibérico, Jamón Jabugo or even Jamón Joselito. So take that and put it in your stuffed head Mr. Grocery Man. Or read this Blog later in the week when I take the Tube to Harrods to buy some of each of these and pig out-pun intended.

5. This is not a London item, but something I saw while I was here in London. My sister in law Judie sent me what I think is the best video (5 minutes) on the internet I have ever seen. It is not funny or sad-it is just a video about the most awesome thing in nature I have seen. I could not recommend it enough to any of you who have five minutes to spare and want to be entertained while learning something new. I promise you if you watch it until the end, especially the very end about the octopus, you will say Wow! Click Here to see it.


In closing, I have shared with you much about Freedom from Hunger . What I have not shared is that we also have a Blog that when people are out in the field they post notes about their experience. If you go Here you will first see a short posting I wrote followed by postings from each of the folks I was on the trip to India with. I think you will find some of the postings both gut wrenching and uplifting. I hope you have a chance to see them.

I started this Tuesday but it another day has passed so have a great Wednesday.

VIMLA AND HER CHILDREN-NO ONE SHOULD LOSE TWO OF THEM.

Tuesday I was with some of my Freedom from Hunger colleagues as well as some employees of Reach India, an organization that Freedom from Hunger founded and supports.

We were in a very small and very poor village, Bandali Bigha, 27 miles from Patna, the capital of the state of Bihar that rests alongside of the border with Nepal. Bihar is extremely impoverished and has a bad reputation among Indians as a result of the poverty, crime, corrupt local government and I am told a history of terrorist groups such as the Maoists. Having seen some pretty desperate areas, I must say that when I took an hour walk around the city of Patna, my sense was that this is a very troubled area.

It took us two and a half hours to go the 27 mile distance to the village due to the very poor condition of the roads.

We were going there to do three things. First, there is a new self help group of women that had recently been formed and Reach India was going to be conducting some “Learning Conversations” with them to help empower the women in the group and to teach them on some health and income topics.

Second, we were going to interview individually a couple of the women to better understand their living conditions, their needs and to see how we could help.

Third, I was going to make a promotional video reflecting on what I had seen during our trip. We had brought with us a camera crew of three guys who were from Mumbai. The Director, Rattan, worked in Bollywood, the world’s largest film industry in the world and he and his crew, were very talented.

When three SUV’s pull up in a town with no cars, no electricity, no clean running water and no plumbing, the arrival of a film causes the entire village to turn out. In no time we were surrounded by everyone in the village and it took a little while to get things calmed down so the training could be conducted. It went well and while the facilitator, which is called an Animator, was conducting the training I took a lot of photos of the villagers, some of which are at the end of this post.

After that, three of my colleagues, Ramesh, Chris and Amber went with one of the women and sat outside of her hut to interview her. Another woman, Kim, and I tried to distract the remainder of the village from sitting in on the interview. Kim did a masterful job of that by getting some of them to sing. She and I were in the middle of a circle completely surrounded by about 80 men, women and children and I decided to try and get out and climb up on a roof so I could get a photo of Kim encouraging the singing. As you can see below, she did that by first singing to the group and then asking them to do the same.



Once I got up on the roof, I snapped the photo below of a man who had taken her small voice recorder and sang about an 8 minute song into it. It was all very touching.



I then realized I could not get back into the middle of the circle due to the number of people, so Kim was on her own. After the singing finished she asked them to give her a tour of the village and they took her to their Hindu shrine and showed her how to kneel and pray.

I went from one roof to another and then onto a crumbling wall and was positioned to get some photos looking down at my colleagues interviewing this woman below while her naked son of 3 or 4 years of age sat near her. Her first name was Vimla and her photo is at the top of this posting and she had a story to tell that, unfortunately, is so typical of Mom's in India. To read about the story in Amber's own words, click Here. and then see the photo below of Amber, Ramesh, Vimla and her son sitting in the dirt and conducting the interview.



While they were finishing their interview with Vimla, I made two different videos with the villagers looking on.



I suddenly had an idea that the film crew wasn’t too crazy about but I don’t often listen well when my mind is made up. I told all the kids to gather around me, which the film crew thought would be too chaotic. My view was that since what we do is help women learn how to solve the problems of chronic hunger within their families, having the kids in the video with me was the right thing to do.

I sat down in the dirt in front of a wall and asked an interpreter to invite all the kids to come sit with me. They all did and they were very well behaved. As we were preparing for the shoot, I saw the Vimla and her naked son that had been with her during the interview which was now finished. I asked Vimla to bring him over and let him sit on my lap. As I did that, one of our colleagues from Reach India leaned over and told me that two of his siblings had died of malaria and that Vimla had shared this while the interview was taking place. This was right before I started to record the video. Needless to say, I lost my composure. Here was a woman that had five children and had lost two of them to Malaria. How does a Mom deal with that on top of her poverty?

So I decided to do something different with the video. I opened it by talking about the fact that it was such a wonderful experience to be sitting with all of these children, the hope of the village for a better future if we could do our job in educating them on how to deal with many health issues that contribute to chronic hunger, including of course, malaria.

I then said that while it was a wonderful experience for me, how much better it would have been if there had been two more children there with us-the two siblings of the little guy sitting patiently on my lap. But they were not there as they had died from malaria, a preventable disease given some education and a small amount of financial resource. It was one of those difficult moments for me but I think I did a decent job, although we will know for sure once it has been edited and in production.



This was also another one of those "ah-hah" moments that helped me see the value that Freedom from Hunger and it's partners throughout the world bring to the poorest of the poor. How outrageous that Vimla has lost two of her five children because she is poor. And how sad for all the other Vimla's out there. And how wonderful it is that I have been offered the opportunity to become associated with people who have dedicated their careers to making sure, wherever possible, this type of thing does not continue to happen.

After the interviews and video shooting was over we said goodbye to the villagers and left to the many smiles, waves and thank you’s of everyone.

We went down an old potholed road that was washed completely out in some places as it meandered through the rice paddies.



As I saw the local people working with water buffalos pulling wooden carts with wooden wheels,



and thought about the little guy that had been sitting on my lap, it was another SEE (significant emotional event) for me.

We arrived at the main road and stopped at a shack so the film crew and drivers could eat (it was too risky for us to eat any of the food there) lunch. We sat outside on some old wooden benches and were told we could all pee in the back of the shack near the high pile of rice drying in the sun.



None of us, particularly the women, were impressed with the al fresco bathroom choice since ten yards from the rice pile some men and women were working in the field. Because of something that had happened with one of the children that was in the video with me, I was encouraged by my colleagues to change my pants immediately when we stopped and to put the pants in a plastic bag.

I planned to do that when we found a bathroom as I had a pair of jeans in my suitcase. Since the bathroom was simply a field, in the plain view of everyone, I had to squirm around inside the car changing while several young Indian men peered in the window at me.

It always amazes me that I have lived as long as I have and traveled as much as I have and still know so little about the world. When I travel, especially with Freedom from Hunger, I see and experience things that I had absolutely no idea existed. We live in such a world of affluence, where the people that we call poor in our country would be considered so fortunate in other countries, that unless one actually goes and sees what the real world is struggling with, it is hard to explain. I try in this Blog but I know my words fail me.

When we returned to Patna, we stopped at the airport to drop me off. I said goodbye to Chris, Amber and Kim as well as our Indian colleagues and the film crew. I flew back to Calcutta, had dinner at 10:30 and went to bed.

Wednesday was my last day with the Freedom from Hunger staff in India. I went to the Reach India office and met with all the staff. In the photo below, taken at the office, from left to right you will see Barb (HR head from the Davis, CA office), Malika (training specialist), Arjabit (IT manager), Leslie (Support Officer), Nakir (Administrative Support), Alay (CEO), me (hanger on), Sheila (Research Coordinator), Shabari(Business Development Manager), Sean (from the DAvis, CA office and Director of Reach Global) and Subir (Finance Manager). What a dedicated group of people. I was honored to spend some time with them.



After spending the afternoon at the Reach India office, at 5pm on Wednesday, it was 12:30 pm the same day in London. I left for the Calcutta airport for my flight to London to meet my new Grandson, Finn.

Over the next 48 and 1/2 hours I flew from Calcutta to Mumbai, then to Singapore, then to Paris, and finally to London where I took a car to Andrea and Lee's apartment, arriving at 1pm on Friday, exactly 48 and 1/2 hours after I left Calcutta. I would describe it as a very long-ass trip to use a traveler's term. Of course, I could have flown right from Calcutta to London but that would not have been near as interesting, less rewarding from a frequent flyer points perspective and a lot more expensive.

I missed my connection in Paris and became depressed about it.

Then I made an interesting discovery-the incredible restorative power of a Parisian ham and cheese sandwich on a fresh baguette coupled with a Fanta Limon. I actually considered intentionally missing my newly rebooked flight just to feel even better with another sandwich.

On the planes I did three meditations and answered over 230 emails. I attempted, unsuccessfully, to sort through the 1400 plus photos I took. I slept a few hours, drank gallons of cappuccino, read a Time magazine, ate good French food and read most of a book about a guy who goes from one country to another to determine which country in the world is the happiest. I generally had a good series of flights and layovers. I also spent six hours of one flight sitting next to a woman who reports to a senior executive in IBM who I have known and worked with for many years. I spent an entire week with her (the senior executive) at an IBM training facility in California some years back.

Knowing I was soon going to meet Finn in person, be reunited with Cathy after 23 days and see Andrea and Lee for the first time since October made it a good trip. The ham and cheese sandwich also contributed immensely to my high morale.

And so I close this post with more photos of the most important part of my last three weeks-the women, their families and their villages. Helping these people is what Freedom from Hunger is all about and I am proud of the role I play with them.

WHILE STANDING ON THE ROOF OF A HUT IN A SMALL VILLAGE IN INDIA TAKING PHOTOS,

on the other side of the world, my third grandson, Finlay Reeves Botham, was emerging into our world, 15 days late, with reddish hair from both sides of the family, weighing 6 pounds and 13 ounces (after they had estimated it would be 8 pouds 3 ounces) and 20 inches long. At long last, Fizzy, who they will call Fin, has arrived and it was a joyous night for me last night when I learned it. I was banned about talking it on my Blog until Lee had a chance to post more photos on Andrea's Blog so I waited. Click .here for Andrea's Blog to see several photos. I have also put two of the photos I really like below.

Within a half hour or so of his birth, Andrea was sending me an email from her Blackberry while still in the delivery room. Both Mom, Dad and Fin are doing well.




I took 211 photos yesteday in the village up by the Bangladesh border. I will put them on later. I don't want to take away from the excitement of Fin, so I will only show 3 or 4 or thenm below.

AN "AH-HAH" MOMENT IN THE VILLAGE OF DEBSHALA



Yesterday my colleagues and I went to the village of Debshala in West Bengal. This was day 23 of my 47 day journey and I woke up feeling quite homesick and wanting to be with Cathy, Andrea and Lee since soon our new grandchild will enter our world.

I would rather be with them at this important time, but once we arrived at this village, I was reminded that one of the reasons I am on this planet is to help people like I met in the village. And it was an Ah Hah moment for me.

Sitting in a circle with the women,



Listening to their stories of their lives in this village with no electricity and outdoor plumbing, I was so pleased to hear how Reach-India, an initiative of .Freedom from Hunger , was helping improve their lives.

As we sat their in the circle, with me trying to keep my legs crossed (without totally bending my artificial knee) and not end up showing the bottom of the feet to the women, I was amazed at how much they smiled.

Then I started thinking about my mood earlier in the day and how I was a little down. And I thought about the women’s ups and downs:

* One day you are getting ready to harvest the crops you will depend on to feed your family and the next day they are wiped out.

* One day you are playing with your child and the next day you are the victim of violence against women where it is too often accepted as socially okay.

* One day you are happy and the next day your child wakes up with a fever and 3 days later they are gone-and it could so easily have been prevented if you had access to vaccinations and education on how to prevent and treat childhood diarrhea.

* And on and on. Suddenly my longing to be with some of my family at this important time, while not dimming in its intensity, seemed selfish.

And then we asked them to sing for us. And their smiles went away and they began singing softly two songs. Of course I had no idea what the words were to their song but as I looked around at all of them, young and old, dressed in their finest for this meeting, so thankful for the education we bring to them, I suddenly saw the ups and downs of their life and I fought back the tears.

I was so afraid the women, who are the one with the challenges, would not understand why I was so emotional and I was also concerned about the reaction of my colleagues. But my heart and soul hurt for these women on one hand while on the other hand I was inspired and hopeful over their attitude and hope for the future. It was a very powerful moment for me.

After the meeting they served us tea and we visited with them. Then I had to pee so they directed me around the corner to a primitive yet clean latrine. It had a swinging metal door on it so I stepped in and closed it and a lizard that was evidently on the door decided to jump and landed on my arm, scampering down onto the floor.

The only thing that saved me was that I was so startled the only thing that came out of my mouth was the noise of every breath of air in my lungs being expelled. One of my colleagues is a woman named Amber who I believe is a bigger fraidy cat than me and she is the first one I saw so I proudly told her the story and that I was brave and didn't scream. Of course that is only because the scream wouldn't come out.

We are off in a few minutes to the town of Mayapur. We are staying at the main temple worldwide for Krishna Consciousness. Why, I am not sure. It should be interesting. They told us that there will be thousands of Hare Krishna practitioners there with us. I am sure we will not stand out. They also told me last night (my colleagues forgot to mention this before we left on the trip) that the sheets are reportedly quite gray and soiled and there are no towels.

So I had to negotiate here at the hotel for them to loan me two sheets and a towel for the temple stay tonight and when we get back here to Calcutta tomorrow I will return them. In typical Indian bureaucratic custom, I talked to 7 people before I got the approval and then had to sign a long form that had 5 carbon copies. On the other hand, they said it was the most unusual request they had ever had from a guest.

Here are a few more photos from yesterday

I THINK I WILL SKIP EATING THE CHICKEN

There is an interesting article below my two photos that sure caught my attention this morning when I saw it since the area it refers to is where I am flying to tonight to spend the next week.

But, before that, I will share later some of the last 6 days here in India, but for now, I want to share three photos. One is of a Indian wine that we drank a little too much of on Tuesday night and the other is the latest innovation in what certainly must discourage smoking here. The third is a photo of my Trustmark colleagues that I have been traveling with and that I have so enjoyed being with. They are all leaving India night for home or holiday and I am leaving (note the article below) to go to another part of India to work with Freedom from Hunger.

From right to left below: Kelli, Warren, Ryan, Brinke, Joe and Julie


Here is the lovely article:


Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 1:50 PM
Subject: India: A Bird Flu Outbreak to Watch

Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
---------------------------

INDIA: A BIRD FLU OUTBREAK TO WATCH

Summary
The Indian state of West Bengal is experiencing a large outbreak of the
H5N1 avian virus. While it is still unlikely that this particular bird
flu will create an epidemic among humans, places like West Bengal give
the virus an environment for incubating and possibly crossing the
species barrier.

Analysis
With a human mortality rate north of 50 percent, bird flu exists as a
boogeyman for everyone from health planners to conspiracy theorists.
The
fear is that should the current H5N1 avian virus spread through the
human population, the world could experience massive death tolls
paralleling the 1918 global swine flu epidemic.

So far, the threat has been greatly overblown.

While there have been a handful of confirmed human-to-human
transmissions of H5N1, they have all been among close family members.
Simple -- and common -- medical practices no more complicated than
washing dishes and avoiding fluidic contact have so far proven
sufficient to prevent any broader spread of the virus. Bird flu, put
simply, is less transmittable than normal flu by orders of magnitude,
and total global human deaths are only about 200. For now H5N1 is
little
more than something that will crash local poultry markets (as the birds
are culled to prevent the virus' spread).






The most likely way for this to change would be if the virus mutated
into something more transmittable, something that most likely would be
brought about by H5N1 interacting with a human flu virus within a
person. But for this to happen there must be opportunities for H5N1 to
get into a human in the first place. Since cooking chicken kills H5N1,
most people are simply never exposed. Only those who eat raw chicken
products or who actually deal directly with chickens without protection
on a daily basis are potentially at risk.

Enter India.

A few weeks ago an H5N1 outbreak manifested in West Bengal. So far, the
Indian government has culled about 3.5 million birds and it is
attempting to set up an "exclusion zone" around the state in which all
poultry are slaughtered. The effort, however, is not going well. The
government is not promising compensation for any birds culled, sharply
reducing the impoverished citizenry's willingness to cooperate. And so
far the "poultry-free zone" effort has only begun in one of West
Bengal's neighboring states -- Assam -- and not in the other three --
Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa -- making it extremely likely that H5N1
will
jump over the exclusion zone and into other areas of India.



But that is beside the point. The real danger is that H5N1 now appears
to be entrenched in the domestic fowl of West Bengal. Already H5N1 has
been confirmed in 13 of West Bengal's 19 districts.

The state of West Bengal is one of India's poorer regions -- so poor
that the national government regularly gives the state's citizens
chicks
so that they have at least a modicum of private livestock for food
and/or supplemental income. Roughly 80 percent of the population shares
living quarters with these chickens and ducks, creating the perfect
crowded conditions for H5N1 to first jump species, and then mutate into
something more communicable. And just next door to West Bengal is the
country of Bangladesh, a country of 145 million with worse governance
and greater population density than India.

This does not mean that it is time to head for a bunker in the hills.
There is nothing to indicate that the next pandemic will originate from
H5N1 or any other specific animal virus. It is simply worth keeping in
mind that most major human diseases do come from animals, and that if
H5N1 is to develop into something more dangerous, places such as West
Bengal and Bangladesh are the ideal incubation chambers.

YES, THAT IS A BIRD ON MY HEAD-AND SEVERAL MORE ALL OVER ME




This is short because we arrived in India last night right after the third transatlantic sea cable was cut near Egypt, virtually reducing internet capacity to about 4% of normal all over Indian and the Mid East. They say it will be fixed by February 12th. It takes several minutes to load a page and then you get knocked off often.

So, only a few photos from my time in Singapore on this post.

How in the world I ever let Julie and Warren (and he had no interest in doing it himself-he just wanted to take photos of me doing it) talk me into this is beyond me. We were at the Jurong Bird Park and these birds were fighting to get on top of me. I hope it is because they were females but it may have been the food in the little container that Julie made me hold for them.

But I not only drew the line on this next photo, I actually began to question if these two people should really be trusted with the corporate assets of our company based on this lapse in judgment. I could hardly hold the camera ateady. There must be a circuit in their brain that doesn't fire right that would cause them to do this.

Now, I know some of the readers of my Blog that do not know me well (my close friends and family absolutely know this stuff is true) wonder if I really do some of these things like eating shaving cream when I think it is mouthwash or finding dead bodies in hotel rooms. Well, here is proof I don't make this crap up.

Night before last (Thursday) we (Warren, Julie and also Ryan and Kelli who had just arrived) went out to eat. That consisted of stopping at Raffles for a few glasses of champagne, walking to Boat Quay and having (in my case) a Caiparhina, and then going to the Lo Passat Hawkers Market where we had 3 pitchers of beer along with my customary 20 Satays and a number of other dishes we all shared.

We got back to the hotel a little after midnight. My room was a suite with a sliding door between the living room area and the bedroom. I wanted to shut it so the light from my PC in the living room area wouldn't shine in the bathoom. I put my hand in the handle as I walked into the bedroom and slammed it hard. The problem was I put my hand in the handle on the living room side instead of the bedroom side so I slammed my hand in between the sliding doors.

Here is what my hand looked like within 73 seconds. And it was not easy to take these photos as it was my right hand so between my whimpering and moaning, I had to use my left hand to steady the camera and take these photos. Note the walnut that emerged immediately from somehwere within my hand.




Unfortunately, this stuff really does happen to me. It must have been the satays-I am sure it was not the beer. Below is a photo of what my hand looks like today, 36 hours later. From my knuckles to my wrist, it is a dark reddish purple.

More posting from India when they get the internet problem working right.