{"id":62,"date":"2019-09-14T05:45:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T05:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/?p=62"},"modified":"2019-09-14T05:45:54","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T05:45:54","slug":"jamies-manifesto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/14\/jamies-manifesto\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie’s manifesto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jamie Ewing
June, 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me start by getting this out in the open: I haven’t done much for this trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My fund\nraising is pitiful compared to my sister, her high-rolling friends and my bullying\nengineer cousin. I haven’t listened in on a single Go Help conference call.\nI’ve barely studied the logistics, rules, visas, distances, or routes for my\nnine countries. I haven’t suffered from FOMO (in case you don’t know what that\nis, read the previous blog entry), and I haven’t bought any supplies even\nthough the temperature in Turkmenistan commonly reaches 110 degrees in July (I\ndid research that).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My biggest\naccomplishment thus far is that I haven’t managed to sabotage my teammates by\nnot getting my visas. I don’t think they would be too happy with me if we got\nto the Uzbekistan border and everyone was welcomed into the country except me. So\nat least I have that going for me. I have managed to follow instructions from my\nsister the team leader and mail in some forms on time. Yeah me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nwhen I was asked to take on two tasks I was excited. Here was my chance to redeem\nmyself. My chance to earn a seat in our Opel van. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Task\none: Plan our route from Istanbul to Baku<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Easy\nenough right? I know how to load up Google maps, move some dots around and read\nsome reviews on TripAdvisor. So I fire up my internet machine, and what\u2019s the\nfirst image that pops up on my home screen? A photo of a Turkish protestor\nbeing carried away after getting shot in the head with a canister of tear gas.\nThat can’t be good. I’ve never seen a tear gas canister, but I imagine it\u2019s\nabout the size and weight of a full can of beer, and I’ve been hit in the head\nwith a full can of beer. You don’t need to watch the Jackass video to know it hurts.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\ntrip is still a month away. Maybe they are just protesting a minor issue that\nwill quickly blow over. Maybe they want to go back to living in Constantinople.\nMaybe their government is secretly recording their phone calls and e-mails and lying\nabout it while the fiscal arm is illegally targeting the opposition party for\nharassment and investigation. Oops…wrong country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ndig a little deeper. Protestors comparing the prime minister to a\ndictator…blah blah blah. A park being turned into a shopping center…that\nsounds like an American problem. I’m quickly losing interest in this protest\nuntil my eyes glean the words “ban on alcohol sales.” The Turkish president\nrecently signed into law a ban on alcohol sales from 10pm to 6am. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can take away a man’s freedom. You can take away a man’s park. But I’ll be damned if you can take away his right to get drunk at 5am without a fight. That changes everything. I had slotted several hours a day for drinking and recovering from said drinks. I can’t foresee Love Valley with its penis shaped rocks being nearly as funny without some loud mouth soup. A mixture of panic and disappointment rises in my stomach until I see a Reuters photo of a protestor with a homemade gas mask made from a plastic bottle:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Is\nthat man really wearing a plastic bottle for a gas mask, and an orange scarf\nthat screams “please shoot your tear gas over here?” The guy on the\nright looks moderately cool with his swim goggles on, but a plastic bottle? At\nleast he punched some breathing holes in the lid, which I\u2019m sure are special\nholes that only allow oxygen, not gas in. And I’m sure the gas won\u2019t be able to\nget in on the sides where he taped the bottle to his hair. That’s air tight,\nisn’t it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ncontinue to stare at this picture until it dawns on me: He must be drunk! The\nonly rational explanation for battling police with a street sign and the bottle\nfrom your afternoon apple juice is that you must be drunk. If bottle face can\nget liquored up and fight the police, surely we can locate some Turkish moonshine\nalong our route. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nrelief slowly washes over me, I go back to charting our course to Baku knowing\nthat I have found at least one drinking buddy in Turkey and that our travel\ntime has just been increased tenfold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Task\ntwo: find a medical travel kit, preferably with sutures, staples and at least\none sharp scalpel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\nmakes sense. Give me a nice state-of-the-art medical kit, and I’m sure I\ncan not only treat a mean sun burn or pick out the nastiest splinter but also\nwhittle a fully functioning third arm out of my left calf muscle. My sister, on\nthe other hand, blacks out after being bitten by a hamster, but that’s another\nstory. (Actually, that’s all B.S. except the part about the hamster). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m\nas squeamish around blood as I am around roaches, and if you have ever seen me\nrun like a 3-year-old girl from a roach, you know that’s not good. I’m being\ntold that we won\u2019t actually be using the medical kit, but instead, it\u2019s to give\nto a doctor to use on us. What? Give to a doctor? Why doesn’t this “doctor”\nhave his own medical tools? Why does he need to borrow a scalpel I bought off Amazon.com?\nNow I am picturing some guy rolling off his yak mat in the middle of the night and\nstaggering over to me in his hash-induced stupor so that he can sew up my arm\nwith a needle I only purchased because it was available for free shipping. Do I\nneed to print off some Wiki pages on how to perform surgery and bring them with\nme as well? Maybe I should download the children\u2019s song \u201cDry Bones\u201d so that\nwhen this \u201cdoctor\u201d is putting me back together, he will know that the neck bone\nis connected to the head bone (and why are we teaching kids to call the skull\nthe \u201chead bone\u201d?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now\nI am realizing why I have not been tasked with more on this trip. After being\nassigned two simple jobs, I am not only convinced that if we get in a horrible\naccident, I will return home with my hand possibly attached to my head bone,\nbut I will apparently also have to be sober the whole time. If I get injured, perhaps\nI can just tape a plastic bottle to my wound until 6am rolls around and I can\nget a drink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jamie Ewing
\nJune 2013<\/p>\n

My fund raising is pitiful compared to my sister, her high-rolling friends and my bullying engineer cousin. I haven’t listened in on a single Go Help conference call. I’ve barely studied the logistics, rules, visas, distances, or routes for my nine countries. I haven’t suffered from FOMO (in case you don’t know what that is, read the previous blog entry), and I haven’t bought any supplies even though the temperature in Turkmenistan commonly reaches 110 degrees in July (I did research that). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/protestor.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}