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    Now, We Begin
    Now, We Begin
    Now, We Begin
    Ebook195 pages2 hours

    Now, We Begin

    By Robert S. Mellis

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    About this ebook

    The author has spent his retirement years working and mentoring journalists in Namibia, as well as Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Bhutan and even in Borneo.

    He takes the reader along on this adventure and describes the cultural roadblocks, as well as soaring breakthroughs that occurred on the journey.

    This book was written to help baby-boomers see that retirement lets them move into a new and exciting phase of their lives. It permits the opening of a new door, where extraordinary experiences await.

    Robert S. Mellis began his journalism career in Scotland and emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 20. He has worked as a reporter, editor, designer and publisher of large and small daily and weekly newspapers and cultivated his belief that brainpower always outstrips resources when it comes to creating journalistic excellence.
    As a result, his forays into some of the world's poorest countries, where resources often are non-existent, allowed him to put his belief system into action.

    This book recounts some of the extraordinary stories he helped write while on his training visits to the smaller countries in the world. In addition, he exposes the reader to the excitement of discovery in the remotest places, where he came face to face with headhunters, wild elephants, cheetahs and lion. The book contains numerous photographs that illustrate the narrative.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobert S. Mellis
    Release dateDec 12, 2011
    ISBN9781466192669
    Now, We Begin
    Author

    Robert S. Mellis

    Born in Scotland. Moved to the U.S. at age 20, in 1961 and spent most of his working life in some form of newspapering.... mostly as an editor or publisher. Took early retirement in 2000 and set sail with his wife, Jo, aboard their 30-foot sailing cutter. He and Jo sailed for 15,500 miles until 2007 when they sold the boat and moved aboard a 34-foot motor home. They now land cruise during the summer (Alaska in 2010, Newfoundland and the Maritime Provinces in 2011.

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      Book preview

      Now, We Begin - Robert S. Mellis

      Now, We Begin

      A Strategy for Baby Boomers to Grab Life, Add Drama, Excitement, Adventure and Make a Difference in Our World

      By Robert S. Mellis

      ***

      Now, We Begin

      Published by Robert S. Mellis at Smashwords

      Copyright 2011 Robert S. Mellis

      ISBN: 978-1-4661-9266-9

      Cover Photograph by Robert S. Mellis

      License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ***

      Dedication

      To Jo Mellis

      ***

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1: Fork in the Road

      Chapter 2: Questioning Authority

      Chapter 3: Where The Real Africa Begins

      Chapter 4: The Water of Life

      Chapter 5: Meeting King Mpasi

      Chapter 6: You Very Sick Man

      Chapter 7: Confronting Fear

      Chapter 8: Taking Back Their Land

      Chapter 9: An Overflowing Mortuary

      Chapter 10: Cambodian Nightmares

      Chapter 11: Tuol Sleng Prison

      Chapter 12: The Television Street

      Chapter 13: Car Troubles

      Chapter 14: Praying to a Duck

      Chapter 15: Living on the Mekong

      Chapter 16: Road to Angkor Wat

      Chapter 17: Attack of the Killer Bugs

      Chapter 18: Breakthrough

      Chapter 19: Learning About Fast Food

      Chapter 20: Blind Massage

      Chapter 21: The Lion of Burma

      Chapter 22: Forays Into Vietnam

      Chapter 23: Working in Hanoi

      Chapter 24: Another World in the South

      Chapter 25: The Mysterious Mme. Binh

      Chapter 26: Bad Water - Bad Sickness

      Chapter 27: Closing Orders

      Chapter 28: The Roots of Adventure

      Chapter 29: The Roof of the World

      Epilogue

      ***

      Acknowledgements

      This book would not have been possible without the support of the remarkable people at the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C. Susan Talalay, the then-director of the program provided the perfect balance between support and confidence while I poked into the training of journalists in places like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Bhutan and Namibia. The Independent Journalism Foundation in New York provided the funds that made my adventures in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam so meaningful. But it is Celia McTague Pomeranz in New Milford, CT, to whom I owe a large debt for being the person who helped me focus my ideas and who gave me the inspiration to write this story.

      ***

      Chapter 1 – Fork in the Road

      My world ended, so I thought at the time, in 1992 when the weekly newspaper group that I had led as publisher for 10 years was sold and I was cut adrift from a source of income as well as my passion for living after 35 years in journalism that ranged from Scotland to cities throughout the U.S. I was given a golden handshake that in no way compensated for the blood, sweat and tears shed during those years.

      But the end is the end. Reinvention had to be the focus of my life since there was no way the state unemployment office would provide me with leads to a similar publisher position in an industry that had begun to decline.

      I set about creating a graphic design business while simultaneously getting my captain's license so I could charter our 45-foot sailing ketch on Long Island Sound. There was no way we could afford to keep this lovely boat if we couldn't make it pay for itself.

      Both businesses did well enough but I didn't feel much fulfillment. It wasn't journalism - my first love. I made contact with the International Center for Foreign Journalists in Washington, D.C. I told them I was available to help train journalists in remote parts of the world and I had the key ingredient for such an assignment. As a publisher of weekly newspapers, where resources were either non-existent or paper-thin, I had built a team defined by excellence. We were guerilla journalists who, with hardly any resources, had created newspapers that were judged to be outstanding in their class. Why couldn't I do the same, with the same lack of resources, in the developing countries of the world?

      My pitch worked and I was chosen for a fellowship that would take me to a base in Singapore (decidedly not third world) where I would fly to Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Borneo, Bhutan, Nepal and by train to Malaysia.

      It was a baptism by fire. When I spent 10 days at the University of Sarawak on the island of Borneo, I was taken to a longhouse, the ancestral home of my interpreter's Dayak tribal people. There, I sat in the communal hall and ate with the people.

      Above my head, in the smoke-filled rafters, hung the shrunken heads of past enemies of the Dayaks. These shrunken, fist-sized heads, tar black in color, were intertwined in the leg and arm bones of the dead. These Dayaks were cannibals back in the day. Now they subsisted on the side of a mountain, with a bamboo pipe guiding water from a stream down to the longhouse. The pipe ran along the back of the house and had taps attached which provided the residents with pressure water.

      I had achieved my dream of bringing guerilla journalism to the backwoods of the world. I was so successful that the university in Sarawak invited me to join the faculty. It was a flattering offer. But I had much more to do so I thanked the dean of faculty and flew back to Singapore to decompress before heading for India.

      Of all the 35 countries I have visited, India is the most problematic for me. It has one foot in a modern world and another firmly planted in a cobweb of bureaucratic red tape that harkens back to the English colonial period. It is the only country I have worked where culture shock overwhelmed me. Was it the adults squatting to defecate in the streets, cows that take precedence over all other things, or six year old girls offering their bodies to me in exchange for five rupees (12.5 cents)? All of these - and more - made up the madness of India when I walked the streets of Madras (as Chennai was called in 1994). I retreated to my hotel room, shaken to my core by the apparent barbarity.

      Before going abroad, the ICFJ in Washington had spent a week preparing the fellows for the cultural problems we might face in country - as well as the shock we'd have to deal with on our return to the U.S.

      A professor from American University told us the first month abroad usually is a hugely positive experience. The natives are quaint, interesting, fascinating, mysterious - just insert the adjective of your choice. But, he warned us, foreign cultures, just like our own, should be likened to icebergs - only a tenth of the iceberg is visible. The nine tenths that are submerged are the real culture. This is what you will find immovable and this is what will cause the real culture shock. His final words still are hooked in my memory: About a month in, you will run into a wall and you will know you have when you utter these words: ‘these people’, he said. If only ‘these people’ would do this. Or why don't ‘these people’ do that. And so it was.

      These words would tickle my mind when, nine years later, Jo and I flew to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I had been chosen to lead a media center for working journalists from Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma. Jo and I sat on the balcony of our too-palatial home on a back street in the anarchy that was and is Phnom Penh. We had been in-country for thirty-one days when Jo said: Why can't these people learn to cook eggs properly? She had struggled to learn enough Khmer to communicate with our cook through a picture dictionary. But the going was tough. The runny-almost-raw eggs came on a piece of toast each morning despite Jo's attempts to have them poached to a firm consistency. In a country where the staple for breakfast, lunch and dinner is rice, it was asking just too much to get eggs for breakfast.

      She had just hit the wall. We laughed about the lunacy and Jo eventually went into the kitchen and cooked the eggs herself to demonstrate how she wanted them.

      This book is not designed to show you how to live your life when you retire. It is my story of how I reshaped my life to bring meaning and fulfillment. Each person must walk his or her own path. But I want you to know about the wonderful forks in the road as I made that journey. I hope it will inspire you to take a chance at something new so your retirement years can come alive with new adventures, rich new vistas, reasonable risk-taking. My story is not your story. But it may help you write your own story for the rest of your life.

      ***

      Chapter 2 – Questioning Authority

      The call from the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., came in 2001 as my wife and I sailed into Miami, Florida, aboard our 30-foot sailboat, Quiet Passage. We had moved aboard in 2000 and had traveled down the eastern seaboard of the U.S. from Portland, Maine. Plans were to cross to The Bahamas but the call on our cellphone offered a different adventure. They offered me a stipend to spend more than four months in Namibia, in southwestern Africa, working as a trainer at The Namibian, an independent English-language daily.

      Jo flew north to Vermont to be with our youngest daughter who was in her eighth month of pregnancy with our first grandson. I flew for 30 hours to London and then south across Europe and the Mediterranean to Africa. It's a long, long way to fly north to south through the entire continent of Africa. And it's not easy to get to Namibia. I flew to Capetown, dazzled as the jet circled Table Mountain. The next day I fly north and west, arriving in the dusty desert dryness that is Namibia.

      It didn't take me long to get settled in a little apartment 200 yards from the newspaper office. Each night, as I left work in the dark, I'd be greeted by the guard. He sat outside the newsroom with his ancient rifle between his knees. I asked him if he had bullets and he told me he had only one bullet.

      The newspaper had been born before independence in 1990 and was founded by a white woman who had grown up in South Africa. Gwen Lister is one of the most courageous journalists I have ever worked alongside. Her newspaper has survived fire-bombing by white Namibians who feared the end of the apartheid era. And she has survived the endless attacks by a black government since independence - a government that is riddled with incompetence, corruption and ignorance. The government in exile (back, before independence) had believed, because she wrote about the need for independence, that she was in its pocket.

      After independence, however, when she shone the newspaper's spotlight on the ineptness, venality and incompetence of the new ruling class, the government turned against her. The first president of the new Namibia pushed a

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