Remembering my business trip to Colombia in 2001

How are those 72 virgins working out for you in hell ?

Remembering my business trip to Colombia in 2001. 

I was musing the other day on another of my business trips that could have gone terribly wrong, but fortunately for me, and my creditors, I made it back alive and well. Here is a tiny slice of what I remember from a trip to South America.
Back in October of 2001, a colleague and I went to Bogotá, Columbia for a business trip. This trip was less than a month after the devastating terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York City by the followers of the terrorist leader Usama Bin Laden, No one in my family was enthusiastic about me making any kind of airline trip since four aircraft had been high jacked on September 11th. And to go to Bogotá, of all places, was really pushing luck since Bogotá was notorious for terrorist activity.

My colleague and I were undaunted. We arrived safely and were soon making business introductions to the locals with our agent’s assistance. But I got the strangest reaction to the Mexican speaking Columbians when I said my name. “Hi, I’m Bill L…..”. Without fail, the person I just introduced myself to would give me a ghastly look of confusion and say “Bin Laden?” “Why do you say you are Bin Laden?” I thought this was a charming joke that the locals were trying to play on me until this encounter was repeated over and over again by nearly everyone I met.

In Spanish, the double LL sounds to the listener like an “N”, so I finally figured out that they heard “Bin” for my first name and my last name syllables just ran together. And given the terrible notoriety that the real Bin Laden had suddenly achieved, his name was in everyone’s consciousness. So, here I was, a tall, slim, bearded foreigner, who was either a lunatic claiming to be Bin Laden or I really was Bin Laden, and happily admitting, “gee, you got me. Here I am”. With most of the world looking to collect a $25 million bounty for the dead or alive capture of Bin Laden, I was not too tickled with this situation.

A couple of days later, after I had gotten used to the idea that I could be the world’s most wanted Mistaken Identity, I was traveling with the manager of the company we were in Columbia to work with. For this story I will call him “Edwardo”, because his name was, well…, “Edwardo”. He told me of past kidnappings of executives by the local narco-terrorists, where their M.O. was to stop traffic, pull the unsuspecting victim from the vehicle and spirit him off in the jungle. A ransom then would be demanded and the victim may or may not be returned alive. What a cheery thought.

“Edwardo” had driven me out to their manufacturing facility on the outskirts of town. We were headed back to our hotel when the traffic suddenly slowed and halted. We were in the middle of three lanes of traffic and were, for all intentions, trapped in the street. I suddenly heard several quick, loud explosions off to my left. I strained to see what the commotion was about and glanced at my driver. He was tightly gripping the steering wheel, and staring blankly straight ahead. “What is going on?”, I implored. I was not sure I wanted to know. He mumbled something very un- reassuring to me under his breath and continued to stare forward. The explosions continued. Then to my right, a platoon of riot police in full protective gear, burst forth, running quickly towards the sounds of the explosions. Panic began sneaking into my brain as I watched the soldiers bearing riot shields and AK-47s rush past me. “Oh great, my wife was right. I am going to die and she will get to say I told you so”.

After the wave of soldiers had past us, the traffic slowly began to move forward. “Edwardo” finally looked over at me and asked “were you afraid”? “Should I have been”?, I asked, in stupefying ignorance. He calmly began to explain what we had just witnessed. We were driving past the University when this incident occurred. And on occasion the students at the school stage mini uprisings. They protest all kinds of things, from the poor wages being paid to Juan Valdez to pick coffee, to protesting the food in the school cafeteria. One of the ways they show their displeasure is to insert some kind of tiny explosive into potatoes. They throw the potatoes at the police and when the spuds hit the ground they blow up. These were apparently harmless explosions, but very loud and scary, none the less. It had become a silly ritual. The police would look tough and disperse the students while the students got to act like activists and can brag to their socialist friends what great causes they were fighting for. It was a relief to hear this story since my mind was thinking much more serious thoughts, like how my loafers would hold up in a jungle hike.

Well, I finally did make it home safely to the U.S after all of this. I amused my children with the exciting tale of how I could have been killed by the horrible exploding potato bombs wielded by vicious anarchists. I naturally was expecting loving admiration from my fawning daughters for my courage. But all I got as a response from my children was the sarcastic comment “gee, seems like a waste of perfectly good potatoes.” I bet Bin Laden wouldn’t get this kind of disrespect.

Still not over the Cold War

Karl Marx welcoming the world to Fantasy Empire

Nov 2011
Still not over the Cold War
Hello Gentle Readers, I just landed in Russia. I have a short layover here at the Moscow International airport on my way to Singapore. I have never been here before but I am not technically here now. Let me explain. Unless you go thru Customs of a particular country, you really aren’t “in” that country. So, by that measure, I cannot claim I am in Russia. And by that measure it also means I have never been in France, China, Antarctica, or Mars.

I was sitting in a window seat as we neared Moscow. It was a bright sunshiny day, but oddly enough, no other passenger on the plane seemed to notice William Shatner, in a furry gremlin suit, out on the wing. I had a great view the countryside from low altitude as we made our approach to land. We were flying over a broad, flat rural region. It is a huge area. I don’t recall the unit of measure they use for land over here. Is it Hectares?,Voltaires? Éclairs?

Much of the area below me was a blend of forest and open farm land. There were a few lonely roads etched in to the landscape. I could see occasional smoke stacks that were busy spewing out dark gray plumes of smoke. The vapors created a long wispy line along the horizon as far as the eye could see. I guess this is what caused the thick layer of haze in the atmosphere that we flew thru as we came down land. Thank goodness I never see that kind of air pollution in the U.S. any longer, unless I am flying thru Washington D.C. airspace.

As I Looked down on the unplowed barren fields it was evident to me that the communist system just doesn’t work. No crops were growing and the grounds were empty. The Commies told us back in the 60’s they would bury us, but they can’t entice the farmers to produce food? Where were the collective farms that would allow proud farmers to feed the world? I guess profit motive for farmers may actually make them grow stuff. Or maybe there was nothing in the fields because it is mid-November? OK, I guess that could be it.

We landed. But I never saw ANY sign we were even close to Moscow. There were no small outlying communities that you’d normally see near the large central business areas. Where was that giant evil city that was the scourge of the free world during the cold war? Where was Red Square and the famous minarets of the Kremlin? Not to be seen. I have quickly adopted a theory that it was all just a giant illusion. Moscow, and the entire Soviet System was just a menacing cardboard cutout of power that the communists created just to fake out the west. I have learned to hate fakes. Like the fake Rolex watch I bought in Indonesia, or the fake heart transplant I had in Mexico City. (Not really. I am a Conservative. I don’t have a heart. ) History has shown, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, that communism did not work.The wall was more valuable when it was broken up in to chunks to sell to tourists.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see in the airport of the Capitol city of the former Soviet Union. Maybe I envisioned a chorus line Cossacks in furry hats doing a folk dance, or a KGB agent in a trench coat asking for my papers, or perhaps a vodka swilling bear eating peasants for the amusement of the tourists. As a side note, I’ve actually seen a performing bear in a rural area of India once. But it was not swilling vodka, it was not eating peasants, and it didn’t ask me for my papers. It was just a sad captive bear that had all its teeth pulled out and was working for tips and tips alone. Seeing this made me wish I had become that dentist I originally went to college to become. I’d grab the owner of that poor bear and pull his teeth out to see how he liked it. But, as usual, I digress.

I am a child of the 60’s who grew up under the threat of immediate nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union. I remember the agony of practicing “duck and cover” drills in elementary school. It seemed we spent hours doing the drill. We’d be sitting on the floor, bent over with our hands over our heads “for protection”. I wondered why it was OK for the teachers and faculty to be walking around and chit-chatting while the students were cowering in the hallway. They always seemed to let the drill go on a little longer each time. And they appeared to enjoy it way more than they should have. Now, thinking back on it, I am suspicious of what was in the drinks I saw them toasting each other with. At the time, I didn’t think about why they would have had olives and tiny umbrellas in their beverages.

Looking back now, as a mature adult (OK, age-wise mature, not mentally), I realize that these drills were not to protect us physically from a Rooskie sneak attack. These drills were designed by our government to make us think we were doing something to protect ourselves. It was rather silly to believe that covering our heads with our hands would do any good if we were exposed to a 2000 degree blast wave from a thermo-nuclear device.

I am beginning to have my suspicions that our government knew all along that the commies were not a problem. Our leaders just used that threat to get billions of tax dollars out of us. Never let a crisis go to waste. I thought that was a new term, but the concept behind it is as old as politics. We now are accustomed to the U.S. government using our money to buy million dollar toilets. I wonder if those toilets had built-in bidets? But, in fairness, those high dollar commodes must have done the trick. It turns out that we were never bombed by the Commies, or attacked by dancing bears wearing trench coats. But the KGB does ask for our papers, now, at the airport.