Out of the Gulag, part 4 of Turkmen trip

Out of the Gulag

Send Lawyers, guns, and money.

I know what you are thinking.  You, the discerning reader of these Intrepid Traveler stories are thinking:  “wow, that Intrepid Traveler has led a charmed life.  He travels the globe, poking into the dark recesses of the world where ordinary humans never have a chance to look.  Back home, he has the Fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler to keep the home fires burning, and who blessed him with a beautiful, charming, witty child.  (Since I have more than one kid, it will be fun to watch them try to figure out which one I might be referring to)

Along with my charmed life, I am one who never seems to lose his cool. Well, I just about lost my famous cool on this trip.  Let me explain.

I flew to Turkmenistan to consult with a customer on some equipment that was not working properly.  The equipment was located one hundred miles from the nearest point of civilization, surrounded by a harsh desert.  The customer’s facility is essentially a work camp, and the only way in or out is to use their roads and go thru several of their security check points.  The moment I arrived at the “camp” I had a bad feeling about getting back out.

My colleague and I were greeted by a fellow who spoke limited English with a distinct Russian accent.  When he smiled he exposed his poorly capped gold teeth.  He asked for our passports and said he would return them soon.... “No worry”.   We were brain dead from 24 hours of travel, and without asking questions, we just handed them over. 

We were each assigned to a room.  This is where we would call home for the next week or two.  The indefinite length of time was a big concern for a control freak like me.  The room was about 10 ft by 10 ft.  It had a bed, a desk, and a broken chair.  There was a metal wall that partitioned off the bathroom.  The bathroom had a cheap shower curtain separating the shower from the toilet and sink.  It was illuminated by a single dim light bulb.  The shower wand was hooked to the wall if you wanted a hands free shower experience.  But the shower head was squirting water in all directions.  This might not have been a problem except there was an electrical outlet just inches away from the water splash zone.  I never smelled singed hair or burning flesh, so I apparently did not get electrocuted.  And yes, I did move the spray head. Over the sink was a small magazine sized mirror, hanging at an angle from a nail, which was about chest high to me.  When I looked in it I wondered where my head was.  (Thinking back to when I agreed to come here I wonder where my head was then, too.) 

Within an hour of check in, I heard pounding on a door down the hall, and someone saying WORK! My colleague, came to my room and said they want us.  We took a mini bus to another location which consisted of a row of sad looking one story buildings. There we met some of the managers, and were issued our work clothes.  Before making this trip I bought outdoor clothing specifically to wear here to help cope with the 100 degree heat, but we were told to wear the company issued pants and heavy cotton long sleeve matching shirt.  It was more like a uniform.  There was an underlying message:  we had to conform.  The uniform was bright red, as if to tell the wearer that there is no way to blend in with the desert fauna, and we will spot you if you try to escape.    

There were small trucks and SUVs constantly moving about the camp.  Each had heavily tinted windows so you could never tell who was in it.  I am surprised there were no armed guards visible.  The first full day at the camp we were taken into a brand new modern office complex then escorted into a stark conference room.  The room had a huge table in the center.  On the far side of the table sat some important looking Chinese men, who were never identified, and did not offer business cards.  Thru an interpreter, we were told, again, that there were problems with the equipment which we needed to fix.  

The interpreter was a tiny lady from the computer dept.   Her voice was so weak that I could hardly understand her.  She, like many oriental people, abhor exposing their skin to sunlight. So when she was outside she wore a full face shade, which covered her mouth and muffled her tiny voice.  She vainly tried, all week, to help us talk to our hosts, but bless her heart, she was not much help. Most of the communications were done by babbling and gesturing.

We spent the week being shuttled to various locations in the complex of petroleum refining facilities.  Our equipment was installed in the strategic piping all over these locations.  Wherever we went, there seemed to appear out of nowhere a collection of workers.  They gathered around like curious farm animals.  In all the locations we visited, there was never a problem with my product.  The problems were always with the instruments that were purchased to work with our equipment.

By the end of the week it was apparent to me that we were nearly done, so I contacted our agent for Turkmenistan by text messaging from a borrowed phone.  I told him to put the wheels into motion to get us out of the camp.  This meant booking the two hour flight back to Ashgobat, the capital of Turkmenistan, and start the long chain of flights back to home.  The two hour flight fills up quickly and if we missed one we would have to wait another 24 hours for the next one.  There was a lot of resistance about our departure from the Chinese management.  They thought we were leaving before we were done.  I tried to assure them it was not the case, but they came up with a list of 29 installations we needed to check before we left.  The Chinese were very relentless and this  list was going to kill our chance to get out of here .  I don’t know why they waited until the last minutes to show the list to me.   Maybe they are the real control freaks.  

On top of this we still did not have our passports.  We kept getting excuses for the delays, which always concluded with “don’t worry”.   Well, I was worrying.  An American passport is worth a lot of cash on the black market. My cell phone did not work in this country and the internet connection was unreliable.  I felt isolated from the world.  Was I destined to die in a desert camp that I could not find on a map?  I did not want to be here a moment longer.  These guys were in control and I really couldn’t leave without their assistance.  Inside my head, panic was creeping in.  I was losing my cool.

So I went into “American” mode.  I no longer waited for them to tell me where we were going or what we were doing.  I showed them the list and told them we were going to item one immediately.  We did.  And it turned out it was not even our equipment.  Item two was the same.  Way down the list we finally found something we needed to look at.  We did, and determined the problem and the solutions. From a list of 29 items only handful were even ours. 

So, in just a few hours after I felt the desert closing in on me, we flipped the situation around and were done.  We headed back to our camp.  Our driver was already there, so in short order we showered, packed and were on the road to the airport.  I told him to drive like he stole the car.  He did not understand the words, but knew the meaning.  Getting the hell out never felt better.