Logistics and Qualms

    There's nothing like a day and a half in the air crammed into a space as small as the average modern airline's economy seat to get one thinking about how the hell one got into this position in the first place.    
    For years, I have been longing to see gorillas.  Scott, on the other hand, was longing for me NOT to see gorillas.  In fact, one time he extracted a promise from me that elephants, OK; rhinos, well, OK; lions, ok; but gorillas, not OK, emphatically.  That's where the matter stood until two separate events.  First, Judy and John Travers, the owners of Imire, went on vacation to Rwanda to visit gorillas and gave a spectacular account.  Scott was still not impressed.
    But then, one day in the parking lot of our favorite local grocery emporium, Golden Harvest, we met our friend DB, who was our veterinarian for years and is now having splendid adventures in retirement.  He told me about HIS seeing gorillas in, I think, Uganda, and when I told him about Scott's decree, he talked to Scott and assured him of the relative safety of gorilla visits.  His reasonable assurances caused Scott to release me from my promise!  Thanks, DB!
    I hoped to be able to volunteer somewhere with gorillas, but could find no such opportunity .  I think mountain gorillas are SO rare and require SUCH professional care that their care would not be entrusted to an amateur like me.  So, I decided to see them as a tourist and started an internet search for a tour company that would arrange my visit.  I found Nature Adventure Africa Safaris Ltd. and started a correspondence with Moses, and that correspondence turned into a friendship.  In addition to arranging an itinerary for me, Moses also found me a place to volunteer:  a school for "street boys" in Kigali, Rwanda.  He gave me an email for Charles, the executive director of the school Les Enfants de Dieu, and WE developed an internet friendship.
    So here I was, hurtling through the air in the rather profound hope that my instincts were correct in trusting these two gentlemen Moses and Charles on the basis of many email exchanges and nothing else.  Scott was more nervous about this than I was, but still, put a person 36,000 feet or so in the air for 36 hours, and doubts seem to follow.

 

Doubts notwithstanding, O'Hare was soon WAY behind me and I found myself in Amsterdam on a dark early morning.  I had a layover of a couple of hours to contemplate the amazing efficiency of the airport there.  As day dawned, I found myself calling the place "a miracle of concrete and logistics."