cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, and Maxine Shirts
"I've been going to sit down and write this ever since we got back from the Niger Delta last Sunday. Maybe I'm jet lagged, too busy, burned out, getting old, just plain lazy, or worried about how what I want to write will come across. Anyway, I've got two Thoughtlets to do, and since I've kept this effort up this long, might as well get caught up and stay consistant.
In case any of you attempted to call us this weekend, and you happened to read this before you try, you will know not to call the house number. I cut the telephone line with the shovel Saturday morning when moving the big plant from HyperMedia by the big rock to where the three pine trees are in the back yard. You can reach us by calling Andrea's cell phone (713.542.2197) or my cell (713.542.2207). The two lines and the facsimile into the house were working again by Monday night.
One of the reasons I have had a hard time getting around to writing this Thoughtlet, is related to phone calls and visits. On the first night of the PAIRS Class, they did a couple of exercises intended to teach participants that if we are going to have an intimate relationship with another human being, we must learn to take turns pursuing and being pursued. Over the last two weeks, I have been thinking about my relationship with my 10 kids. I realized I don't pursue a relationship with my step-kids in the same way as I do with my biological kids. I don't do telephones very well, and I've proven to myself over and over this is not a medium for me to use to build relationships. And everyone is a long ways away from where I'm at, even Rob and Matt. So how do I build better relationships?
I use the Thoughtlets, and they are just one-way monologues. Andrea has encouraged me to call each week, and I have, until the week before we left for the Niger Delta. It seems to me the phone call has become expected, and it is interesting how often the phone has not been answered over the last few months. When it is answered there are unsolicited comments about being out of town, which come across as incomplete, or doing this, or that. I think of all of the years I have called my Mom and Dad (when he was alive) and Grandma Hafen (when she was alive) on each Sunday evening, and can not help but wonder what I didn't teach. I do appreciate those times when you make the effort to call, or to come and visit. And our trip to the Niger Delta got my thinking about relationships and realizing there is plenty of room to improve my relationships with each of you, those whom I truly love and miss and want to have a close and an eternal relationship with. Hopefully I will find a way to package the words describing our trip so as to help you understand where my mind has been traveling the past couple of weeks.
My first visit to the Niger Delta was in Feburary and March of 1975. I just did some keyword searches, and I can't believe I haven't written anything about my first visit to Nigeria. This week's Thoughtlet is going to be an epistle. The context is that we had lived in Dallas for 7 months. I was in the Mobil 1 year training program. Part of that training program was to go to the field and to learn about seismic acquisition. I was sent to Kalamazoo, Michigan for two weeks the first part of February. We were doing split line seismic acquistion across the frozen swamps of Michigan, looking for small pinacle reefs. It was cold. I loved it. I remember drawing a 3-D picture of how the receivers were laid out, where the seismic energy went, and how this acquistion plan, an early version of 3-D seismic acquistion, allowed us a better chance of seeing these small reefs because of better lateral coverage. The jug crew (those who laid out the geophones and drilled the shallow holes to put the dynamite sources in when they were used because the vibrator tractors could not get into an area) were mostly X-convicts. The area was overcast, and I guess it is all winter. It was a depressing place. It seemed no wonder there were so many x-convicts to choose from. And it was really cold. I flew from Michigan to Dallas for a night, and then flew to Lagos, which is north and west of the Niger Delta.
My traveling companion was John Pototsky. He was one of the 18 that joined Mobil the same time I did. He got his B.S. in geophysics from Columbia University in New York City. We were good friends, and had a lot of fun together. I recall one time we were talking and an Egyptian who was in our same training program kind of out of the blue said to John, you don't smoke, you don't drink, you don't swear, and you are still going to hell. John loved the women. He would slip off at lunch time, particularly with some of the young ladies in the drafting department named Tina, and come back from lunch very pale. I remember being very jealous of the way he came on to Marti and her response. Yes, I am going to write some `little things' I remember this week, which will probably offend some of you. I'm sorry if you choose to be offended. This is not my intention. My intention is to explain my reaction to my fourth visit to Nigeria and my second visit to the niger Delta, and to give you a context to where I come from, something which I do not have for my parents, and something which I hope will prove valuable to each of you.
We were met at the Lagos Airport and taken to Mobil House on Victoria Island (../9727.html). Before we left Dallas, we had gone downtown to the Mobil Building with the Pegasus on top, next to where Ben now works, to visit the Mobil Doctors, get a whole range of shots, and to get malaria pills. I was sick from the Yellow Fever shot while I was in Kalamazoo. Imagine what it was like to my body to go directly from the freezing temperatures of Michigan to the Nigerian equator. Imagine what it was like for Marti, to have a 4 month old baby and to be left alone for over two months, while I was in Michigan and Nigeria. No family, not very good at moving, not very many friends, not that comfortable in the church, and basically no preparation for being a Mom. The road we have traveled is much different than any of you will travel, and so I hope you learn to soften your reactions to our weaknesses and our mistakes. I had spent two years as a missionary in England and London, and so I had seen lots and lots of people before. However, I had not seen the absolute poverty and the mayhem of a third world capital before. I was Indiana Jones, and I was eating it up. They didn't have transportation to get us to the dock and on the Fred Moore, Mobil's seismic acquisition ship at the time, and so we ended up getting a ride on the back of an old flat bed truck. The others were sitting down and holding on as the driver dodged pedestrians. I was standing up, balancing myself like I was riding on the back of the gut truck between the plant and the lower plant, or like I was on the tube in London and not holding onto the rails. I remember as we approached the dock seeing the first skyscraper I'd seen in Nigeria. Then when we got closer I realized the windows were six inches square, and it was actually only a few stories tall. I filed the impact of this visual insight in my mind with all of the photos I had taken on my mission of council housing which could be the basis of a mini-Archeology, a 3-D community based around people instead of around automobiles.
It probably took me 15 minutes to examine the length and width, height and depth, and every room in the Fred Moore. I have never been so claustrophobic in my life as I was during my six weeks on the Fred Moore. It was absolutely terrible. I like the mountains and the outdoors where I can walk in any particular direction I choose to for what ever distance I want to. You can't do that on a boat. And seismic boats have the added `benefit' of a loud BANG every 45 seconds when the air guns go off, for 24 hours a day. It was the closest to a personal physical hell I have been in my life. I was more bored than Rob or Matt ever are. I made two knives out of band saw blades, which are still up by the indian pots. One of them has the carved head of a unicorn on the back end, and the other is a paring knife. If any of you are interested in these mementos, let me know. I read the standard works. I was offended by the blatent pornography and made folks take it down from the most public areas. I asked them what they would think if that was their mother or their sister or their daughter. I read a book about Israel: `Oh Jerusalem.' I kept a journal of the experience, and someday expect to have it included in the index of `eventlets' (little, or stand-alone events) as described in these Thoughtlets.
Work wise I was assigned to calcuate and check others who were calculating the location of the sip from satellite navigation. We were shooting long regional lines from Mobil's oil leases at OML-70 out into the deep water. There was no way to do accurate navigation from shore, and so we were doing early versions of satellite navigation. The crew had extra folks, and having two trainees on the ship just gave extra hands, and so there wasn't much work to do. It was impossible to sleep very good because of the BOOM, BOOM, BOOM of the air guns, and the rolling of the ship. So John and I found things to keep us busy. I mostly read, and he mostly worked with the crew in the back, reparing hydrophones, air guns, etc. They did have good food on the ship. Steaks almost every night. The captain got out his cross-bow and killed a dolphin that was following the front of the ship for a long time, and we ate it (I realize some of you will figure this is pretty close to canabalism because of the intelligence of dolphins). It was like sole, or several other salt water fish. Even with the good food, the relatively good weather, good books, and interesting things to do, I figure I would have gone crazy if it would not have been for John Pototsky's accident.
John was helping with the airguns in the back, and they made the mistake of moving one before depressuring it. There is nothing to hold onto these 2,000 pound metal torpedo shaped guns, and John had his wedding ring finger in a slot as they dragged the air gun across the back of the boat. It fired, and his finger was smashed by the big metal plate. It took an hour to take the air gun apart before they could get his finger out of it. And then it looked like something which had been run through the meat grinder. I was the only priesthood holder on the ship, and so I couldn't give him a regular blessing, and he asked me to pray for him, which I did. The captain was definitely not pleased about the screwup, and at least there were two of us extra's, and so they quickly decided to pull in the hydrophones, go to the nearest platform, have a helicopter fly out and pick us up, and take us into the Qua Ibo Terminal, from which we could get a ride to Eket on the Niger Delta. So we did, and John went to the local Lutheran hospital manned by a Doctor from the Phillipines. There were people spitting up blood sitting in long lines outside the hospital. Because we were white John got preferential treatment. The X-Ray's showed the bones were still in tact. So the Doctor wrapped the ring finger, tied it to a splint on the middle finger, and wrapped that with a bunch of gauze. It really hurt if John lowered it below his heart. So he held this giant middle finger up over his head and we took off on foot for the Mobil housing across town.
We were not very far, when we saw an open school under a thatched roof. There were about 4 buildings, and the kids were probably in elementary school. They saw us just as we saw them, and the teachers immediately lost control of their classes. The classrooms emptied, and there were probably 200 kids running across the grass to see these two white guys, the one holding his hand up in the air. John pulled out his camera and the kids intuitively formed a flying wedge in front of him. I backed off and got my camera out and got some great photos of John taking a picture, with his left hand in the air, wrapped, and all of these little black kids looking at him to get in the picture. The teachers came out with switches, and the kids started to head back to their classes. We were laughing so hard we were almost rolling on the ground.
Just before we left Dallas, `Digger' Gray, who was in charge of the seismic crews, told us about his visit to Eket a few weeks earlier. He said he was sitting in the chair in the office, and he felt himself being dragged across the floor. He looked down and one of the Eket cockroaches had hold of his foot. Said he got a baseball bat out and hit it, and it broke the baseball bat, and the cockroach was just fine. Well, when John and I got to the guest house, we learned first hand about the cockroaches. They were about 3 inches long, very fast, and everywhere. They were bigger than the big water bugs we have in Houston, and looked a lot grosser. Their was no air conditioning that night. I was almost glad to get back on the helicopter, fly 45 minutes offshore to a platform, and get back on the Fred Moore. I was much happier when we arrived in Doualla, The Cameroons, a couple of weeks later, and we got to get off of that ship, and come home.
So imagine my joy when Jude invited me to come to Nigeria. Then when I told him I only travel when a family member accompanies me, I figured it wouldn't happen. He didn't miss a beat, he simply said, we will be glad to provide Andrea a ticket also. He didn't exactly tell me we would be going out on the Niger Delta. He mentioned we would be having meetings in a town to the east of Lagos, and that we would really enjoy it. And this is where the story of my second visit to the Niger Delta begins.
We did not have Mobil Doctors downtown Dallas to go and see and get shots. On the Thursday before we left I got hold of my Doctor's nurse, and she said they had no openings for the next two weeks. She recommended a web site, which I passed on to Andrea. If you recall from what I wrote last week, I was working really long hours at II&T and was not focused at all on little things like malaria pills. Andrea called in a panic, `We should have had the yellow fever shots two weeks ago,' and `we have to go to a Doctor to get a perscription for the malaria pills.' By the time I got home on Thursday night, Andrea was going to stay home, and she wanted me to stay home too. It was fine with me, and it was not fine with Jude and company. Friday Andrea went to one of the local Doc-in-a-box shops, and was able to get a $120 perscription for malaria pills to cover both her and me while there and during the decompression period. She was naturally worried about Matt, and I figured it would be good for him to realize what it is like not having his support system around. Jerad Jurinak, who is going on a mission to Venezuela right after General Conference agreed to spend time with Matt in the evenings. So everything fell in place and Andrea and I went to Nigeria, not knowing what was going to happen. After we accepted that we were going, I said to Dr. Vince Eleri, `Well, we are going. And you can come and visit me in the hospital when we get back.' Of course, nothing like this happened, and everything was just fine.
I wrote about the flight over last week (0236.html). We got into Lagos after dark on Sunday evening. There was a lady waiting for us. She does protocol at the airport for the U.S. Embassy and numerous other groups. She took our passports and whisked us right through all of the lines. It was much different than my three previous visits to Lagos, back in the 1970's when I was at Mobil. We finally hooked up with Basal Nuanko, Emerald Energy Resources's Exploration Manager, at baggage. His carry on bag was taken from him when he borded in Detroit, and it did not make a connection. It had all of the paper seismic sections for the presentations. He is a very easy going man, and he was agitated. Once we finally determined his bag did not make it, and that he would need to come back to the airport, we took off to find a ride to where we were going to stay.
The airport parking lot was mayhem. And there were all of these kids wanting to help us with their bags, and then wanting us to give them money. One looked about 16, and his arm was missing. He had what looked like a four inch bone coming out of his shoulder, which he would wiggle around under his shirt, and then ask for money. When we finally did get two cars we ended up in the one without air conditioning, so the windows were left down. There were not hordes of mosquitoes. And both Andrea and I were uncomfortable. It seemed to take forever to get out of the parking lot. And then the drive to Victoria Island went fairly fast. The Freeways looked new, and despite all of the people walking along the side of the road, I could see a change from when I was in Lagos 25 years ago.
We drove for quite a ways, past Mobil's big new building and down a road that looked like a brand new sudivision site in Cinco Ranch to a big house with barb wire around a 12 foot tall fence and an armed guard. It was a guest house. It turned out Emmanuel had moved out of the hotel, and we were suppose to take his room. The driver thought he was suppose to bring us here, and we were put up in the honeymoon suite. It was a nice room. The bed was like sleeping on the floor with a reasonable carpet. We went down stairs and drank a fanta orange while Basal ate some dinner, and then we went to sleep. This was Sunday evening, 08 September 2002. It's 11:30 PM two weeks later, I'm tired, and so I'm going to go to sleep. Hopefully I'll finish this and write the other Thoughtlet (based on the Nigerian word Broda, 0238.html) over the next few evenings.
Monday, the 9th of September was spent at Emerald's office. I wrote two more Marginal Field reports, for the two seismic surveys interpreted the Friday afternoon and evening we left. Guess it is bragging to say I'm impressed with how well these interpretations turned out. It will be interesting to see which of these Marginal Fields are bid on and which are won. I have my ranking that came out of the work I did, and I look forward to comparing it to what happened. Andrea read `The Prize' most of the day. She went and got our bags and checked us into the B-Jay Hotel at one time during the day. We were at the office until about 9:00 in the evening. Tuesday was more of the same. However, instead of working on the Marginal Fields, the time was spent on Emerald's block, OPL-229. I was able to take the images I captured, and build figures which better explained the interpretations I came up with. Again, we ended up working at the office until about 8:30. We didn't even go down and eat dinner Tuesday evening. We just ate some power bars Andrea brought with us.
Wednesday we got up at 5:00 AM and left at 5:30 AM for the airport and a flight to Port Harcourt in the middle of the Niger Delta. Port Harcourt is Nigeria's Houston, and 98% of Nigeria's Gross National Product is from hydrocarbons. The analogy breaks down at this stage. Andrea points out that even though Lagos is one of the largest cities in the world, we only saw one traffic light all the time we were in Nigeria. The plane ride wasn't bad. Kind of like riding on Southwest Airlines. When we arrived, there was a 12 passanger bus waiting for us, which the Chinese sent to pick us up in. There was the driver, two policemen with AK-47's (see the photo of Andrea with them standing on either side of her), Andrea, myself, Dr. E. (the President of Emerald), Jude, Dr. Felix (on Emerald's Board of Directors), Cecilia (Emerald's lawyer and on the Board of Directors), Basal, and at various times over the next three days, one or two Nigerian's representing the Sinopec connections. Jude mentioned we were going to the East, and there was no real description of where we were going. The reason for the guards was that some of the local people are upset with western oil companies, and they sometimes stop cars and cause problems. More about this when I describe what happened on Friday morning.
It took about 3 hours to get to where the Chinese were. Sinopec has committed to invest US$650 million to build a refinery and a power plant in the Niger Delta. We were taken to the headquarters for doing this work. We arrived at their offices at about 11:30 AM Wednesday. It turned out the key geologists did not show up until Friday morning. They kept saying they are on their way, be patient. After hosting us in a very small room, they told us to go eat lunch and meet the Chinese delegation, then to go to Eket, where I had been in 1975, and spend the night and come back first thing in the morning. We did. When we arrived at the hotel, I fell asleep for an hour or so, and Andrea watched a revival meeting outside our hotel room. It was the nicest hotel we stayed at on our trip. For dinner we had pepper soup as an appetizer. It was fresh caught fish, and lots of pepper. It was good, and a little spicy for Andrea. After dinner, Jude, Basal, and I spent about 4 hours revising the presentation. We went to sleep about midnight, after watching CNN for a while. This was September 11th, and all of the programs were on in commeration of 9/11.
Thursday morning we were up, ate some breakfast, and were on the road a little after 8:00 AM. It takes about an hour to drive from Eket to the Refinery. The roads are narrow, 1 1/2 lane asphalt roads, with lots of big pot holes in them because of all of the large trucks that drive on them. There are always people walking along the side of the road. Many of the people have 5 gallon buckets of water,or the equivalent in firewood, food, or clothes, on their head. Everyone is very poor. The women dressed very nicely. If you didn't look out at the palm trees, and jungle all around us, you might think they were dressed up to go to a Mall. The trip was a study in contrasts. On the way Andrea called out, `ROICE, LOOK, THERE IS ONE OF OUR CHURCHES.' We arrived at the office at about 10:00, and were ushered to a warehouse a couple of blocks away. On the second floor there was a large room, with equivalent of 6 church folding tables in a rectangle with a gap in the middle. The tables were dirty, and Dr. E said this was totally unacceptable. So we got to work and cleaned the place up. I found some 4' x 8' wallboards, and we made a screen, covered the window to make it darker, and set up some poster areas at the back. We sat up the projector and hooked up the PC's, and I used a shelf to cover the gap between the tables so we had place to set the projector so the image fit our `screen.' About the time we got set up the Chinese showed up and started to smoke. I asked them to smoke outside the room, and took all of the ash trays out of the room. When the meeting started it was a very acceptable facility.
This was one of the most interesting meetings I have ever been in. There were about 8 Chinese, 6 Emerald Nigerians, 2 Sinopec Chinese, Andrea, and me. We explained we have identified between 5 and 6 billion barrels of oil in place within OPL-229, with 2.1 billion barrels recoverable, and this is only in the structural traps. The Chinese explained their plans for the power plant and the refinery, and that they have no feedstock for either. They also explained how they have two drilling rigs in Nigeria, and no drilling sites defined. In all of my meetings with the Chinese, I have only seen them make counter offers, never offers. It seemed I was wrong, and this meeting was going to result in an agreement. However, it turned out they can not make a decision. We ate lunch in the compound a few miles away again. The geologist from Lagos did not show up. Dr. E. was very strong in his closing arguments, that they were wasting their time with 10 million barrel marginal fields, when there was a 2.1 billion barrel opportunity waiting for them to evaluate. I was able to pass notes to Emerald's presentors and prompt them as to how to negotiate with the Chinese. It was exciting to watch the professional birth of what looks like it will become a significant oil and gas company. And I have been told over and over I will be able to receive both an exploration bonus, based on successful wells, and an ownership position, so as to participate in production, in additional to consulting fees. It will be much more real when all of this is written down as a legal document, which will hopefully happen by the end of October.
On the way back to Eket, we asked the driver to stop at the Church, and Andrea and I went inside. There were two local women there, one with a baby wrapped on her back. She was the Young Women's President. There are 15 Young Women in the Ward. They were having a Pesidency Meeting, planning for Young Women in Excellence. Andrea was so excited. She gave her a hug (see attached photo) and they talked for a while. Cecilia, Emerald's lawyer came inside to make sure we were OK. I later learned it was very touching for her to see us (Andrea) interact so warmly with the church members. There were some boys outside, and I took their photo, and showed them on the digital camera. One asked for money, and I told him we do not do that in the church. He said, `OK' and just asked to see his photo again. It was a very special experience. We were about 15 minutes out of Eket.
After dinner on Thursday evening, Andrea went for a walk. There was a band in back of our room again, and this time they were playing Reggae versions of Primary Songs. `Choose the Right,' with a beat. `When the Saints Come Marching Home.' I was thinking I should go down and ask if they were members of the church. However, Basal and I worked on some slides to describe the stratigraphic opportunities in OPL-229. It turns out one of the reasons this block has been passed over up until now is that most of the block is a monocline steeply dipping to the south. In my conversations with Basal in Houston, I had said `The real opportunity for Emerald is the monocline,' and after the words escaped my mouth, I spent the next week thinking about them. It is a very vivid example to me of something outside myself (I choose to call this something God, or Jesus, or The Holy Ghost) placing words in my mind and in my mouth. During the meeting with the Chinese, I drew on a white board a description of why the monocline was important to structural traps on the north edge of the block (all of the hydrocarbons just flowed uphill and were trapped by the faults) and for stratigraphic traps (submarine fans from the Niger Delta had been growing into the block for a very long geological time, and many of these stacked sands are probably full of hydrocarbons). The three slides I made described these concepts nicely. I have worked seismic data from all over the world, and this is definitly the most exciting project I have ever been involved in. I realize it is not financially prudent to count blessings from the windows of heaven opening (see Malachi 3:10, Bring ye all your tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.) until they are in the bank. Yet the blessings to me are simply tied to the opportunity to participate in this project.
Friday morning we finally slowed down a little bit. I spent from 7:00 until about 10:00 looking up scriptures for `An Open Mind' (the book I have started writing about reconciling science and religion: 0231.html and 0234.html), to the mindless background chatter of CNN. We went down at 10:00 and checked out. The bus from the Chinese finally arrived at about 11:00. Jude had left about 3:00 Thursday to return to Lagos. Dr. E. and Cecilia left at 5:30 Friday morning to return to Lagos. This left Dr. Felix, Basal, Andrea, and myself to meet with the Chinese geologist. On the way to the refinery office Andrea had the driver stop at the church again, and she took in a Fast Offering donation and slid it under the Bishop's door. There were two young men, who looked like they were about 12 or maybe 14. One was 19, the Ward Mission Leader, and preparing for a mission, and the other was 18. They were planning a young men's activity for that afternoon after school.
When we got to the Sinopec's office they sent us to the subdivision where we have been eating lunches. There was a house set aside for us to meet with Mr. Wu Minglin, the `missing' geologist who turned down working with OPL-229 a year ago, and the person who seems most responsible for not being able to turn the Chinese offers into an agreement. He is an engineer, turned manager, who moved from Manager of China's operations in Sudan to Nigeria about a year ago. Very bright, and very self assured, he had good questions to ask, and seemed receptive to the work I have done on OPL-229 over the last few weeks. Basal gave a great presentation, and then I went though details on the `KK' structure, which is where we are recommending the first well be drilled. Jude wants this well drilled in November of this year. Wouldn't it be nice to get an exploration bonus for a discovery well by Christmas? Then we could afford to pay for everyone to come to Houston. We talked until about 2:30. This included a private meeting with Peter, the Utah State University Ph.D. who is responsible for building the refinery and the power plant for Sinopec. He definitely wants to work with Emerald, and in fact he wants to purchase 60% of Emerald's stock at considerably more than they are asking for. However, as with any large bureauracy, he does not have authority to go ahead, and is frustrated with all of the people he needs to get on board before an agreement can be consummated.
As the discussions finished, I painted a little bit of my view of the bigger picture, showing them an Infinite Grid(SM) map of the world, and highlighting where the 55 opportunities I have put together as Dynamic Resources this last year and a half are located. After we finished, they quickly ushered us out of the room, leaving our bags in the room, and walking us to one of the other houses for lunch. Lunch was not ready, and we expect they were busy going through our bags and making digital photographs of everything we had. Dr. Felix was particularly stong that they should be interested in copying what I showed them just as we were leaving. Oh well! Definitely not the way to start of a partnership. And what else could you expect in Nigeria, where most of the population is corrupt. They did not have lunch ready, and we ended up walking back and leaving about 3:00 for the Port Harcourt airport.
The two plus hour drive to Port Harcourt started off with a lot of excitement. As we pulled into the first town, some goons, uneducated men who have been given `taxing' authority by a local chief, with a 10 foot 2" x 4" board with 10 or 12 penny spikes all up and down it, threw the board in front of the truck and were going to get us to pay a tax. Then they saw the policemen with the AK-47's in the front seat, quickly pulled their 2 x 4 out from in front of the bus, and waved us on. Dr. Felix later admitted he was pretty worried for a minute. It did lead to a very interesting conversation about his goal to build a digital image library of all of the cores from the Niger Delta. I told him about Christian Singfield, and he has since followed up with Christian, who is back in Brisbane. I took some movies out of the front window, showing the hoards of poverty, and capturing the noise of the bus ride. When we were about 10 minutes from the airport we had a flat tire on the rear passanger side. We were in Port Harcourt, and yet there was nothing but jungle around us. We had just passed several thousand yards of garbage dumped on half of the road, covered with birds, and smelling like the by-products plant where all of the guts and bones and meat waste from Nelson Meat Packing Plant were taken. The guard and the driver proceeded to get out the spare tire and change it. The issue was whether we would make the last plane from Port Harcourt to Lagos. As Dr. Felix was explaining this, a car stopped, and the driver volunteered to give us a ride to the airport. He wanted nothing for his service, and maybe I will learn that everyone is not corrupt in Nigeria. We were at the airport in plenty of time, and before long we were back at the domestic airport in Lagos, and then back at the B-Jay Hotel.
After putting our bags in room 106, where we had stayed Monday and Tuesday night, we went down to the restaurant, where Basal was finishing his dinner. Maybe it was all that had happened during the week, or maybe I was just tired. However, this dinner was kind of an epiphany for me, and it is the reason I have had such a hard time writing out this Thoughtlet. I've been thinking about this dinner for a week and a half now, and I still don't have words to describe what happened. I just know that I left the dinner humbled, and ashamed of myself, and specifically of the things I haven't done, no matter whether it be because I haven't been given the opportunity or I didn't know how. The B-Jay Hotel had a buffet, with many kinds of Nigerian foods. I tried too many, and as usual ate too fast. Basal had been there a half hour before us, and he finished well after we finished. His looks kind of reminds me of Barney on the Andy Griffin show. His words are measured. He asked about you kids, we answered and then he told us about his family.
I won't attempt to recall all that he said. Just two things that really hit home. After being the Chief Geophysicist at Mobil Producing Nigeria for several years he was transferred to Dallas. They liked the schools in Plano, and so his family stayed there when he took a new assignment running a deep water Joint Venture offshore Nigeria. He traveled back and forth to Nigeria at least monthly, and so he was with his family regularly. His 13 year old son got in trouble with some other black kids in Plano. He was spending most of his time in Nigeria, actually in Eket on the Niger Delta, and would be home 1 or 2 weekends each month. When the second event happened with his son, he turned in his resignation and took an early retirement from Mobil. He moved home, and he spent all of his time with his son, until he was back on track and doing OK. It was a critical time for his son. Then one of his daughters fell apart at her first year of college. He brought her home, put her in a community college, and every night he would help her with her homework until she learned how to do chemistry and was back to getting good school grades and had got away from the social influences which had caused problems.
I know these two events sound pretty innocuous. However, they represent things I have failed at, things that are the most important things in my life. Specifically, I have not been there for Rob. Sure, he gets all bravado and says doesn't want me involved in his life. I grew up listening to the four letter root word which has dominated any conversation with me written or spoken over the last two years, except at his and Rachel's High School graduation and Ethan's birthday party. I'm sure Basal's son did not want his Dad in his face either. This last year Sara said she feels like she just missed out on the trips and things I did with Melanie and the older boys. You did. So did Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Rob, at least so far. It is a consequence of divorce. And the sad thing is none of you are the least bit responsible for the mistakes and choices of your parents. Yet you still get to reap the consequences of our choices.
The trial of my life was the threat of divorce and the emasculation of implementation. When I chose not to step in front of the train the night I walked to Brookshire (../9835.html, ../0013.html, and 0104.html), after the first threat of divorce, I also chose to do everything I could to stop the divorce from happening. A few years later, on the 8th of April 1995, when on the way home from UT Austin's 47th Annual Honors Day, where Roice was one of 45 students from the 5,000+ engineering student body to receive an award for a 4.0 grade point average, Marti said to me, `I haven't changed my mind and in fact I plan to get a divorce.' I was successful in delaying this from being formalized until June of 1997, and I truly did everything I could think of to stop it from happening. During these critical years, everybody but Sara and Rob graduated from High School, and Sara only had one year left. We have certainly seen the impact of the divorce on Rob, whom I remember as a kind, gentle, and caring boy. I recognized a clear choice to make, just as Basal did. However, I consiously chose to spend all of the emotional energy I had on Marti, believing those of you with me in those days would be OK, if I showed I truly loved your Mom. She didn't believe me, I believe because she didn't love herself or feel good about herself in those days, and it seems others felt the same. All most of you saw was Marti crying because of the `talks' we had. I became the villian. You learned to lie to me. Too many of you still do. And as I listened to Basal describe the successes in his life, I could not see beyond the failures in mine. It was so hard to sit in that resturant on the Niger Delta and not break down in tears.
Sure, I can say, `my Dad never once helped me with any homework.' I have helped Matt and Rachel more with their homework that all of the rest of you put together. They know how little I have been there to help them. Sure, I can say, I fasted two to three days every week, taking no water and no food for 48 to 62 hours, for about 20 weeks. Other than getting you kids off to college, I didn't see answers to my prayers, and I didn't even lose any weight. If anything I gained weight because I was eating more to find some kind of peace in my life. Of course, my prayers were answered, not in my time, nor in the way I requested, and with a wonderful companion who went to the Niger Delta with me and enjoyed it. If I was a stronger or a better person, maybe I would keep all of this stuff inside and let it be buried with me. However, as I learned in PAIRS, if you bury these kind of emotions, they come out sideways. I get upset because you kids hide things and lie about things, and yet, as Basal talked, I clearly saw how I am responsible for teaching you to do so. I did not accept compromise. And I had a temper. And I wasn't worried that everyone was afraid of me, because I truly believed you would eventually see the value in not compromising on values. Instead, I inadvertantly created that which I was trying to escape from. I expect it is like that with most of us. It is only the humble, honest in heart, Basal Nuanko's of the world, who are able to perform the miracles and save souls and lives. Hopefully a little confession will someday go somplace towards helping you each know that despite my weaknesses, I truly and deeply care and want nothing but the best for each of you.
Then again, I think of being told of a young man who wants to and is very comfortable working with his Dad. I don't ask for help very often, and expect I will even less often in the future, because it hurts so much to not even get a response for a request other than the words `What can I say?' Anyway, I've attempted to write the essence of what I've been thinking about since our trip to the Niger Delta. Hopefully you can see past the `little things' and see where my heart is.
Saturday started with Andrea and I spraying each other down with insect repellant, as we did each day all week. She had a big mosquito bite on her arm. We had written out our wills and filed them so they could be found before we left on this trip. As I have many times in the past, I saw our lives as simply being in the hands of the Lord, and if it was time to return home, that was fine with me. I spent the day in the office. I presented Dynamic Resources to Dr. E, Jude, and Basal. I attempted to copy some files for Jude to CD. It didn't work. Andrea went shopping and bought some really neat things. Jude gave both Andrea and me two Nigerian outfits. We left the office at 5:00 PM, and were at the Lagos Airport by about 7:00 PM with the lady who brought us through customs on the way in. She walked us right though, and we spent three hours in the Lagos terminal looking at some shops, eating lunch and dinner, reading, and writing. I wrote sections of `An Open Mind' most of the way home. I did watch the movie `It's about a boy' again, and slept in a chair in the Amsterdam airport for three hours. All in all, depsite the emotional baggage I carry around and am attempting to leave behind, I think you will each agree, we had quite a visit to the Niger Delta."