Tag Archives: dogs

by - 24 Comments

Stumping for Haitian Art: Gorgeous Gardens in Port-au-Prince


I had a close encounter with garden art last week—

An unexpected one at that.

Regular readers of my blog know that I’m a visual artist—of sorts—self-taught, poor, and living in exile on a Caribbean island, where electricity is in short supply, political stability is even harder to come by, and cholera is spreading like good gossip in a gaggle of girls.  I’ve shared my work in previous posts.  I love art, support art, enjoy it in all its incarnations, shapes, and sizes.

But it surprised even me last week, when an artistic enterprise unfolded in my own Port-au-Prince back yard—one uninitiated by me.

Ever since last spring when Sara moved into our house on a hill—Morne Calvaire (where we’re told a new neighbor is Baby Doc Duvalier), the land-lady has promised a garden, and last week she delivered, arriving with a landscape artist who installed a stunning rock garden near our front door.

We were happy.  We were actually thrilled.  However, we were not prepared for act two, which unfolded the following day.

It was morning; the sky was clear, blue bold enough to brighten even the most bored of bloggers.  I was writing, enjoying light that angled through my wall of windows.  While I was working, however, the dogs alerted me to a noise outside, one I might have otherwise ignored. Thank God for canine clamor.

There on the hillside that slants down and away from our house, three men, our landscape artist included, pushed and pulled, grunted and groaned the most massive of stumps toward a wall and fence that border the back of our garden.

I couldn’t imagine why.  What was the purpose behind this effort?  Why had Sisyphus himself shown up on my Haitian hillside?

What concerned me most, however, from my interpretation of signs and signals being gestured below, was an apparent plan to heave the stump over the wall and through the fence cemented into it.  I watched and wondered, watched and wondered some more till I was sure the plan indeed involved such fence bull-dozing, before running out to get our security guard to intervene and interrupt this planned assault.  Within seconds Sonny came running, riffle gesturing the men away from ruining our fence.

It was soon discovered via a phone call to our landlady that, having forgotten the fence was attached to the top it, she had asked the men to remove the stump by pushing it over the top of the wall.  Our stump-movers extraordinaire interpreted her instructions quite literally, intending to force the tree through the fence in an effort to accomplish the task.  So much for common sense.

Stump removal ceased for the day.

The men then returned the following morning, removing a section of fence, forcing their burden over the top of the wall, lowering it with ropes into the back of a truck on the other side, and replacing the offending section of fence, before departing—

I assumed forever.

However, the following morning, while I was again writing, a horn honked outside our gate, the dogs barked like insane caricatures of canine companionship, and I soon heard the shouting of what turned out to be seven men.  Within minutes massive crashing commenced on the deck above, more shouting, still more housing-rattling crashes, shouting and crashing, shouting and crashing, until I simply had to investigate.

The stump had returned.

It was now living on our patio, puzzling me, puzzling indeed.  I like trees as much at the next semi-green ex-pat on the island, but REALLY, did we want this stump on our patio?

Over the next several days, however, Dicton Gaston, our new gardener guy answered that question for me, proving more and more a sculpting savant, as the stump morphed from this:

Into this:

Dicton Gaston is a gardening genius.

Dicton Gaston proves art emerges from even the most unlikely places.

Dicton Gaston proves that in Port-au-Prince, though ex-dictators may show up unannounced at airports, though they’ll be arrested and released and move onto the mountain where you live, art can come from equally surprising places, in delightfully surprising packages.

So, this week, as long as the ex-dictator can maintain his EX-dictator status, as long as protesters don’t take to the streets and shut down the city, as long as posts can go as planned, this week I’ll bring you a series on Haitian art, hoping to remind you—

Port-au-Prince may be leveled, reduced to a dead stump of its former self, discarded on a hillside, in ruin.  Haiti may be broken, lost, and nearly forgotten, but still, like Dicton’s stump, it can occupy a prominent place, a patio blooming, green, and living once again.

A work of genuine genius.

by - 31 Comments

Fear and Trembling in the New Year: a Writer’s Confession


It’s the beginning of a new year and I’m facing the feeling so many writers dread—the fear that I will never compose another decent sentence—the dread that I will not only have nothing to say, but also that what I do write will limp along badly—boring, boring prose that no one with even half a literary brain would lay claim to.

Part of what frustrates me is my seeming lack of focus, the realization as this blog evolves that my interests are too eclectic.  I enjoy a little of this and a lot of that and that and that.  With Sara and I traveling so much, I feel my writing is both literally and stylistically all over the map, sometimes funny, sometimes deadly serious.  Are my own eccentric inclinations exaggerated by the sheer geographical range, if nothing else?

 It might be boring, but I sometimes wish I were one of those people with a singular focus!  Practically speaking, how does one lend cohesion to a blog that’s at one time or another about Haiti, Vietnam, art, poetry, dogs, travel, disaster response, and election fraud?  Then when you expand that list even further by adding topics I’ve yet to address, but plan to (my work in India this past year, for example), it becomes a dizzying mish-mash that would give even the most open-minded reader a case of topical whiplash.

So, my questions this New Year’s Day remain:

–How singularly focused does a blog need to be?

–What makes you keep reading one blog but not another?

–What is your biggest fear as a writer?

–Would you be willing to discuss any of these issues in a post to your blog?

I’d love to know I’m not alone with these writerly fears for the coming year.  How do you manage your own creative insecurities?

by - 13 Comments

Happy Holidays from Haiti: a Christmas letter


Dear Friends and Family,

Sara and I, along with our dogs Ralph and Lucy, would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays both from our home-away-from-home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and from our home in Lexington where Sara will join me on Christmas Eve. 

2010 has been a challenging year for us, as we have tried to settle in yet another international location, tried to create a home for ourselves away from the family and friends we hold so dear and miss so often.

Though last year we didn’t make it home for the holidays, Sara and I spent Christmas itself on a stunningly secluded beach in central Vietnam, playing in the sun and sea, eating food so delicious we salivate now even thinking about it. 

However, just two weeks after that lovely holiday in paradise, the January 12th earthquake in Haiti brought our life in Hanoi to a premature end.  By the first week of February Sara was on the ground in Port-au-Prince, having had a mere 18 hours at our home in Lexington to transition.   Since that time she has still not had more than 5 consecutive days in Kentucky, not more than a week in close to 2 years.  And though, of course, Sara loves her work and is passionate about providing homes for those displaced by the earthquake, she’s saddened that time away from her own home distances her from those she loves, forcing her to think about  from far away.

I, on the other hand, was fortunate to spend most of February, March, and April in Lexington, with only 1 week during March in Port-au-Prince and 2 weeks during May in the slums of New Delhi with 12 University of Kentucky students (completing in a service-learning project with Habitat for Humanity India).  It was not until June that I, along with our two dogs Ralph and Lucy, transitioned to Haiti more “full time” or at least as close to full time as risk management allow.  Security challenges abound in Port-au-Prince, where there is at least one kidnapping a day and we have two armed guards at our house around the clock.

However, we DO have a lovely, mountain-side home in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petion-Ville—a home Sara’s left for only brief visits to the US and one longer trip to the Pacific Northwest, where we enjoyed 2 days in Seattle and a week with 12 other friends on Whidbey Island—a fabulous time of fun, feasting, and fellowship with a group of women we dearly love.

And though we feel fairly well-settled in Port-au-Prince by now, settled enough to have hosted a sit-down Thanksgiving dinner for 24, Haiti itself is far from peaceful this Holiday Season.  Not only did the earthquake last January kill close to a quarter of a million, but it has left, still 11 months later, more than 1.3 million people homeless in the city of Port-au-Prince alone.  Not only did the Haitian people suffer destruction again in the wake of Hurricane Tomas, but they are continuing to fight a cholera epidemic that has killed and sickened thousands more.  Not only did they face fraudulent presidential elections last month—they have dealt with the resulting social unrest, especially in the form of rioting by people who have suffered unimaginable losses in the last year, people who feel disenfranchised not only by the international community, but also by their own political leaders who would steal their right to a free and fair election.  It’s sad for us to see so much loss and suffering in such close proximity to our own lives of comfort, surplus, and blessing.

Despite all of this, however, the Haitian people are strong.  They are resilient.  They persevere.  Sara and I are proud to call the beautiful people of this tiny island our neighbors, our friends, our family, and we would ask you to not only pray for us this Christmas, but more importantly to keep our new Haitian brothers and sisters in your hearts and prayers, as well.

As the mountains that circle Port-au-Prince brighten on Christmas morning, the Haitian people will be left with little to do but pray—

But we ask that you too pray for peace in Port-au-Prince streets—for peace in those mountains beyond—those mountains beyond mountains—

Please pray those hills would be alive with the sound of peaceful music–

A peace that passes understanding–

May God bring peace to you and your family this Holiday Season!

May God bring peace to Haiti!

With blessings from Port-au-Prince,

Sara and Kathy

by - 14 Comments

A Holiday Match Made in Doggy Heaven


With Christmas only a few days away, I thought it might be a fitting time to reminisce romantically about how Sara and I met—not only because this is a part of our history I don’t think I’ve shared even in the Vietnam part of this blog—but also because I’m missing Sara, who has not yet returned from Haiti for the holiday, and writing about our shared past helps her feel closer—or at least helps Port-au-Prince feel a little less far away.

Sara and Kathy, October 2006

(If you’ve only just begun reading “reinventing the event horizon”—Sara is my partner.  We live together in Haiti, where Sara works in disaster response and I’m a writer/artist.  We also own a home in Kentucky—a house that’s more than 100 years old in downtown Lexington.  I have come back to the US a week ahead of Sara, who won’t arrive here herself until Christmas Eve.)

In 2006, however, Sara was still directing her NGO’s response to the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in Southeast Asia, while I was working in Lexington as an artist-in-residence, facilitating creative learning opportunities for disabled adults.  These employment realities brought us together, my needing to supplement my measly artist’s income by pet sitting and Sara’s needing to travel internationally while at the same time caring for her dog. 

One afternoon that summer my writer friend Kristy called to say her new neighbor Sara was looking for a dog-sittter and wondering if I could take on another client—something I was willing to do, since I was preparing to purchase my first home— was a starving, soon-to-be-home-owning-artist fighting for every dollar she could get.

So when Sara called several days later and we met a few days after that, I eagerly agreed to care for Ralph.  And ours was ultimately a match made, for all intents and purposes, in doggy heaven.

Sara, Kathy, and Ralph in October 2006

However, I didn’t fall for Sara immediately.  Though I found her voice intriguing, the first time I heard it on my voice mail, and though I recognized when she brought Ralph to me the morning she returned to Asia, how terribly attractive she actually was, I wasn’t looking for a relationship at the time and simply filed these sensual details away for later romantic retrieval.

Retrieval that came by way of a dream.

When Sara returned from Asia a month later, I was already in love with her dog, so much so that it pained me to give him up for the few weeks she would be home—that is, until a week or so later I dreamed I was in love with Sara and woke up the next morning with a passion for her that has yet to wane.

The realization was as profound as it was simple—that I not only loved this woman but also that I would spend the rest of my life with her.  Period.  End of Story.

Kathy and Sara in Thailand, March 2007

Sometimes things are meant to be, and though I’ll save the particulars of our romantic story to share in future posts, I will pass along now one surprising and seemingly important detail neither of us was aware of when we first met.

That our mothers had been dear friends for a number of years before either of us knew anything about  the other—had been friends until Sara’s mother died more than 10 years ago.  Both were elementary school teachers at Lexington Christian Academy.  My mother taught third grade; Sara’s mother taught fourth in a classroom across the hall.

In fact, I remember Sara’s mother being ill and my mother’s grief surrounding her eventual death.  My mother even spoke at Sara’s mother’s memorial service.  During the years our mothers were friends, Sara and I were adult women living outside the state, so we never met in the context of that friendship.

However, sometimes lives are linked in profound ways.  Sometimes lives are linked and love is forged against all odds, even with matches made in doggy heaven.  Sometimes there’s a cosmic rightness about a relationship in which lovers are not only star-crossed but mother-blessed, something precious to remember, especially during this sacred time of year.

Silent night.

Holy night.

All is calm.

All is bright.

May the brightness Sara and I share be yours, as well, this Holiday Season.

Kathy and Sara in Vietnam, Christmas 2009

by - 13 Comments

A Pack-Rat’s Parable: on Traveling with too Much Stuff


I tend to over-pack. 

I admit it.  It’s a sickness.

It might even be a curse—who knows?

However, when you travel as much as I do, it becomes a problem—

A big problem.

This issue arises every time I go almost anywhere—the grocery store, the gym, even a restaurant or my mother’s house.  Heck, I even carry too much to the bathroom, if I think my stay there may be extended—a book, a notebook, a pen, a drink, a phone, sometimes 2 phones—maybe a magazine.  It all adds up.

Sara insists this calls for an intervention.  She thinks she’ll fix me.  That she can help me “edit”—her word.  And admittedly, she has a reasonable investment in my reform, as often she ends up carrying my stuff, lugging it all over the planet—quite literally.

This is why she bought me a Kindle—afraid when last  year we moved to Vietnam, where there’s not an abundance of reading material in English—that I would bring the inventory of a small university library along for the ride—that she would have to carry it.

Wise woman!

However, this week’s trip from Port-au-Prince home to Kentucky, has challenged even my advanced luggaging skills.  Even more so, since I was bringing Lucy back with me—a dog as carry-on baggage—a canine complication on top of my already dogged determination to carry too much stuff. 

When will I ever learn?

This complicating of already complicated carrying manifested itself most clearly yesterday morning in Miami.

I was running late—unusual for the chronically early like me.  I had to take Lucy outside the airport to use her version of public toilet.  She took too long. 

She wouldn’t pee!

Never did!

I was pissed!

So I loaded Lucy back into her black back-pack carrier, hurried back into the hotel to collect my 3 remaining bags—a yellow and brown messenger bag, a standard carry-on-sized suitcase, and another 55 pound monster—at least 100 kilos, if I’m doing the math right. (I’m not good at math.)

The woman at the hotel’s front desk mistakenly directed me to the American Airlines check-in in Concourse E, where the hotel is, rather than Concourse D—where I needed to be.  I stood in line for a good 15 minutes before an airport official indicated what no signage did, that this counter only handled check-in for passengers headed to Haiti—which two weeks from now will indeed be my destination.

For now—I was headed in the opposite direction—which meant trying to transport my abundant belongings outside for a 15 minute lumber to what could only be considered an outpost of the same airport.

It was far.

I was carrying a lot.

When I finally arrived at Concourse D, I tried to check in by swiping my passport.  

Didn’t work.

When I did succeed by typing in my name and destination city, the machine recognized but rejected me because of the pet, at which point an actual human being intervened, only to send me to yet another, though in the same terminal, distant location. 

Again I “luggaged.”

The clock was ticking.

Unbelievably, the third counter didn’t like me either, returned me, cursing the entire way, to location number 3.

There the slowest pet-check-in-specialist in aviation history had nearly completed the process, when I was reduced to begging, “Please hurry.  I’m going to miss my flight.”

“OOOOOOOOOOOh, you have plentyyyyyyyyyyy of tiiiiiiiiiime.”

“Not if you have anything to do with it.” I think.

However, her sloooooooowly articulated, cloooooooooosing words, were less than comforting, “Gate number 50.  Youuuuuuuuu have a longgggggg way to gooooooooo!”

No kidding!

Only after being rejected yet once more during the security check for, you guessed it, tooooooooooo many carry-on bags, did I finally persuade the less-than-friendly luggage Nazi, that I had paid 100 extra US dollars for the privilege of bringing my dog along.  I had to show the receipt.

You get the picture.

There’s ALWAYS a complication because of the bags, especially when Sara isn’t along to help carry!

Maybe she’s right.

Maybe there should be an intervention.

In the meantime, I’ll have to further sharpen my Sherpa skills—

Do they offer advanced degrees in “bag-lady?”

(By the way, me and all my bags are finally home!)

by - 14 Comments

Photos from Haiti: entertainment for the journey home!


Minor victory--Finally able to upload photo of Ralph and Lucy!

 Good News—-If you are reading this, I have likely left for the airport in Port-au-Prince, Lucy (pictured above) in tow!  Ralph, the larger dog, will remain in Haiti with Sara and be with a dog-sitter during Sara’s short 5 day holiday in the US.

I apologise for the brief and unfocused nature of this post.  Please know I want to offer you at least a little something during my two-day travel to the US.  Lucy and I will over-night this evening in Miami and fly on to Lexington (via Chicago) tomorrow.

We have two armed guards around the clock at our house in Haiti. This is Jean-Jean, one of my favorite!

Finally, before I head to airport, let me try uploading a photo taken last spring in Cabaret, a small village about a two-hour drive from Port-au-Prince.  The children were totally intrigued by the digital camera and the images displayed of themselves–never seen before!

Kathy with children in a village outside of Cabaret, Haiti.

Again, I apologise for the brevity of this post, but wanted to take advantage of actually being able to upload photos from Sara’s office.  My blog has always lacked a visual component, since we have such a dismally slow internet connection at our house–too slow for uploading photos.

I will try to post tonight from Miami!  Off to the airport—————–

by - 14 Comments

A Haitian Tale of Veterinary Angst


So I took Lucy (my Maltese) to the vet yesterday.

Had to get the appropriate travel documents for her re-entry into the US, something I’ve done a number of times in several different countries.  Unlike most globe-trotting animal lovers who leave their pets at home when traveling, Sara and I see fit to move the zoo with us where ever we happen to settle next.  Clearly this is not always the sanest of decisions. (See a post called “An unfortunate incident involving the international trafficking of canines and what I haven’t learned since then” to discover the comedy of errors associated with moving our larger dog Ralph to Vietnam.)

I should have known it didn’t bode well for the appointment, when I arrived at the office to find the vet standing outside in the driveway screaming, raging at 3 male members of his staff—face reddening, arms flailing.  Since my French is so bad and my Creole even worse, I have no idea what he was saying and no sense what set off the tantrum.  (See post called “A Tale of Miserable Failure: moanings of a second language learner”)  

I was unsure how to handle this initial incident and asked Junior, my driver, if I should go ahead and enter the compound, I thought there might be some Haitian etiquette about how to handle incidents of public raging, but Junior only shrugged, the international “I don’t know,” so I reluctantly ignored this show of veterinary angst and walked past the scene into the office. 

Maybe this was my mistake.

At any rate, the doctor raged for at least 10 minutes before entering with seeming calm, offering a “bon jour,” and proceeding to examine my freshly bathed Maltese.  When he was finished, he motioned me into his office for the paperwork part of our visit—generally a 3 document process: an international health certificate, an immigration form for the USDA (US Department of Agriculture), and a “Certificate for Domestic and International Airline Travel.”  The doctor happily generated the health certificate, but refused to sign the other two documents.”

“These are not my forms!” he insists.

Confused, I agree, “No they aren’t.  One is a US immigration form and the other is generated by the airline.”

Again—“These are not my forms.  I will not sign.  You do not need these.  The health certificate is all you need.”

This time I try respectful disagreement, “Actually, every time I have returned my dogs to the US, I’ve needed these forms.”

“I’ve been doing this for 20 years.  You do not need these forms.”

“Well, my experience has been otherwise,” I try to reason.  “The airline and immigration have always asked me for these forms.  You signed them for me when I was here in October.”

“These are not my forms.  I will not sign.”  He has degenerated into a ranting-raging specimen of veterinary medicine—full on arms flailing, the whole raging apparatus in high gear—pissed off on speed!

“Well, just to be on the safe side, would you please sign them?” I try the pity appeal.

“These are not my forms.”

Slams the health certificate and invoice on the desk and walks out of the room.  I call Richard the head of Sara’s security department, the one we call Papa Bear, because we fully believe Richard can fix just about anything—as evidenced by a track record of previous salvation attempts delivered.  Score several for the home team!

To my disbelief, however, Richard’s dressing down of the dear doctor accomplishes nothing.  The doctor stands, tears the health certificate into pieces and shouts,

“I do not like your attitude!” exits stage right.  I think I’ve been dismissed.  Richard and I have lost this round.

Round two—

Junior drives me to another vet.  I’m crying on the phone to Sara the entire way—fully believing, irrationally so, that the second vet will tantrum with equal earnest and I will be stuck in Haiti with my dogs—

Forever—

Since, I’ve not fully recovered my composure upon arrival, Junior accompanies me into the office of vet number 2, clearly thinking I may need his moral support, if not his driverly expertise in this document getting endeavor.  However, Dr. Calixte, actually, is lovely—an older Haitian gentleman, who speaks little English.  But he’s confused.

“Doctor not at his office?”

“No, he was there, he just refused to sign my documents.”

“Ah, you do not have appointment?” 

“No, we had an appointment at 3 o’clock,” I clarify.  (Since we have arrived unannounced at his office, the vet, perhaps, assumes we’re in the habit of randomly raiding veterinary offices in the greater Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.)

Ultimately, however, Dr. Calixte understands enough to intervene.

And, to be honest, I don’t know exactly what was said, or how I acquired the sympathetic, document-signing approval of the doctor, but after several exchanges between Junior and the Dr. Calixte in Creole and several more with Papa Bear Richard on the phone—in French—my new veterinary ally examines Lucy, and agrees, with a grandfatherly bed-side manner, to generate a health certificate and sign the appropriate forms when Junior returns with them later.

To make a long story short, Junior drives me home; I generate new forms for the vet; Junior takes the forms to Dr. Calixte’s office; Junior returns an hour later, amidst monsoonal rains, with a damp health certificate and both the airline and USDA forms signed and stamped.

Junior is my hero—Dr. Calixte, a fellow champion!  Round two—victory for the home team!

Writing this now a day later, I should clarify that the ultimate winning in this game will be our successful reentry into the US tomorrow and our safe arrival in Kentucky the day after that.

Please be assured, however, that I’ve calmed down, regained the resolve necessary to exit Haiti, and can now clearly recognize the comic moments in what, at the time, seemed a tragic encounter with Dr. Wulff (his real name).

Clearly his bark was worse than his bite!

by - 17 Comments

An unfortunate incident involving the international trafficking of canines and what I haven’t learned since then


Okay, I’m forced to face an ugly fact–my life in Port-au-Prince has gone to the dogs—quite literally.  I know most folks don’t traipse the planet, canine companions in tow, but Sara and I, for whatever reason, see fit to move our mutts to whichever corner of the globe is hosting the latest in earth-shaking disasters.  And so, Ralph and Lucy have hijacked this half of Hispaniola wagging their way into the very heart of earthquake recovery, and I’m not even half-way kidding.

But to highlight the kind of misadventures likely to abound when transporting pets to unlikely international destinations, this post explains what happened when we moved our 40 pound Terrier mix named Ralph, not to Haiti, but to Vietnam over a year ago.

It even started off badly—when Sara’s father dropped Ralph and I at the airport in Lexington with a crate that proved to be, after meticulous measuring by an airline employee (measuring that took over an hour, I might add) one inch too big—one inch too large for the smallish regional jet we were taking to Detroit—the first leg of our journey to Hanoi.

I wasn’t happy to hear this.  I wasn’t happy at all to wait two full days till we could be rebooked and Ralph could be re-crated in a kennel a mere sand-papering would have made small enough in the first place.  But I remained calm.  I went home, over-sized crate in tow, and waited. 

Forty eight hours later—

An additional hundred dollars poorer but an appropriately-sized kennel richer—we were back at the airport, Sara’s father supervising the once more meticulous measuring, me hyperventilating in the corner, afraid I’d be another two days’ waiting. 

But we passed inspection.  Ralph was loaded.  I tried to relax, knowing the 27 hour flight to Hanoi can be exhausting.  But things went well, with me checking at each layover to be sure Ralph was transferred to the next plane and ready for the next leg of a very long trip.  Things continued to go well—

Until South Korea—

In Seoul, I again checked on Ralph upon arrival and was assured by a Korean Airline employee that he was well and would be transferred for the trip to Hanoi.

So I did what any American, living in a country with no western fast food besides Kentucky Fried Chicken, would do—I went to Burger King for my last supper of Whopper and fries, knowing it would be at least another 90 days and a second resurrection of Christ before I’d eat another meal with equal amounts of artery-clogging cholesterol and heart-stopping good taste.

Two hours later and that much closer to an early grave, I waited at the gate to board the flight to Hanoi.  I was exhausted, relieved to hear, “At this time we would like to begin boarding Koran Air flight . . .” and only a little alarmed when an airline representative began paging someone whose name vaguely resembled my own. 

Two minutes later—

Having dragged my baggage though a maze of travel-weary passengers, I was told, “Madam, you not go on this flight.”

“Excuse me?”  Surely I had misheard.  South Koreans’ speaking English could sometimes be hard for me to understand.  “Could you repeat that?” I apologized.  I had been traveling for twenty-two hours; I wasn’t processing well.

“Dog not go on this plane.”

“I’m sorry.  I don’t understand.”

“No room for dog on this flight.”

“But we’ve had this reservation for weeks.  There must be some mistake.”

“No dog in plane.”

Eventually I understood, though I never fully understood why,

–that we could not leave that night,

–that there were no more flights to Hanoi before morning,

–that we might not be able to go even then (there were no guarantees),

–that the airline would bring Ralph to me,

–that I could go to an hotel,

–that Ralph could not.

Floating somewhere near the ceiling, looking down on this silly woman in the ridiculous Asian airport misadventure, I realized this was not a good situation.  I realized the woman might be close to losing it.

Ninety minutes later—

I still hadn’t gotten Sara on the phone and knew that by then she had already left for the airport in Hanoi (translator in tow) ready to meet the quarantine official, whose “special fee” she’d pay to compensate for our late night arrival and the overtime he’d work to process Ralph’s entry into Vietnam without incident.

To make an excruciatingly long and less-than-pleasant story a bit shorter, I should mention the follow facts:

–I ultimately did get Sara on the phone.  Sara paid the official’s special fee (since, of course, it wasn’t his fault we didn’t arrive) and arranged to meet him again the next day, when, of course, there would also be an extra fee, since it would be Tuesday and there is always a special fee on Tuesdays.

–Forbidden by airport officials to remove Ralph from the crate he had already occupied for more than twenty hours, I pushed his perfectly-sized kennel around the airport all night on a luggage cart, telling myself repeatedly that if only  I got through the next ten hours, I would be able to take just about anything.  Cholera included, I now hope.

I should have known it would be challenging:  taking a 40 pound, blonde terrier to Vietnam, where the meat of medium-sized, light-skinned canines is still considered a delicacy.  And though it ended well, concluded with Ralph arriving uneaten in Hanoi, it proved so crazy-making along the way, I sanely decided to bring him here to Haiti this past summer. 

However, that trip proved less eventful—except for his traveling companions on the flight from Miami to Port-au-Prince—the 10,000 chicks he still hasn’t stopped chirping about.

But that’s another story, for another day—another lesson not quite learned.