Turkish Rape Victim Kills and Beheads Her Rapist to Protect Her Honor
Not all women will show this kind of courage and determination when bullied and intimidated by a powerful rapist. Now, she faces the penalty, but her actions have ignited a debate in Turkey. I found this on Huffpost, a re-publication of a CNN story:
A 26-year-old Turkish woman, who was impregnated by her rapist, reportedly shot and beheaded her alleged attacker to protect her honor. The case has forced the country into a new round in the intensifying debate over abortion.
Nevin Yildirim, a mother of two from Turkey’s Yalvac district, faces charges of murder for the August killing of 35-year-old Nurettin Gider. Yildirim, according to CNN, is at least five months pregnant and claims she was rape-impregnated by Gider.
Yildirim told police that Gider, a father of two who was married to her husband’s aunt, first raped her in January, when her husband left town to work a seasonal job.
Yildirim said Gider threatened to kill her children if she alerted anyone to the crime. The rapes allegedly continued over the course of the next several months and Gider reportedly threatened to publish photos he took of Yildirim’s pregnant body if she did not do as he said, Turkish broadcaster DHA reported.
On Aug. 28, Yildirim claims spotted Gider climbing up a wall behind her house and grabbed a rifle that was hanging on the wall.
“I knew he was going to rape me again,” Yildirim said at an Aug. 30 preliminary hearing.
Yildirim allegedly shot Gider twice and chased him from her property. She claimed in court he was armed at the time.
“He fell on the ground. He started cussing,” she said. “I shot his sexual organ this time. He became quiet. I knew he was dead. I then cut his head off.”
Witnesses told police they saw Yildirim walk into the village square, carrying Gider’s bloody head by his hair.
“Don’t talk behind my back, don’t play with my honor,” Yildirim allegedly told witnesses in the square as she threw Gider’s head to the ground. “Here is the head of the man who played with my honor.”
Authorities arrived on the scene shortly thereafter and Yildirim was taken into custody without incident.
“He kept saying that he would tell everyone [about the rape],” Yildirim told authorities, according to Doğan News Agency. “My daughter will start school this year. Everyone would have insulted my children. Now no one can.”
“I saved my honor,” she added. “They will now call [her children] ‘the kids of the women who saved her honor.'”
According to CNN, Yildirim went to a health clinic for an abortion prior to the murder but was turned away because she was 14 weeks pregnant at the time. In Turkey, abortion is only permitted during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Anything beyond that requires a special circumstance.
Turkey’s abortion debate has now been re-kindled as the public prosecutor’s office considers Yildirim’s request. Authorities are waiting for experts to weigh in on her mental stability.
“The extremity of Nevin’s actions show the extent of the trauma the rape has caused,” Dr. Gürsel Öztunalı Kayır, Foundation for Women’s Solidarity, told International Business Times. “We shouldn’t be distracted by the murder; if she wants to have an abortion following months of abuse, she should have the right.”
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, considers abortion “murder” and wants the practice outlawed. Melih Gökçek, mayor of the capital, Ankara, supports the proposed ban, saying a mother who considers abortion should “kill herself instead and not let the child bear the brunt of her mistake,” IBT reported.
Women’s groups in Turkey consider Yildirim a heroine. The case also resonates in the United States, where abortion remains a topic of heated debate.
ReBirth in the Midst of Chaos
“Come look! Quick, come look!”
As AdventureMan was making preparations to move the potted plants indoors, he discovered a Black Swallowtail chrysalis had split, and a new swallowtail was born. It wasn’t easy to capture this resting brand-new butterfly, newly out of the chrysalis, hidden deep within the bronze fennel plant, but so beautiful!
As I headed through the guest suite to the French doors, I saw something flutter . . . and it was a newly born Gulf Fritillary – in our guest room! We must have brought it in with the garden furniture – those chrysalis are often hard to spot.
“I need your help!” I called to AdventureMan. (I don’t handle insects!) He rushed to my assistance and was astonished to see another newborn.
If you had known AdventureMan in his business persona, managing multimillion dollar contracts, you would not believe this new AdventureMan, who cultivates a garden that attracts butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, who grows tomatoes and hot peppers, who takes photos and identifies rare birds flying overhead, and whose favorite time of all is spent with his grandson. 🙂
Tap Tap Whiiiiiinnnneee Screech in Pensacola
Pensacola is a Job kind of city, circumstances keep sending lethal blows and Pensacola keeps bouncing back, but not without pain. Already, we have had floods this year, record rains, and several of the places who were flooded, Waterfront Mission, Manna Food Pantry, Loaves and Fishes, etc. were charities on which the poorest of the poor, the jobless, the homeless and the transients, rely.
And now Isaac.
Sunday mornings, as in many towns in the South, the people go to church. The biggest churches are Baptist and then maybe Methodist. Then comes the rest of us, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Congregationalists, the Unitarians, the Mormons, so many different kinds of Christians!
We hit the early service, which, for one of the last Sundays in August, was relatively well attended. After church, while it was still relatively cool outside (in the 80’s F. not the 90’s F.) we put up our window shields and brought all our outside furnishings inside. Tomorrow we will bring the plants into the garage. Anything that can be picked up by a high wind can become a missile; we want to give the high winds as little ammunition as possible.
All aroound us we can hear the tap tap of hammers hammering in plywood slabs (those who were lucky enough to buy plywood early; rumor has it that there is no more plywood to be found) and the whiiiiinnnee of electric drills screwing window coverings on and the Sccrrreeeeech of window coverings being drawn closed. We are also exchanging phone numbers, so we can help one another if the worst happens, and we suffer a direct hit.
Today, Father Tim reminded us in the midst of all our self-absorption and survival-oriented errands that we are to be a blessing to others. I saw that happen when Hurricane Ivan hit Pensacola, and our son stayed. He met another fellow living nearby and they have become fast friends. Out of the worst circumstances, can come great blessings.
We trust God has this all in his hands. And we also continue our preparations against the coming of Isaac.
The newest 5 day forecast shows Isaac has wobbled to the West:
A Swallowtail is Born
“Come down! Come down!” AdventureMan is calling me from the garden, and I can tell it is something special.
“Look! He just came out of the chrysalis! He’s still wet!”
It is a beautiful new swallowtail butterfly. When the eggs are laid – it takes a mere second, a mere brush-by as the tiny egg is placed on the fennel – they are a mere 1/32 of an inch, you can barely see them with your bare eyes.
It is 78° in the cool of the morning, the best part of the day. The sun is coming up, and a new swallowtail is drying off, preparing to fly away to a new life.
Sunlight May Help Prevent Heart Attacks
This report is from Bottom Line. It seems to me that we are more primitive biological organisms that we think ourselves, but it also occurs to me that if sunlight helps prevent heart attacks, and helps limit damages, do people in the sunny places have a lower incidence of death due to heart attacks?
Sunlight Helps Prevent Heart Attacks
Ah, sunlight.
There’s nothing like being outdoors on a summer morning.
What you may not know is that sunshine doesn’t just boost your mood and your vitamin D level—it also may help you ward off a heart attack or minimize the damage that one can cause, according to a new first-of-its-kind study.
I talked to the researchers to find out more about how we can all harness the power of light to brighten our heart health.
I called the study’s lead author, Tobias Eckle, MD, PhD, an associate professor of anesthesiology, cardiology and cell and developmental biology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.
Dr. Eckle told me that our circadian rhythm—the physical, mental and behavioral changes prompted by light and darkness that occur over each 24-hour period—helps determine the level of a certain protein that can minimize the cell damage and cell death caused by a heart attack. This protein might even stop a heart attack in its tracks. So Dr. Eckle and his colleagues were eager to see whether exposure to certain kinds of light at a certain time might be effective at boosting levels of this protein.
In the study, researchers divided mice into two groups. One group was exposed to light boxes emitting light that was the same level of brightness as daylight (“bright light”), and others were exposed to regular room lighting (“regular light”). Both groups were exposed to the light first thing in the morning at 6:00 am.
Then the mice were given anesthesia and heart attacks were triggered in them. Researchers found that mice that had been exposed to three hours of “bright light” had three times the amount of the protective protein as the mice that had been exposed to “regular light”—and, incredibly, the “bright light” mice’s hearts had experienced only one-fifth as much damage!
HOW SUNNY ARE THE FINDINGS?
There are, of course, unanswered questions—for example, how the findings might apply to humans and how lasting the benefit of the protein might be.
That said, the results are promising. What’s especially interesting is that it’s the light exposure on the eyes—not the skin—that affects the protein levels, said Dr. Eckle. So humans wearing sunscreen or long sleeves wouldn’t blunt the effect.
SAFE WAYS TO LET IN THE LIGHT
Several forces have conspired over recent decades to keep people out of the sun during the day, such as indoor work and fear of skin cancer. But many people would be likely to benefit from getting more sunlight exposure as early in the morning as possible.
Here are some safe ways from Dr. Eckle to shed more light on your daily routine…
1. Take a daily walk outdoors, and keep wearing sunscreen. Even 10 to 20 minutes a day is better than nothing. Since, as I mentioned earlier, it’s the way that light affects your eyes (not your skin) that matters, apply sunscreen—that won’t dampen the benefits. The added exercise will boost your heart health, too.
2. Get sunlight while indoors. Sit near large, bright windows.
3. Use a light therapy box. If you can’t follow either of the first two tips, or if you’re at high risk for skin cancer and want to avoid UV rays at all costs, this may be the best option for you. Available online for about $50 and up, light therapy boxes mimic the brightness of sunlight while filtering out most damaging UV rays.
Source: Tobias Eckle, MD, PhD, associate professor of anesthesiology, cardiology, and cell and developmental biology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver. His study was published in Nature Medicine.
James Lee Burke and the Creole Belle
James Lee Burke is number one on my guilty-pleasures list.
I first met his main character Dave Robicheaux in A Morning For Flamingos, a book I picked up in a military library at Lindsay Air Station, a post that doesn’t even exist any more. In the cold dark endless winter in Wiesbaden, Germany, James Lee Burke lit up my life. I had thought I was picking up just another escapist mystery novel, but when James Lee Burke puts words together to describe the way a storm moves in over the bayou, prose becomes poetry.
There is a downside. Whether it is his character Dave Robicheaux, the former New Orleans cop, now head homicide investigator in New Iberia, Louisiana, or his Hackberry Holland series set in West Texas, James Lee Burke’s books are filled with extreme violence and disturbing images that live in your head for a long time.
I’ve recommended James Lee Burke to friends, some of whom have said “Why do you read this trash??? It is HORRIBLE! It is full of over-the-top violence!”
And then again . . . he is writing about some really really bad people. They are out there. There are people who exist who inflict cruelty. I don’t understand it, I can’t begin to fathom where the urge would come from, but I’ve seen it. It’s out there. James Lee Burke pulls up that rock and exposes the dark happenings underneath.
On one level, as I started reading Creole Belle, I thought “Oh James Lee Burke, stop! Stop! It’s the same old formula! A downtrodden victim (often a beautiful woman) cries for help. You and Clete start looking for information and end up beating people up and then they retaliate by threatening your family! There is a rich, beautiful woman who seems vulnerable and who you kind of like, but she is complicated. There are rich amoral people who keep their hands clean, but who are calling the shots and never go to jail! Stop! Stop!”
Well, I should say that, and maybe I should stop. Then he starts talking about the smoke from the sugar cane fields and the bridge over the Bayou Teche, and the big Evangeline oak in St. Martinsville, and I am a goner. I’m sucked in, I’m hooked.
I detest the violence and the images. I keep coming back because James Lee Burke has some important things to say.
I’d love to have him to dinner. I’d love for him and our son to have a chance to talk about Law Enforcement. Here is what James Lee Burke has to say in Creole Bell:
There are three essential truths about law enforcement: Most crimes are not punished; most crimes are not solved through the use of forensic evidence; and informants product the lion’s share of information that puts the bad guys in a cage.
My son hates shows like CSI, and Law and Order, where the evidence convicts the criminals. He says it raises unreal expectations in juries, and makes it harder to get a conviction.
We watched a Violation of Parole hearing, or actually a series of hearings, where the judge asked each individual whose parole was about to be revoked what had happened when he or she was re-arrested. In each case, the parolee had done something stupid; drove a car with an expired license, drove to another state, was arrested driving drunk, etc. EVERY time. The judge made his point, I believe.
From Creole Belle:
But if Caruso was the pro Clete thought she was, she would avoid the mistakes and geographical settings common to the army of miscreants and dysfunctional individuals who constitute the criminal subculture of the United States. Few perpetrators are arrested during the commission of their crimes. They get pulled over for DWI, an expired license tag, or throwing litter on the street. They get busted in barroom beefs, prostitution stings, or fighting with a minimum-wage employee at a roach motel. Their addictions and compulsions govern their lives and place them in predictable circumstances and situations over and over, because they are incapable of changing who and what they are. Their level of stupidity is a source of humor at every stationhouse in the country. Unfortunately, the pros – high end safecrackers and jewel thieves and mobbed-up button men and second story creeps – are usually intelligent, pathological, skilled in what they do, middle class in their tastes and little different in dress and speech and behavior from the rest of us.
And then there are paragraphs like this that discuss the human experience, and have a far wider application than the book:
No one likes to be afraid. Fear is the enemy of love and faith and robs us of all serenity. It steals both our sleep and our sunrise and makes us treacherous and venal and dishonorble. It fills our glands with toxins and effaces our identity and gives flight to any vestige of self-respect. If you have ever been afraid, truly afraid, in a way that makes your hair soggy with sweat and turns your skin gray and fouls your blood and spiritually eviscerates you to the point where you cannot pray lest your prayers be a concesion to your conviction that you’re about to die, you know what I am talking about. This kind of fear has no remedy except motion, no matter what kind. Every person who has experienced war or natural ctastrophe or man-made calamity knows this. The adrenaline surge is so great that you can pick up an automobile with your bare hands, plunge through glass windows in flaming buildings, or attack an enemy whose numbers and weaponry are far superior to yours. No fear of self-injury is as great as the fear that turns your insides to gelatin and shrivels your soul to the size of an amoeba.
Last, but not least, this is what keeps me coming back to James Lee Burke, so much so that I buy the book almost as soon as it is released. James Lee Burke isn’t afraid to take on the big guys. He “gives voice to those who have no voices.” (Proverbs 31:8) His focus is always on the dignity of the common man, the dignity of hard work, done well, and on the dignity of doing unexpected kindnesses to those who have no expectation of kindness.
. . . All was not right with the world. Giant tentacles of oil that had the color and sheen of feces had spread all the way to Florida, and the argument that biodegradation would take care of the problem would be a hard sell with the locals. The photographs of pelicans and egrets and seagulls encased in sludge, their eyes barely visible, wounded the heart and caused parents to shield their children’s eyes. The testimony before congressional committees by Louisiana fisher-people whose way of life was being destroyed did not help matters, either. The oil company responsible for the blowout had spent an estimated $50 million trying to wipe their fingerprints off Louisiana’s wetlands. They hired black people and whites with hush-puppy accents to be their spokesmen on television. The company’s CEO’s tried their best to look ernest and humanitarian, even though the company’s safety record was the worst of any extractive industry doing business in the United States. They also had a way of chartering their offshore enterprises under the flag of countries like Panama. Their record of geopolitical intrigue went all the way back to the installation of the shah of Iran in the 1950’s. Their even bigger problem was an inability to shut their mouths.
They gave misleading information to the media and the government about the volume of oil escaping from the blown well, and made statements on worldwide television about wanting their lives back and the modest impact that millions of gallons of crude would have on the Gulf Coast. For the media, their tone-deafnessness was a gift from a divine hand. Central casting couild not have provided a more inept bunch of villains.
James Lee Burke has a voice, and he uses it. He could just cash in on his reputation as an Edgar Award winning author, but he uses his voice to speak out against injustice and corruption. He is a champion of the people. I’ve written several book reviews, and taken some trips just because I wanted to see James Lee Burke country; if you are interested in those, you can read them here.
I have a concern about this series, in that this book ended differently than all the others. So differently it made me seriously question whether Burke intends to continue writing about Dave Robicheaux or if Dave is about to hang up his shield and call it a day. He’s a guilty pleasure I am not yet ready to give up.
Not the Day We Expected – Even Better
LOL, as our Friday dawned with thunder and lightning, our day totally changed. We had thought we would rush to our water aerobics class, rush home, hand up our clothes, head out to meet friends for Italian food near Destin, and then come home.
With the thunder and lightning, however, we knew there couldn’t be a class, and so we had an unexpected holiday from exercise, sort of puttered around the house taking care of things that needed taking care of, and headed off to meet up with our friends. We had a great time, great conversations, and they mentioned – as have other friends – how much they enjoyed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and that we really needed to see it. After long, fond farewells, we headed home, via the beach, which we always love. So far, it was a much cooler day, only reaching the 80’s as we drove along, due to the cloud cover.
AdventureMan suggested we look at the GulfBreeze4, a really fun little theatre we love to go to where they show a lot of foreign movies or quirky movies that didn’t make it to the big screen, and there it was, the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and we were just in time for the afternoon showing.
It is a delightful movie. It has a lot of fun moments, some sad moments, many very human moments. You know me, I especially love the cross-cultural moments, and the thought that people can grow and adapt – no matter what age. We really enjoyed the movie.
And, when we left, we just had to have Indian food. We stopped at Taste of India on the way home and had Talli. It was one of those nights when almost every table was taken, but they had room for us.
“How spicy?” our favorite waitress asked.
“Spicy,” we stated emphatically.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “Indian spicy!” and we said “Yes!”
When it came, it tasted like being back in Kuwait, eating food my friends had prepared. Not dumbed down food. Good, strong spicy food. We couldn’t even eat it all; but we know how good it will taste tomorrow. We brought a lot of it home 🙂
So it wasn’t the day we expected, but we feel blessed by the day we had. Good friends, good conversation, lots of laughing, good movie and a good time at Taste of India. A great day altogether.
Leaving Nsefu for Chongwe; The Most Exciting Moment of our Trip
Early, early the next morning we heard a crashing and crunching – sounds we can easily identify as elephant. At first we continue sleeping, our only morning for sleeping in, but I can’t resist, I have to get up, and lo! The elephant is between our cabin and the next, obliviously chomping and breaking and tearing the tree for an early breakfast.
I decide to get up and get dressed so I can get the iPad charged before the generator goes off at 10, but I can’t go out until the elephant has departed, and she heads in the direction of the lodge, which is where I need to be. Deb Tuttle, the walking guide, walks with me once we see the elephant walk a little further down the valley, I’m able to get the iPad charging and grab a cup of coffee so to be able to say farewell to some of the guests whom we will not see again.
Sunrise over Nsefu:
Travel agents heading out on a Robin Pope Walking Safari:
Making Toast is the favorite job in the winter, close to the hot coals:
It is so nice to be able to pack in daylight! My iPad is at 100%; I have finished The Paris Wife and am starting Wolf Hall, which also holds my attention. While carrying books is bulky, this constant underlying awareness of needing to recharge camera batteries and iPad is also a deterrence. I find I am less desperate about the camera batteries, I always carry at least one back-up so I always have a charged spare, but when the iPad goes, it has to be recharged before we can use it again.
A couple of the travel agents who didn’t know each other had to bunk together in Nsefu. I don’t feel sorry for them; they get to come free. It seems to me, though, is hard to come on these trips as a single person and not feel the odd one out when the game drives go out. They say it is no problem, but I’ve been the odd one on trips to Kawazaa, etc., when AdventureMan wanted to do some activity and I wanted to do something else. It is possible, anything is possible, but sometimes it is just a little awkward. Sometimes people are nice; sometimes they are not so happy to have someone else with them. We are finding that the best of all worlds is to come with your own little traveling group.
The first time we came as a small group was with our son and his wife. We were able to do game drives with people who share our preferences, have people to talk to at dinner if everyone else has their group, etc. We like meeting up with other people, and at the same time, it gives you more confidence to have a group with you, if the other people are all absorbed in one another, or not great company.
The most difficult people are those who don’t understand that this is not a predictable experience – that’s why it is an adventure. There is no guarantee that the lion will crawl over the lip of the riverbank just in front of your car. There is no guarantee you will find the same great, shaggy maned lion at the salt pans that the other guests found the day before. There are NO guarantees, and so you have to treasure all the moments, great and small, and if you are blessed with an extraordinary experience, you celebrate, but honestly, just being here is cause for celebration. Those whose noses get out of joint because you might have seen something they haven’t aren’t a lot of fun to be around. We had one experience when a group that had been friendly to us got all sour and disgruntled because we had seen the lions at the salt pan and they had not. Hey! The lion don’t always show up! The leopard are elusive. This experience is one that totally has to be lived in the moment.
You have to love the smell of the campfire in the morning, and be willing to sacrifice your one morning of sleeping in to spot the elephant chomping outside your bathroom wall. You have to love the little elephant shrew as much as the elephant. There are some drives that are just quiet. It’s like you can’t expect Christmas every day, and if it were Christmas every day, it wouldn’t be special any more.
Just before Holly arrives to open up the Bend Over Store (LOL, it’s a trunk full of goodies) we are blessed with one last elephant crossing! Two days earlier, the elephant were crossing back and forth like a street in New York, then yesterday – not an elephant! It was so unearthly quiet! Today, groups are massing once again, and crossing. We love watching the baby elephants as they learn how it is done.
Drinking; getting ready to cross:
Mom, wait!
On the way to Mfuwe airport, we see Eland – we’ve been looking and looking for these large elk-like ungulates, they are shy and elusive, but Jonah spots them off in the distance, a parting gift from Nsefu.
We have an all-too-brief mad dash through Tribal Textiles, where we ‘invest’ in tablewares, cushion covers and deco for children’s rooms. AdventureMan befriends one of the Tribal Textile cats while I am busy shopping. I have cleared out my backpack so I would have space to put my purchases. 🙂
We have a full flight from Mfuwe to Lusaka, and not a lot of time to spare before our next flight. Smooth flight to Lusaka, just minutes to pick up luggage and transfer to next ProFlight flight, this one is not even on the departure board, only eight passengers, our party of four and a German family from Bavaria. At the very last minute another man comes running, running to catch the plane, we are all busy chatting, it is already a family. They are en route to Chiawa.
It’s a short flight, but here comes the most exciting moment in our day. The pilot is looking at a cheat sheet and the suddenly the plane is saying loudly “Pull Up! Pull Up!Terrain! Terrain!”
The pilots are looking confused and annoyed, one still looking at the instruction sheet, a mountain is rising in front of us, the plane is banking and the loud voice keeps saying “Pull up! Pull up! Terrain!”
I thought I had a movie of all this. I remember making a movie, thinking that if these are my last moments, I will record what happened and try to store the iPad in a place where it might be safely found. Of course, as it turns out, we landed safely and . . . somehow, I don’t have the movie. I must have shut it off too quickly and it didn’t save; I was in a hurry – just in case those were my last moments. I have to admit I am disappointed not to have it to share with you.
Waiting at the airstrip is Victor, our guide, and we rode with him and Chris, who turns out to be one of the owners of Chongwe, to the Chongwe River Camp.
(This is a waterbuck we passed on our way into camp, and again on our way out of camp the next morning; so so sad, part of the circle of life and death, but as we departed Chongwe, his bloated body was in the same field; they suspect he was bitten by a snake and died.)
Arrival is lovely, we are greeted at a tall stand, so we are not climbing in and out of the Land Cruiser, we walk right out onto this stand and down the steps. Flossie greets us and then they tell us that we have been upgraded and put in the family suite.
The Family Suite . . . As soon as we see it, we remember. We had totally forgotten . . . we loved our cabins at Chongwe, we were delighted with all the amenities, and we also remember our first boat trip riding by a place that looked like a fantasy from 1001 Nights, a tented living room and dining room, with carpets and nice furniture and linen tablecloths and gleaming candles – it was so lovely. We remember, it was the family suites. And now, the family suite was ours!
We were a little dazed by our good fortune, we couldn’t believe this lovely place was ours. Our butler, Steve, offered us drinks, Flossie, the camp hostess showed us to our bedroom/bathroom/dressing areas and explained how everything worked, where the electrical outlets and switches were, how the double shower works, where the bath oils were for the claw-footed bathtub, gave us the white cotton pique robes and the fluffy thick Turkish Towels.
This is our sleeping area:
This is our dressing area:
This is the view from our tent toward where the Chongwe River meets the Zambezi River:
This is our bathroom, with a two-person shower and claw-foot tub 🙂
And this is the desk area, also where we can charge our batteries and electronics:
This is our dining room:
The Family Room:
This is the view out over our swimming pool to the Chongwe and Zambezi Rivers, and the hippo pods:
There are woven mats and kelim carpets, and we feel at home, if home can be a huge octagonal tent with an indoor / outdoor feel. Victor comes back, pulling up in a boat next to our swimming pool,to take us for a sundowners up the Chongwe and then back down into the Zambezi.
And Victor has fishing equipment with him for the fishing enthusiast in our party. He is able to cast to his heart’s content with a rod and reel trying to hook a Tiger Fish (catch and release) but no luck.
We see lots of animals coming down to drink at dusk, just across the Chongwe:
Our first Chongwe sunset:
Dusk settles on the Zambezi:
After sundowners, we head back and go to our luxurious tents to clean up, then reassemble around the fire to have a glass of wine before dinner.
The ultimate luxury is privacy. We have met such lovely people in the camps, and still, I am who I am, it is hard for me to exert myself to be charming every night at the end of a long day. I do fine at breakfast around a campfire. I manage at lunch, although after an early start and a long game drive, I am usually eager for a quick snooze. But by night, at the end of the game drive, all I want is comfort food, quick, like tomato soup and a cheese sandwich, not so much chit chat and good night, see you all in the morning when I am more chipper.
I recognize there are people who do well later in the day. I recognize that there is this thing called civilized behavior. I do have manners, I know what is important, and . . . yet . . . late in the day, I have the nature of a curmudgeon. I need some quiet. AdventureMan and our friends are out having a great conversation in our living room area, I can hear them, I delight that they are having such a great conversation, and I really, really need to be in here, writing up my notes. By the grace of God, they understand me and have compassion on me. I am able to join them a little later, and we have a lovely laughter-filled dinner in our private dining room and then off to bed – we have a full day tomorrow in Chongwe!
The butler, Steve, does wonderful napkins:
We did nothing to deserve this beautiful upgrade. We loved the spacious tents we had the last time we were in Chongwe River Camp, but this . . . this is a totally unexpected, undeserved blessing, it just fell in our laps, and we are so appreciative. We feel so cherished, so blessed, so beautifully taken care of. We go to sleep with the sound of hippos . . . . .ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . . . .
“Never for Acclaim, Always for Country”
This weekend the CIA also honors fallen warriors, and in a new level of transparency, shares some of those names. It’s devastating to lose a loved one in the military, and I cannot imagine what it was like to lose a loved one and not to even be able to tell people your loved one was lost in service to his or her country. Heartfelt thanks to all those who have served silently and anonymously and sacrificed identity and history for our nation. You know who you are. 🙂
From ABC News:
Out of the shadows in death: The CIA honors its fallen
By Suzanne Kelly CNN – When you’re a spy, you have to accept the fact that everything you do will go unnoticed by most people during your life. Sometimes that secrecy even follows you in death, with a simple star carved into a marble wall at Langley being the only memorial to your service.
Sometimes though, in death, the names come out, along with just enough information to piece together a glimpse of what life — and death — have been like for CIA spies over the past three decades.
This past Monday, 15 names were added to what’s known by insiders as the “Book of Honor.” When a name is inscribed in the book, it allows family and friends of the fallen to publicly acknowledge in general terms, how their loved ones spent their lives, and how they died.
The names and brief stories shared with a crowd said to number in the hundreds gathered in the CIA lobby, told a story of an Agency spread far and wide; the story of an Agency not only consumed with tracking down terrorists, but sometimes becoming victims of the hunted.
Jeffrey R. Patneau, described by CIA Director David Petraeus as a “young can-do officer,” was killed in Yemen in September 2008. Yemen has become a hotbed of al Qaeda activity and is where a recent al Qaeda in the Arabian Pensinsula (AQAP) plot to bring down an airliner with a difficult-to-detect new explosive material, was recently foiled by undercover operatives.
Five of those honored this year died on April 18, 1983, when terrorists targeted the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. Phyliss Nancy Faraci had also been one of the last four Americans evacuated from the Mekong Delta when Saigon fell, according to an Agency spokesman. She died in Beirut along with Deborah M. Hixson, Frank J. Johnston, and a married couple, James F. and Monique N. Lewis. Petraeus noted the Embassy bombing as the place where the Agency “first caught sight of the adversary we face today.”
To get a sense of just how widespread the CIA presence has been over the years, Matthew K. Gannon was killed in the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; Molly N. Hardy was killed in the 1998 suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi; Leslianne Shedd died when hijackers downed the plane she was on over the Indian Ocean in November 1996; Jacqueline K. Van Landingham was killed in Pakistan in March 1995; Barry S. Castiglione died during the ocean rescue of a colleague in 1992 in the waters off El Salvador; Lawrence N. Freedman was killed in Somalia in December 1992; Thomas M. Jennings, Jr. died in Bosnia in 1997; Freddie R. Woodruff was killed in Georgia in 1993; and Robert W. Woods died in a plane crash during a humanitarian mission to Ethiopia in 1989.
Petraeus told the group of gathered mourners and friends that the officers who have died for the mission “all heard the same call to duty and answered it without hesitation — never for acclaim, always for country.”
One more star has been carved into that wall so far this year, bringing the number of stars representing fallen officers to 103. We don’t know who the latest person was, or how they died, but maybe someday, we will.
Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Jesmyn Ward and Salvage the Bones
You are fifteen, poor, black, and motherless as this book opens. Dad drinks, and isn’t around much. You are the only girl in a family of brothers. Having sex is no big deal, and there is one guy you really like, Manny.
Your oldest brother’s pit bull is having puppies, and you are having trouble with throwing up most of what you eat, especially every morning. Dad says a hurricane is coming, but he’s said that before, no big deal.
As this book opens, it has the feel of a myth of the nightmare kind. We know, because we have the benefit of hindsight, that the impending storm, Katrina, will be catastrophic. The Batiste family has already suffered a catastrophic storm with the death of their Mama, just after the birth of her last child. Throughout the book, we watch these children suffer the daily absence of their mother, raising one another, squabbling, but tenderly looking after one another.
If someone had told me about this book, I don’t think I would have wanted to read it. Amazon.com kept telling me I needed to read it, so finally, I did. From the opening page, I was in a world utterly alien from my own, and yet a world I could understand and inhabit. There are worse things than being poor, and one of them is heartless. This family has heart; they are loyal to one another, they look after one another and they sacrifice for one another. For all the violence – and there is a lot of violence – there is also beauty.
There is the familial love, and there is the love between Skeet, the oldest brother, and his dog, China. There is friendship, and good people who give you refuge in the aftermath of the storm. There is the stunning numbness of surviving the worst hurricane ever.
Jesmyn West has a deft touch, with the language, with the interweaving of the Medea myth, with non-verbal communication, with the complexities of families and love. This is a book worth reading.
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