Scott Simon (0:02)

From Rotary magazine. This is the Rotary Voices podcast Espresso in a War Zone, published in the December 2024 print issue of Rotary magazine, written and read by me, Scott Simon. Travel is broadening, enriching, and sometimes a pain in the butt over the past few decades I've been blessed to be able to see much of the world. I have ridden camels in India and donkeys in Jordan and flown aboard the US Space shuttle simulator. But I cannot drive a car, an inconvenience at times and occasionally a downright pain in the rear as the woman sent with me to Saudi Arabia as the producer for coverage of the first golf war resoundingly complained over the phone to our foreign desk. You have sent me somewhere women cannot drive with a reporter who happens to be the one American male who doesn't have a driver's license. I did drive a Land Rover once in the Serengeti. The guide of our expedition following a zebra migration invited me behind the wheel on my birthday. What can you run into? He said. It's empty and flat for miles within minutes. I almost ran our vehicle into a gully and had a close call with an innocent wildebeest. The encounter only convinced me that the world is a safer place because I do not drive. But I have bummed rides with many engaging people and been able to see all 50 states, the Hindu Kush mountain range, Bamiyan's Valley of the Gods, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, the Northwest Passage, and, no less awe inspiring, the 1 ton fiberglass cow statue that presides over Janesville, Wisconsin. I've endured innumerable flight delays and bumpy bus rides. I've had my winter coat stolen after an emergency landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia during a snowstorm. I've slept on airport floors thoughtfully carpeted in San Francisco, Miami, Cleveland and Newark, New Jersey, waiting for flights to be rescheduled, and on the floors of train stations and hotel lobbies. For various reasons during all these years, despite occasional bumps in the road, I've also been welcomed by so many people, especially in war zones and areas contending with great suffering and strife. I've met inspiring people and seen extraordinary places, from the Taj Mahal and the bastile of Kolkata to space shuttle launches in a tunnel of survival dug by hand, shovel and pick under a field in Sarajevo that helped the Bosnia and Herzegovina capital survive its four year siege. It's time I put pen to paper on some of these tales. In El Salvador, I was covering the civil war there when the production crew and I drove to an area called Chitistopan, southwest of the capital, to try to see the Salvadoran military's bombing of jungles that harbored rebels. We came off the road to wander into villages and soon lost our way. This was before our Google Maps, which may not show those villages to this day. It was also before mobile phones. One or two people in each village seemed to have a phone. But whom would we call the Salvadoran military, about which we were trying to report a story Getting lost is often the first in a series of unwelcome events, as was the case on this expedition, Our engineer fell below a waterfall, broke her arm and caught a bad cold. We wandered through the jungle for two days, slept on tall grass, not as blissful as it sounds, and grew so thirsty we finally drank pond water, which is an essential ingredient of typhoid. Once, when I interviewed villagers along the way, I felt a thousand small bites being taken out of my legs. Fire ants. The folks we were interviewing stripped off my pants. Bless them. True hospitality can take many forms. Slapped off the ants with rags and doused my burning legs with vinegar. Don't worry, a woman told me. I do it to my children, which is not the kind of reassurance a grown man, bright red with embarrassment, wants to hear. Finally, we somehow got to a road and hailed a ride on a truck carrying coffee plant workers who thought our whole story was pretty hilarious. We went to an ER back in San Salvador, where the staff put our engineer's arm into a cast and told us, I think you were not cut out for life in the country. About a month later, I was one of several journalists whose name was put on an enemies list, and I didn't even get a lousy T shirt. As our engineer said, you can't even keep ants out of your pants. I've stayed in a few five star places with crisp sheets and deep baths and in a barely roofed hostel in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in the late 1980s, toward the end of a long civil war, truck drivers transporting vital relief supplies would overnight at the hostels, exhausted and thirsty and wind on with a mug or more of traditional cello beer. Winding down all night, it seemed to me and my producer as we heard the drivers singing mournful, amoric ballads as we tried to sleep. The blankets looked as if they'd been used to smother fires. They probably had, and we were told to pull them over our heads. Would it be hard to breathe? We inquired. The roadside hostel proprietor told us, yes, but that way the rats won't Bite your faces. Well then, enough said it. As we learned, the rats were drawn by the presence of food. Therefore, they were oddly welcome visitors. I remember hearing tiny steps scuttle overhead and calling out to my producer. Reindeer, I'm sure. But we did not have to fall asleep hungry like so many Tigrayans or fearful, travel can often remind us of what we cherish at home. A few weeks later, we traveled to a camp in Eritrea that sought to give refugees food and shelter. We were walking through lines of people, handsome and looking haggard and worn from long journeys. We smiled and quietly asked them to tell us their stories. Soon I smelled coffee. My mind is playing tricks, I thought. It's an effective traveling in a war zone. I'll just ignore it. Then I heard the distinctive gurgle of an espresso machine and was sure I heard pops of coffee scented steam. My nose and my ears are playing tricks on me now, too, I told staffers from an international aid group who oversaw the camp. I think I smell espresso. And so I did. The Zaray family had been forced to flee their home near Massawa on the Red Sea one night a few weeks before, carrying only the clothes they wore, a few family photos folded into pockets, small pieces of jewelry to offer as bribes to corrupt local officials along the way, and a small steel espresso pot. You must join us, said the father, who pressed a small clay cup into my hands. The brew was sharp, dark, and fresh. Yes, I felt revived. We sat down in the circle of their family. Sons, daughters, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin or two. They ground a few more blackened beans into a small stone bowl and boiled water from a relief jug. They told us their stories. The war of bombs in Massawa, the gashing of treetops by regime artillery, the quick consideration of what they truly needed to dash into a strange and dangerous night to survive. But soon they began to ask about us. Where are we from? Why would we come there from fat and peaceful America? Did we know a cousin of theirs who was said to be in Oakland or Indianapolis? The coffee, it's good? They asked. I had another cup and one more. In a matter of minutes, our relationship changed. We were no longer reporters interviewing victims or refugees. We were guests being welcomed by a family. They were hosts, not refugees. We were travelers sharing a few moments of, dare I suggest as much. In the midst of war, in the misery of a refugee camp, rest, diversion, and even friendship, travel can put the most unexpected people together in the most improbable places and help them see how we're all made of the same human clay. I was going through Customs at the US Canada border 1 February night when we were told the facility had to shut down immediately. There was audible grousing even from Canadians, who were famed for their extraordinary courtesy, when we noticed on the overhead screens that it was the final minutes of the Canada USA men's hockey gold medal match at the 2010 Olympics, browsing travelers became engrossed. Fans, Canadians and Americans went back and forth with each other. That's a great shot, canadians agreed as Team USA scored a goal to tie the game, forcing the match into sudden death. And then when Canada Sidney Crosby took a pass to score 7 minutes and 40 seconds into overtime, Canadians cheered and Americans smiled. What are you gonna do? We asked. It's, said the kid that stalled. Customs arrival hall had suddenly become a place travelers were all glad to be. While making our way to Bosnia to cover the siege of Sarajevo, a recording engineer and I noticed that the border guards of one Balkan nation in particular would help themselves to several small items on the top of our cases. Not jewelry, which we would not bring into a war zone in any case, but razor blades, socks or toothpaste, which were hard to locate during the war. In time, I learned to pack extras on top, all but gift wrap for official pilfering. But on one trip in, my entire toiletries case was nabbed. I despaired at borrowing spare items from colleagues for months on end. I mean, do you think reporters are a reliable source of fine grooming supplies? And so we went into a Sarajevo street that had been carefully turned into an informal market for personal items. People opened bags and cases to offer old or half used tubes of toothpaste and antiperspirant, quarter full bottles of shampoos and soaps, many of them likely left in the rubble of apartments shattered and bound. Man looking to buy toiletries joked. At least I think it was a joke. Hey, that's my aftershave. It was a Christmas gift. For a moment, we felt less like travelers and journalists and more like Sarah, whom we so admired. Our family now often travels across borders with our dog Daisy, who rides in a carrier that fits under a seat. He is not a service animal, although that is honored service, but a member of our family. Daisy, who is a French poodle, travels with a record of her inoculations in an EU document the size of a passport, as it includes her photo. We call it her EU passport. French border agents almost never failed to open Daisy's passport and admonish her through the glass panel now left. Eh, all right. It is you. You may proceed. This is advice easier to dispense than to live by. But unless you're on your way to a wedding, funeral or open heart surgery, it is often wisest to see travel delays as spontaneous opportunities. Read a book, talk to those nearby, or simply take a breath and ruminate Our family missed a flight home from Arizona once because of a time zone mix up. The airline booked us for the next day, but that meant a day of missed school, homework, meetings, work memos, pickups, drop offs, business email and our whole array of quotidian responsibilities. We grumbled and whined about losing a day from our busy lives and spent it hell by a pool with a water slide, playing, laughing, eating nachos, imitating the arms out pose of saguaro cacti and feeling that in fact our day long travel delay had somehow added a day to our lives. One of the most cherished memories in my life is landing in Chicago after an overnight flight from China with our now oldest daughter in our arms, whom we had just adopted from an orphanage. We were dressed in stretchy gym clothes. The families alongside us in passport control from Poland, Ireland, Nigeria and elsewhere around the world tended to dress in suits and dresses for the occasion. A man in a big brimmed brown hat called out simon Family. Which was the first first time we'd heard the phrase for the three of us. He checked and stamped our paperwork and put his large hand under our daughter's small, soft chin. Welcome home sweetheart, he said, and we melted. This episode of Rotary Voices was produced by JP Swenson, with additional production and music by Yusu Kim. Rotary Magazine is the official monthly publication of Rotary International.