Venturing into Kurdish Anatolia

As I write on the laptop, we are on a bus driving east between Gaziantep and Sanliurfa in Eastern Anatolia of Turkey. This is the southeast and Amb’s long time dream to come here. We are close to the Syrian boarder, but it sounds like visa’s are a major hassle on site so we will not try to go just for the sake of going to Syria. We have nicely stepped off the tourist track which is great ! no more carpet sellers ! Our hotel last night was clearly oriented to Turkish travelers especially businessmen.

Turkey has been amazing. A complete change in everyway, in how we spend our days, the sites, the weather. It was difficult to leave Muheza and make the transition onto something so completely different. I am missing people in Muheza and the team at Bombo. Seems so weird that we can just pick up and go. But as the days slip past I feel more and more clear about the work we will pursue upon our return to Canada fundraising for further development of palliative care….

We have used just about every scrap of clothing we brought as its been much colder than we anticipated (0-8 or so) including some snow in Capadoccia. Istanbul an amazing place of course; we spent a fair bit of time visiting the obligatory museums, palaces, mosques and art galleries. We were a bit disjointed those first few days, learning to be nomads, and with each other 24/7. The family unit even closer now as we sort through all the emotions and challenges of travel (the specifics being totally different than Africa). I look at my family in wonder and know I will look back at this time as an incredible gift, a rich and complex experience for us all, not the least of which is simply to have all this time together so intimately. All of us finding it hard to muster the energy to learn a few words of Turkish (more difficult than Swahili by a longshot) and continue instead to exchange Swahili words between ourselves for comfort. “Pole sana” will be with us forever I think….The Turkish ‘Merhaba’ (hello) helprully close to the Swahili ‘marahaba’ (response to ‘shikamu’ the respectful greeting to an elder)

We moved onto Gallipoli, touring the battlefields, and seeing first hand remnants of the trenches and orienting ourselves to WW1 and how it related to this part of the world. From there to various ruins: Troy, Ephesus, Aphrodesius, Hieropolis (ancient spa city built adjacent to the amazing Pamukkale) and we are seeped in ancient history. Learning tons !!! Amb more knowledgeable than I, both of us staying one step ahead of the kids orienting ourselves to the ancient worlds of the Hittite, Roman, Byzantine, Selyuk, Ottoman etc empires. Amazing to see these places with structures and artifacts dating back to 2000+BC. It is truly humbling and overwhelming to see both all the layers of history here but also the scope of civilization so long ago…

Anyways it has been wonderful to share this time with the kids. They are both great travelers coping very well with the many museums of anthropology and sites of ancient history. Although, I did hear simon grumble recently as we planned our next few days, “ah, not another ruin !!” Certainly the fact that we are traveling through the heart of pistachio and Baclava country helps; food has been fantastic, but with the usual challenges of finding the authentic ‘local’ hot spots and not the more easily visible touristy crap. We are getting pretty good at packing up and relocating, which will be the nature of our existence for the next few months. The bus system is amazing here, efficient, cheap, frequent, comfortable and super easy to go just about anywhere. I guess is reflects such a huge population that makes it so effective. The buses all have a ‘flight attendant’-type person who brings coffee (instant horrible stuff) or tea or fanta orange pop as well as a cake thing usually, although as I write Griffin is worried this ride (2.5 hours) is too short to be eligible for the cake part. Have done 2 overnight rides to date. They are grueling, I find at my advanced age.

Next we went on to Capadoccia (google it). It is a magical region of unusual geological formations due to erosion by wind and rain of repeated layers of volcanic rock. The rock pillars that were formed “fairy houses” as they are called, were carved out into rock houses that were inhabited by (amongst others) persecuted earliest Christians (pre-Byzantine) and the sites to see include amongst the earliest churches carved out of the rock dating from the first and second century. Amb and I did a couple of amazing hikes through the area around Goreme and it was all really quite spellbinding. Incredible visuals of undulating curves and pillars of rock of all shades of reds, pinks and yellows.

Then we left Capadoccia in central Turkey and the well hewn tourist trail and headed south east to the Kurdish part of Turkey. It is amazing, the reactions of subtle disapproval on the part of the Turks in other areas who say there is nothing to see here. The split between the 2 cultures of Turkey persists and is historically complex and we will learn more about it I am sure as we venture into the Kurdish heartland….

We are at the same time looking forward and thinking about the cycle and taking advantage of google maps while we have the fast internet access (frequently with free Wi-fi in the hotel room !!) to research the upcoming weeks and Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. Have been watching Michael Pallin’s Eastern Europe series Rose burned on DVD for us, which has been a great adjunct to our own reflections. Paula sent a wonderful book called “Balkan Ghosts” which I am devouring in an effort to make a little bit of sense of the unbelievably complex and tumultuous history of the Balkans…

Griffin is working away at learning how to use the GPS which we will trial on the cycle. The plan is to create the day’s route on the laptop and upload to the GPS for the day (in addition to the variable quality paper maps we have located to date). Thanks to the help of Shauna and Jane who have searched out some hard to locate Eastern Europe GPS maps, and thanks to Susan for getting them to us from Cambridge, this technological learning curve is slowly coming together. Certainly we will not be heading out on well trodden tourist trails! But hopefully the roads will not be too bad ie not too many punctures, as our UK Muheza colleagues would say.

Our only big challenge right now has been ongoing skin stuff particularly for Ambrose, and we are now certain we have brought a serious case of scabies with us from Tanzania!! (It was quite atypical at first, but over the last 2 weeks has become quite classic in its distribution and now spread to me). We have gone around the block twice now with the available treatment here (Kwellada) and washed all the clothes, even borrowed an iron from a hotel to iron them all as a hot drier is not something that seems to exist here. We are hoping this has taken care of it (I have a slightly less severe version, kids spared for the moment, but treated anyways) I have a worry in the back of my mind that I heard at one point Tanzanian scabies is quite resistant to treatment…. but we will have to see how the next week goes…

As inconvenient as it is, we can hardly complain if this is our most serious health complaint to date from Africa !!

Will keep you posted !!
Please look at the photos Griffin has posted of some of the Turkey exploration. Follow the links he has provided if you want to see what we have been up to!
Hello to all and love all around.
Xo Leah