Talbot's Top Ten Tips to train your dog to misbehave...

Out at the camp we have a veritable menagerie comprising about 50 chickens, 3 goats, a dog and the usual population of African bugs, lizards and bitey things.

Our favourite though is the camp dog. His name is Tunza, which is Swahili for 'to keep' or 'to protect'. We found him on a beach at Tunza Lodge on Lake Victoria amongst a litter of flea bitten but otherwise lovable pups.  The camp needed the security beefed up at the time (at least that's the excuse we used) and the dog's owners were only too happy to get rid of at least one pup to a good home.  We picked Tunza by a rigorous selection and analysis process of walking up to the litter and saying 'BOO'.

The one that stood his ground long enough to realise that all his litter-mates had scarpered was Tunza (the chosen one). Hence the five week old flea-bag made his way by private charter flight to his own little paradise (Tunzatown).

His first challenge was passing security at Mwanza International Airport (a large shed with a couple of metal detectors and xray machines). Because he was in a carry bag (it wasn't plastic so don't bother ringing the SPCA), the ever-diligent (well, sometimes not sleeping) security officers there wanted to put him through the X-ray machine.  The resulting (verbal) battle of wits between security and his feisty Scottish 'mum' lasted about 15 minutes but 3 burly security officers were no match for the pocket rocket.  He was eventually carried through the metal detector safely in her arms (sans the empty bag which had to be x-rayed).

At camp however, we have people coming and going all season, including a range of local staff, consulting geologists and local villagers. Not many people in that group have trained dogs before so his first year of meeting strange people on a near daily basis have taught him to cope with uncertainty. The biggest challenge has been teaching his 'pack' (ie. the people in Tunzatown) to be consistent with him.  We recently came up with a cunning plan to offer them some tongue-in-cheek guidance.  Hopefully you might find the following amusing or even useful if you're having similar issues with dogs, kids, spouses, visitors, etc.

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Ten tips on how to get Tunza to annoy you (and us)....

Tunza is mostly well behaved and spends a lot of his day lying unnoticed in companionable silence, but he’s still young and silly, so if you want him to annoy you and the rest of us, here are some tips.

1. Train him to jump up on people. He’s a big, powerful dog and loves to be face to face with you, but doesn’t instinctively know to jump up. Best to make it a game and encourage him with high pitched squeals and arm waving.  Whatever you do, don’t knee him in the chest. As mentioned, he learns quickly and this will stop him from jumping up in no time.  As per point 5, being inconsistent is OK though, as that not only confuses the heck out of him but also teaches him to behave unpredictably.

2. Train him that it’s OK to bite people. Most young dogs go through a long teething phase. Tunza has lots of things to chew on around here but the best way to make him annoying is to encourage him to play-bite us or to mock fight with him. He loves this. If you get him really revved up, you could probably get him to draw blood by accident which would not only be inconvenient to those of us who have to dress your wounds but could even get infected which would earn you a gold-star for ‘annoying’. Two gold stars if he bites someone else as a result of your training.

3. Encourage him to hump your leg. This will ensure that he does it to all of us and will teach him to come running up behind you to do it.

4. Teach him to beg for food. It’s really endearing to have him beg at the table and push his nose into our crotches while we’re eating, but he won’t do this unless you actively sneak him food at the table. It doesn’t take much effort – just a tidbit once a week. He’s very trainable and even a small amount occasionally will ensure he keeps harassing us at the dinner table. The worst thing you can do is to ignore him – he’ll get bored and go away to lie down quietly somewhere if you do this.

5. Squeal and wave your arms around whenever he does something you don’t like. He’ll think you’re inviting him to play and he loves to play. You’ll have him jumping on you and play-biting in no time.

6. Get him revved up by playing roughly with him. Once he’s in full mode, all you have to do is stop suddenly when you get bored. This will really confuse him and ensure he’ll keep on doing it after you stop. With luck, he’ll also annoy the rest of us.

7. Be inconsistent. This is the best way to get him to misbehave. Some suggestions:

• Use different words for the same command. Eg: Instead of saying “No”, try saying “Toka hapa”, “Bad dog”, “Stop that!”
• Play with him roughly one day then scold him when he plays roughly with you the next day.
• Use his name when you’re scolding him. “Tunza NO!” sounds really similar to “Tunza come!”, etc so you’ll confuse the heck out of him in no time.
• Chicken chasing. Encourage him to chase the chickens or goats out of the pantry, then yell and scream at him to stop when he actually catches one.

8. Use the same tone of voice all the time.  Dog’s don’t understand many words but they are really good at interpreting your tone of voice, so if you keep the same tone of voice when playing, speaking, scolding him, calling him, etc he’ll quickly learn to ignore you and will keep on doing whatever he wants.

9. Teach him that being underfoot is fun. Pat him whenever he is in your hut, the workshop or generally just in the way, and he’ll keep coming back. Sadly, being ignored is no fun for Tunza, so if you just ignore him, he’ll will stop coming back and will go find someone else to play with.

10. Feed him outside meal times. Preferably at random times, in different locations by random people. It will not only make him fat but helps him to see every piece of food in the pantry or the kitchen table as being rightfully his.

Tunza doesn’t belong to anyone in particular here. He is a member of the camp and it’s up to all of us to treat him as such.  If you don’t want him to be here, you’ve got two choices: find him (or yourself) another home or; confuse him so that he starts behaving unpredictably, annoys everyone, gets in the way and if you’re really successful, becomes aggressive towards strangers so that he has to be put down.

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Meanwhile, I think we've figured out why the goats don't want to play with him...

"It wasn't me...  He was like that when I found him - honest."

"I don't care if you goats don't want to play, I've a new friend just like me..."

Talbot's top ten tips for building the most dangerous roads in the world...

Years of travel in Asia, Africa and various parts of the world have helped me gain an insight into the minds of the people who build roads there. At first I was appalled by the traffic carnage, but very quickly, I learned to love the thrill a minute chaos that keeps you appreciating a life lived on the edge.

Lately though, I've seen another perspective.  If you wanted to build a road system to throttle commerce and increase fatalities, there are some well established design principles to help you do so.

1. Change the meaning of VCP's from Vehicle Check Points into Vehicle Cash Points.  It's simple really. Just pay your police so little that they need to take bribes to feed their family. It makes it much cheaper for road users to pay off a police officer than say, fix a bald tyre, get a drivers license or repair a broken headlight.
2. Don't do any road maintenance. Let's face it, that's just dead money that could be used to send your kids to university in the US - after you siphon it of by awarding a maintenance contract to your brother-in-laws road construction company (you know, the one that doesn't own any road construction machinery or have any employees). Don't forget to do some roadworks in the weeks leading up to the next election but other than that, best to let those potholes grow and the road surface wash away until at least three vehicles have had fatal accidents on that bend.  Fixing these 'death zones' will win you votes and for sure, there's no cheaper way to do targeted maintenance. 
3. Get your roads built by foreign aid. When the donor country awards the project to one of their own major corporations, who then come in and build it by awarding it to the lowest bidder, the road will deteriorate within a couple of years and you'll get to ask for more aid to rebuild it all over again. Just think of the employment that will create.
4. Remember to build roads that suit vehicles that you don't have many of. For example, if most of your people travel by bicycle, be sure to build major highways that are barely wide enough for two trucks to pass and never, ever, put in cycle paths or extra space that might allow a bicycle to travel with some relative safely by day, much less at night.
5. Encourage a culture of risk taking. Be sure to build major highways with blind corners, minor roads entering from behind bushes. Be sure to never fine drivers who break the law (don't forget though to put in place some relevant legislation so that you meet the requirements of aid donors and the World Bank loans officers). The police will in any case, provide some percentage of errant drivers with an on the spot fine, but it will be self-limiting because a) they will stop when they have enough money to buy lunch and b) you haven't given them any speed cameras or vehicles to actually enforce the law.
6. Don't whatever you do, regulate signage beside the road. It's best if drivers are regularly distracted by oversize garish advertising signs. Better yet if those signs obscure their vision when pulling out into traffic. It teaches them to be more vigilant in life anyway.  The only exception to this rule...  you should make road safety signs as small as possible and preferably use cheap paint so that they fade quickly.
7. Make sure there are plenty of unemployed youth to become touts and roadside sellers. While they are weaving through traffic or jogging beside a moving bus, trying to sell oranges to the passengers, at least they are getting good cardio exercise and are too busy to be out robbing your house. Those few who slip under the wheels will be quickly replaced and let's face it, they didn't have a real job anyway.
8. Do your best to mingle pedestrians, motorcycles, bicycles, animals, hand-carts, tuk-tuks, cars and heavy trucks - preferably in multiple directions.  Everyone will love you for providing them with complete freedom of movement and to be honest, dodging traffic helps to keep the populace fit.
9. Driver testing - don't do it.  Consult with a few friends to design a system that allows people to bribe officials to be issued a drivers license without sitting a test. Let's face it your roads are so congested by now that it would take four hours to do a 5 mile driving test anyway.
10. Last but not least, you'll need bureaucracy.  Keep the paperwork for registration, insurance and drivers licenses so complex that it takes forever to become compliant. And when most people are in compliance, introduce new measures such as fire safety inspections for vehicles (at the very least, it will help fund your already bankrupt fire brigade - particularly when they get to pull up vehicles and levy their own 'on the spot fines'). Be creative - after all, it could be your job that is saved by needing huge public service organizations. Best example I've seen yet for creative bureaucracy was getting a drivers license when I had to go to three different locations on three opposite corners of a congested city to get a) a police clearance, b) a license application form, c) eyesight test and then head back to a) for the driving test, then return to b) to have the license issued. Lucky for me the ever helpful public servants at a) and b) accepted cash so I didn't have to go past point b) to have my license issued on the spot. Counting the time taken to drive from the office to their offices and back, this business model of relative efficiency took a mere four hours to negotiate the gridlocked city.

Hopefully these tips will help you, gentle reader, in the event that you should ever become the ruler of a small (or large) near bankrupt nation where over-population is a significant problem.

On a serious note... Sadly, I find all of the above and more systemic issues in way too many places. Sometimes it really does seem as if the nations leaders set out from scratch to create the most dangerous road system in the world. OK, I know it's not easy running a country and I can safely say that I haven't had to try it. It's still a sobering exercise to think about the root causes of the millions of deaths annually on the worlds roads.

A year by any other name

If 2010 was my year for living in the flow and being true to my inner voice then I figured I should think about a new moniker for 2011. I could call it '2011' but that's not exactly a unique idea. It's already also been named the "International Year of Forests" and is the 'Year of the Rabbit' but somehow neither of those really grab me at a personal level.

Anyway, for want of a better name I called 2010 the year of being 'authentic'.  Maybe that sounds a bit new age but basically it was about doing what I wanted to do and being who I wanted to be (Authentic: “an emotionally appropriate, significant, purposive, and responsible mode of human life”).  And I'd say it worked out pretty darn well. I've never had a better year, done more, seen more or travelled further. So all in all, I thought I might try and figure out what I'd work on this year.

Normally my New Years Eve resolution is simply "bigger, better, faster, more..." and I haven't left that behind. Still liking that idea a lot and keeping it as the basis for living but this year can also be the year for learning to listen to my gut.

You know how sometimes we can 'be in two minds about things'. It can be hard to listen to the inner voice of wisdom and really know what you want or who you are. Biologists describe our brain as a triune brain. Their version is basically the mammalian, limbic/reptilian and central nervous system brains. I have a different triune: Head, heart & guts. (Logic, feeling & intuition. AKA: Neocortex, reptilian brain & subconscious).  Above all I trust my intuition (when I’m smart enough to listen to it), then logic and lastly feelings.

Not saying feelings aren’t valuable of course or that I completely disregard them (they are terrific for alerting you to an issue or an idea) but I’ve learnt not to make decisions based on them. Logic meanwhile is great at gathering/analyzing data but at the end of the day, the subconscious can process SO much more info than the conscious mind.  So... (at the risk of waffling) I am learning to listen to my guts/intuition and have the courage to act on it.  All goes well when I do. Things not so well when I don’t listen to my gut.  Lots of examples but I'm sure we all have them.  The telltale is that 'after the fact' thought that "I knew I shouldn't have done that". That's also where feelings come in. Sometimes you feel bad about something you did (or didn't do) and usually that's the indicator that I didn't listen to my guts. A classic example that too many of us can share is finding your car broken into and thinking to yourself "I knew this dark street wasn't a good place to park but I was in a hurry to...".  This year, I'd like to learn to listen to my guts more often BEFORE I park the car in a dark street again lol.

Lessons abound in life - I just need to listen to them.  Last years lessons went really well. The more true to myself (authentic) I was, the better life has become :-).  This year can be the year of being more in tune or more intuitive (Intuition: "the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning". Methinks this year will be possibly be more challenging because I’ll have to not only tune in to my instincts (hard enough sometimes) but also to actually act on them (the harder bit).

Learning to snowboard...

I'm still here in the snowfields of Colorado but the original plan of learning to snowboard this season has bitten the dust. Sadly, I managed with customary grace, to break my ankle in the process.  Not so badly that I can claim a medal but still badly enough that I’ll be on crutches for four weeks. On the good side I won't need surgery and it should stimulate my writing - if at the cost of my snowboarding.  Still... if this is the worst thing that happens this year it will be a good year.

I'd originally thought it was simply sprained but after four weeks and still limping I got some x-rays done. They were all clear so I continued limping for another two weeks until I got bored with that and did some googling on ankle injuries. Only to find out about a type of ankle fracture that almost never shows up on x-rays but is so prevalent among snowboarders that it is called 'snowboarders ankle'. Turns out that it accounts for less than 1% of reported ankle injuries but in snowboarders, these fractures account for 15% of all ankle injuries...  (Clearly I'm not exactly a trendsetter with this one lol).

So off I trotted to get a CT Scan. The CT scan produced over 300 cool images and the fracture is visible in only 3 of them. At least it turns out that I wasn't just malingering.  I now know that I have a "fracture involving the medial aspect of the talus".  So, the moral of the story is: 'If you have a badly sprained ankle that is taking ages to heal, get a CT scan'.

On a brighter note, I did at least manage to get the basics of snowboarding sorted before I did my ankle. And whilst thinking that my ankle was only sprained I managed to limp around and spend 2 weeks kayaking in Belize, go indoor skydiving and get back into pistol shooting again so I can’t really complain.   Meanwhile in between the odd outing to lectures about Shackleton or watching Chinese acrobats do things that I couldn't do with or without ankle injury, I at least have a view out over Lake Dillon and the mountains beyond while I write. A tad frustrating for an outdoor sort of a guy but what can you say...A few weeks on crutches and I should be fine to dance again. Actually I couldn't dance before but you get the general idea...

Luckily the apartment has fabulous central heating – a must for a warm weather guy like me :-)

Another day at Fight Club...

Every muscle is aching and the limbs are stiff. Today is unusually cold - it's minus 17 Celsius or about 0 degrees in the old money. The wind-chill on the mountain is taking another 10 to 20 degrees off that. It’s also snowing and the clouds have descended on the misty mountain tops like a dog on a forbidden sofa. Strangely enough through a window, it actually looks like you could walk out in jeans and a long sleeve shirt – until you actually try it that is… Cheeks, noses and tips of ears are all fair game for instant popsicles. As a result, I’m happily sitting indoors today doing some writing instead of being on the mountain.

My aching muscles have nothing to do with the cold though. After 1 gym session, 2 Pilates classes and three days snowboarding in the past few days, I’m feeling pretty good but the muscles unaccustomed of late to so much attention are letting me know about it.  Another Pilates class tonight and a snowboarding lesson tomorrow will be great. I’m enjoying getting back to some focus on fitness and health. 

To misquote one of my favourite movies: "A guy who came to (Colorado) for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After (four months), he was carved out of wood."  Looking forward to that carved out of wood end result by the end of four months of this. J

A quick update on an even quicker 10 weeks...

I'm in Dillon, Colorado as I write this. After 6 months of planning, capped off by 10 weeks living out of a backpack, I've seen lots of the world but am happy to stop here for 4 months of snowboarding and writing.

Spending Christmas day in a Buddhist country was a pleasant change from the commercial feeding frenzy that goes in in Australia for most of November and December.  It was a business day as usual for the Khmer while for us expats a time to catch up quietly with friends in cafes for lunch and evening drinks overlooking the lights of Sisovath Quay.

That pleasantly relaxing Christmas day also made for a nice contrast to the hectic 3 weeks preceding it as I got some dental and medical work done, packed up the apartment, put stuff into storage, spent a day photographing rocks at Angkor Wat and attended a friends engagement to a local khmer lass in Siem Reap.  

26DEC10 was cheap airfare day and a good day to fly to Seatlle where we spent 2 days looking around as a bit of a pause before flying into Denver. Landing at Denver airport at 3pm we did what every tourist would do and took a taxi to a used car dealer. After kicking tyres for about an hour we bought a 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee (Jasper the Jeep) for the princely sum of $3,000 and made Jasper’s maiden voyage to a friends place for the night where we picked up about 200kg of pushbikes and snowboarding kit courtesy of ebay shopping from Tanzania. The sheer quantity of ebay-tastic bargain parcels taking up their spare room would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t had my embarrassment gland surgically removed some years ago. Luckily he's a good friend with a very understanding wife.

The next evening involved driving 5 hours through a blizzard, in the dark, stopping only to buy new windscreen wipers so that I could actually see the road instead of driving by braille. There are, it seems, some mighty HIGH passes, BIG mountains and ICY roads in this part of the world so the investment in a full-time 4WD was definitely worth it.  We spent a pleasant 3 nights up at a B&B in Redstone where a friends family gather each year for NYE so with little if any arm-twisting we had a very social time sledding, snowshoe trekking, eating, drinking, laughing and playing games.  

On 01JAN11 we headed off to a lakeside apartment which will be basecamp for the next 4 months. A mighty pleasant spot in a small town amongst 3 snowfields with have a view over the lake to snow capped mountains so all is well with the world.

Best of all the heating is included in the rental so even when it goes down to minus 20 outside (as it occasionally does), indoor is toasty warm.

"Don't drive out here at night" he said to the guys - then proceeded to do just that...

It's 01:45 in the morning here in Tanzania and I'm sitting in a wooden hut in front of the glow of a laptop. I'm covered in mud and sticky with sweat after a 90 minute conference call. It wasn't the conference call that got me in this state.  I was in fact 30 minutes late for this conference call after a 3.5 hour 4WD trip down to the lake that involved roughly 2 hours of de-bogging, winching and digging plus around 1.5 hours driving of actually driving. Conference call was good but the drive was even better. :-)

Today the last charter flight brought in the wet season caretaker so that we can head off on Friday on a 5 day 4WD trip to Dar Es Salaam and eventually Zanzibar for some diving. A couple of hours after Nic got here we had a request to help a women who was in distress during labor and needed a lift down to the medical clinic 20km away by the lake for a helicopter medevac to the nearest hospital. I suggested that Nic go down to the lake to see it before the roads get cut off.

Four hours later at 9pm we'd had dinner and they still weren't back. Pete & I had a bottle of wine under our belt but there's no RBT here and you can't do more than 15km/h anyway so we grabbed the keys to a Landcruiser, the med kit, satphone and a bottle of water. We figured they'd probably got bogged, had a flat or just slid off the road... A great intro to Africa for Nic lol but at least it would convince him of the futility of trying to drive in the wet season. We ended up all the way to Mgambazi down by the lake and that place is dark by night! It's a village of probably 1,000 people but you could scarcely find the glow of a fire at 10 o'clock at night. With nobody around to ask for directions, we got onto the satphone and rang camp. Turns out the vehicle had got bogged on the way down to the lake and decided to go back to camp by another little used track - the logic of leaving a known track for an unknown track that we hadn't used before on a dark and wet night escapes me but either way, that's what they did.


They'd arrived at camp about 20 minutes after we left so two of the guys grabbed the pickup to drive down and let us know. This was nice gesture but no way were they going to catch us and we'd left instructions to come get us if we weren't back by 2330. As it turned out, if they hadn't come for us I would have been back an hour before my conference call (rather than 30 minutes late). Simple stuff but when I had to reverse out of a bog to have another run at it, Valerian (our senior technician) had the landcruiser pickup right up our clacker and proceeded to reverse sideways and get stuck. Long story and 5 or 6 winching/digging attempts later we managed to slip/slide/drive up the by now very chewed up hillside, that the first vehicle had given up on. Just another day of boys own adventure in Africa :-). Can't believe I get paid to do this. Perhaps one day I'll grow up - but I doubt it...


More importantly though, no-one was hurt and although we haven't heard how the mother and baby are doing yet, at least she got to the clinic before sunset, in time to be evacuated to Kigoma by helicopter. Her home is a farm near our camp where in May this year, her husband hanged himself so hopefully her luck has changed and things will be working out well for her in hospital. We'll find out how soon enough via the bush telegraph and are all keen to have things go well for her.