Tomfool Traveler: A Wayfarer's Comedy of Errors

By CC Nixdorf

Laugh-out-loud stories, alternated with thought provoking, punctuated with downright ridiculous predicaments. These humorous and witty yarns about Nix’s travel experiences span the globe -- Russia, Nigeria, China, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Jordan, Sweden, Australia, you name it -- even as far away as Texas and Montana. C.C. “Nix” Nixdorf has found himself in situations that any naïve traveler could, or the most experienced sometimes has. Go far away often enough and you’re at the will and whim of the travel gods. Nix has survived and pays homage in these twenty-two tales of whimsy, all salted with fondness for our crazy, whacked planet and its wonderfully diverse peoples. “It’s all true,” Nix swears. “Reality provides its own wild ride. At least, mine has!”

• Language: English
• Publisher: CC Nixdorf
• Release date: Sep 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370685066

CC Nixdorf

Besides being an author, CC “Nix” Nixdorf, in other incarnations this life has written and performed on stage and for television.He has been laughing at himself and helping others chuckle for decades.He has also devoted many years to humanitarian efforts worldwide, during which he has traveled to 30 countries, often to parts of them that normal folk would never go to.Look for more CC Nixdorf works of humor and death-defying comedy to come out in the near future.

Book preview

Tomfool Traveler

by

C. C. Nixdorf

Copyright 2016 C.C. Nixdorf

Published by Galactic Lighthouse Books at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Jet Lag, or the Cruel Kindness of Strangers

A Moment in Kazakhstan…

Cops…and More Cops

A Moment in Accra…

Where the Cock Crows

A Moment in Stockholm…

The Great Equalizer

A Moment in Rawilpindi…

The Peoples’ Hotel of Moscow

A Texan Moment…

Down Below

A Moment in Bangladesh…

Manners, Good

A Moscow Moment in Hollywood…

I am so sorry, I am so sorry.

A Moment in Aqaba…

Love Your Enemies

A Moment in Modern America…

Fool’s Luck

A Moment on the Beach in Ghana…

Cardinal Rules

A Moment in Montana…

Comings and Goings

After Words…

About the Author

Contact the Author

Jet Lag, or the Cruel Kindness of Strangers

Call me Nix. C. C. Nixdorf, at your service. Let me tell you a tale of my wanderings, my odyssey.

Yes, traveling the world foolishly trying to do good has been my odyssey.

I say ‘foolishly’ because few people have had more opportunities to embarrass themselves or bewilder others in as many cultures, languages, or colors of sunlight. Perhaps smiles and laughter — albeit unwittingly caused — is the principal good I have left behind.

Take my second visit to Pakistan…

Jet lag is as good a place to start as any. It has hamstrung the best of us. Even Einstein would become a mere mortal after a 26-hour flight. And crossing the International Dateline, arriving somewhere two days later, but 11 hours earlier than the day you left is the Third Theory of Relativity, in any case.

Here I was at the Karachi airport in Pakistan, jet lagged. I personally had arrived in Karachi a number of hours earlier after an endless flight. I hadn’t rested yet, but was at the airport waiting to greet a young colleague who was flying in separately. His name was Georges, pronounced Zhorzh (French Canadian). He was a thin young man. ‘Bean pole’ would be doing him a favor. He normally had sparkly eyes and ineradicable high spirits. Ineradicable I say because it was regularly my duty to give him tasks that would suck the spirit out of anyone, like today, for example. I was at the moment watching him through the crack in the Immigration/Customs exit door, watching him get skewered.

This was Georges’ first bigtime international trip. I had tried to do my due diligence to prepare him. I had learned the hard way that no matter what you think you’re thinking when you arrive zonked with world-girdling jet lag, you’re in the Twilight Zone. What people are actually saying to you is not what you hear. And what you think you are saying back to them (dangerous when standing in front of an Immigration and Customs Officer wearing a uniform out of Stalinist Russia) is not what you meant. If you follow my logic. Exactly. That’s jet lag.

Zhorzh, I had said, before he left, no matter how much you think you will have slept, it won’t count when you arrive.

Not me, he’d answered. I’ll be fine. I don’t get jet lag.

Thank you for that infinitely wise but actually retarded statement, I said. And I began to explain to him what he really and truly had to do to be prepared for Customs. After being wakened from a stuporous sleep in the airliner by a loudspeaker blaring ‘We will be arriving in 30 minutes,’ his preparations should begin with taking himself to the bathroom, and ---

Oh, yeah, Georges had interrupted. You want me to splash water on my face.

Yes, but only after you have shaved yourself, I said, handing him a cheap razor to put in his pocket.

Shave!? What for?

I will explain, I said. Shave yourself and then put on a clean white shirt and tie, and I handed him those, too, to put in his carry-on."

Whoa, Nix. Too much. Is this really necessaire?

Absolument, Georges. Really, do everything I tell you. You’ll thank me later.

I so seriously doubt that, he dared to say. (He was my junior in the non-profit humanitarian organization we both worked for.)

Here’s the drill, I continued. "You will go out and first have to go through Immigration. The Immigration Officer is God. You are a lowly invading form of pestilence. Ignore his sneer and just give him your passport. And this part is important -- nod and answer with one word whatever he asks. Then follow the other passengers out to where your bags will be delivered. That will take 30 minutes longer than you expect. And for certain, Customs will want to look at your bags."

Maybe.

For sure, Georges. Your drill when they do, and this is important, too, because you will really think you’re awake, but you’ll still be pretty much brain dead ---

No, I won’t.

"Just listen. Here’s the thing. They will ask you questions. Don’t try to get into a big explanation. Just smile and nod your head. That will do. And when they ask more questions, show them this 3-ring binder." And I handed him the binder.

Merde, Nix.

Look at the binder, Georges.

He did. See, it’s got pretty pictures explaining everything. Let the binder show and tell.

"Do you really think I am so stupide, Nix?"

I paused for an appropriately polite moment. "Georges, I have had to do this same drill, and when I didn’t, I got in trouble. I’m saving you from so much shit. Deal?" I extended my hand.

I feel like an idiot.

"No, when you arrive and can’t think straight, then you will feel like an idiot. And you will be right. Trust me. I’m your man."

You are so not my man. I can’t believe you gave me a razor to put in my pocket.

I’ll be right outside with our Pakistani welcoming committee to pick up the pieces. See you in Karachi.

* * *

So there I was, standing outside the exit door from Customs and Immigration at the clamorous, really really really crowded Karachi airport. Urdu was being shouted on all sides. Families were greeting loved ones. Suitcases the size of small Volkswagens were being dragged away.

There had been three welcoming committee friends who had greeted me, the airline golem who had tottered some hours earlier out of Customs wearing my white shirt and black tie and carrying my ring binder. Damn right I followed my own instructions! Anyway, the Pakis rescued me and took me to eat, take vitamins, and slug down a gallon of Pakistani coffee, a close relation to the dregs of a car’s oil pan plus sugar. Now I was in a semi-drugged, hyper-caffeinated state, perfect for watching Georges through the crack to see if he was following my instructions.

Georges had come in through the swinging doors on the far side of the customs inspection hall just a little while before, pushing his two big baggage carts loaded with four black trunks and his own bulbous suit case.

Did I omit to tell you about the four trunks?

This is why I was certain Georges was going to get the full court press Customs inspection. Georges and I had come to present workshops in the four corners of Pakistan to doctors on the use of vitamins and minerals and stuff to relieve…well, all those symptoms that modern nutrition relieves, but that Pakistan doesn’t know about yet. There were going to be approximately fifty doctors and counselors at each one of these four workshops. So Georges was bringing samples of these vitamins and minerals for all 200 workshop attendees. Georges’ four trunks were filled with 200 sample bottles of vitamins and 200 bags of mineral powders.

200 bags of pure, white, fluffy, snow white powder.

I think you get the picture.

Pakistan is right next door to Afghanistan, producer of the purest white heroin in the world. The smack comes down through Pakistan to be smuggled from there around the world and sold…eventually to us. Afghan heroin is pure, fluffy, snow white.

In my meager defense, as I picture your incriminatory frown, let me say in my defense that if I had been coming from L.A. myself, Georges and I would have been pushing those trunks in together. But, c’est la vie, I had first gone elsewhere in the world and then come to Pakistan. So it had to be Georges in there schlepping bags full of white powder into Pakistan and me standing free and clear on the outside, looking in, wishing him the best of luck.

* * *

Scarecrow sleepy Georges had just pushed his half ton of trunks through the doors. His normally twinkly eyes looked the color of a cement floor in a military barracks bathroom. But he had his 3-ring binder under his arm. Bless you, Georges, I thought.

I watched him push his stuff up to the first official, who earlier had been waving other people through. Fat chance, I thought. Georges stopped and the official asked him a question. Georges smiled and nodded his head. Good boy.

The official counted the trunks – four? Georges nodded again. The official waved him and his contraband over to the side. Georges waited, looking around. I knew he was too zonked to worry about what might happen. This was a good thing.

After a while, the official came over and pantomimed for Georges to open one of the trunks. He did. The official looked in. Then he stepped back and looked away with his hand on his chin. Then he looked in the trunks again, closer. He asked Georges some question, incomprehensible to me from my crack in the door. Georges smiled and nodded his head. Good boy, Georges. The official called someone else over and, pointing at Georges, indicated that the official was to keep the French Canadian smuggler right there. Don’t go anywhere.

First Official walked briskly away.

A long time went by. I began to worry.

I think I should go in, I said to my Pakistani friends standing next to me outside.

No, no. If I may say so only, said one of them, no one can go in to Customs from the outside. You can only come from in there to out here. You cannot go in, Dr. Nix.

I told them what Georges had in his four trunks.

Mr. Zhorzh is coming in to Karachi with trunks full of white powder!? Oh, Dr. Nix, this is a very great problem.

Uh huh. That’s why I think I should go in.

No, sir, you cannot go in, sir. Not even you.

Well, Inshallah! I said, it’s up to Georges and my 3-ring binder.

Inshallah, they all agreed. As God wills.

I stuck my eye back in the vertical crack of the door. Georges continued to gaze around. Now he was sort of swaying. God knows what was going on in what was left of his brain. Probably recalling his childhood in the wintry snows of Montreal.

A long while later, First Official came back. He brought with him three other officials --- two uniformed like him in anonymous grey, one in civvie clothes, the boss man, I would guess.

They stood Georges over to one side and opened up all four trunks. Then they looked at him from a distance and talked to each other. They walked over to Georges who smiled, nodded, and breaking the rules, said something. They went back to the trunks. Boss Man, sure enough, got out his pocket knife and cut open one of the mineral packages. He licked his finger, touched it to the powder, and tasted it. Straight out of The French Connection or any of a million other narco movies. Yuck! his face showed. All mineral’y, not that vinegary, acid bite of the real drug stuff. His mouth puckered up like he had peanut butter in it. The officials cut open a couple more bags and tasted them, also. They put their heads together and compared notes.

Georges was beginning to arrive in present time and realize where he was. Was that the crease of worry I saw on his forehead? Could be. I wasn’t sure. He was a long ways away. And I was outside, watching, feeling like a shit.

The four officials gathered closer around Georges. They now peppered him with questions. He did his best to mumble answers, but who knows what he said or what they thought he said.

Finally, bless his innocent heart, Georges smiled, nodded, and brought out the 3-ring binder! I saw him page through it and point out one picture or another. Show & Tell. I totally swear by ‘show and tell’ in tense international moments. These were pictures of earlier workshops done in other parts of the world. There were doctors in the pictures, mixing minerals up into a vitamin drink. Doctors drinking this stuff, not drug addicts. Georges took a risk and pointed over to the trunks and then pointed to the ring binder. Duh! I was thinking. Duh, get the point, officers.

Boss Man pulled George gently over to one side. He leaned in and said something sort of privately to him. Georges smiled and nodded his head. Georges and Boss Man walked back over to the trunks, and Georges gave a couple bags of minerals to the officer. The official said something to the others and they lit up and chatted with each other. George then gave them some minerals, too. Boss Man and First Official now patted Georges on the shoulder and waved him on. He could go. He closed up the trunks and with the officials’ help got them back on his two pushcarts, then shoved them like a steam locomotive to the door, banging into the bars on the inside and on through to us.

As Georges clanged out, relief spread across our Pakistani hosts’ faces. They surrounded Georges, hugged and patted him.

Very well done! sang one of them, draping over Georges’ shoulders a bright shawl in the red checkered colors of the Sind Region. So very well done, don’t you think so, sir? he asked me, while one of his friends was decking me out with my own scarf.

Superb handling of our Immigration and Customs officials! said another. He and a fourth young man now hung paper flower leis over our necks. To cap it off, they jammed Pakistani hats on our heads. Georges received a funny sort of beanie like an upside down broken bowl. I got a Peshawar crumpled thing that perched uneasily on my skull like a bunch of sleeping squirrels. We were Pakistani Ken dolls.

Hurrah for our American friends! they said. We made smile attempts and got our photo taken.

Congratulations gratefully over, they started lugging our trunks over to one of the two miniature taxis that were to take us to our next destination.

I semi-hugged Georges in the American male bump-your-chests fashion. Georges smelled like a sandwich someone had kept in his pocket for three days. I doubted I smelled much better. We eyed each other’s weary faces.

What happened in that last conversation? I asked. Between you and the Customs Officer?

He asked me if that stuff really could help people sleep, like I said it did. Yeah, I said, sure. Well, he said, I’ve got a wife and mother-in-law who get very grumpy when they don’t sleep. Might I be able…could I give him some of these minerals? I told him, yes, sure, sure. And I did. Then I guess the others said they had wives or grandmas, too. So everybody got some minerals.

Wow, I said. "wow. It