Hi all! The recent thread about Uzbekistan has prompted me to start this thread about sharing our stories of finding AA in remote places while traveling, or perhaps our surprising encounters with stumbling across a meeting unexpectedly. Some of us shared a few of these stories over in the Uzbekistan thread, and I'll pick it up here with my story about a trip through some of the countries in southern Africa about ten years ago....

I had found a great tour company that offered a seventeen day train trip though six countries - starting in South Africa, then through Swaziland and into Mozambique, back to South Africa and then north through Zimbabwe, then parking the train for several days at the Victoria Falls train station, with day trips into Zambia and Botswana. You slept on the train in old 1930s sleeper cars, and toured around during the day in jeeps and vans that they carried with the train on flat cars.

Before the trip started, I had been able to make contact with a couple of AA folk who worked for a humanitarian aid organization in Maputo, Mozambique, and made tentative plans to get together. When our train arrived in Mozambique I tried to place a call to them but I couldn't figure out how to use the pay phone in the train station so I asked our guide on the train if he could help me make a local call. His first reaction was surprise ("you know someone here? In Maputo??"), but he graciously allowed  me to use his cel phone. I spoke with the 'friends of Bill', and a couple of hours later when most of the train passengers were gathering to go see a couple of local sights, I explained to the guide that I was going to be meeting my 'friends' instead. As timing would have it, the entire group of train passengers were standing in a group in front of the train station, about to head off for their sightseeing trip, when the AAers arrived to pick me up, making quite an entrance by roaring up to the front of the train station in a scary looking beat-up old jeep. I hopped in and away we went. That evening, back on the train for dinner, there were a few hesitant queries from some of the passengers, asking me 'and how was YOUR day?', clearly wondering what the hell I had been doing...

Several days later, we pulled into Bulawayo Zimbabwe, where I had also made tentative plans to get to a meeting at a hostel/guest house that was run by an AA member. I once again explained to the guide on the train that I would not be going with the tour group in the afternoon because I had plans to meet some 'friends'. The guide seemed very curious about all of this, and asked again: "Wait - You know people in Bulawayo??", and I noticed several other people on the train overheard this exchange, and they seemed very curious about all of this mystery...

The meeting was great! About eight of us sitting around a kitchen table at the little hostel, lots of good AA, a couple of new folks, some old timers, etc. I mentioned to the group that the train was heading onward to Victoria Falls and the people in the meeting told me that one of their regular members had moved there a while ago and I should try to say 'hi' to him if I could. They gave me his name and told me to "just ask for him at the train station".

When I got back to the train, I had the distinct impression that my recurring absence from the tour group had been the topic of some amount of discussion among the other passengers....

When we pulled into the Victoria Falls train station a few days later, I went into the train station office and asked for the person I had been told about in Bulawayo. The guy I was speaking to was the guy I was looking for (not really a huge coincidence, I think there were only two people working at the train station). He was a really great guy, quite elderly, and sober for a very long time. He reminded me very much of Bishop Desmond Tutu. We had a long and wonderful conversation and he told me all about his 12 step work in the town there.

As we were saying goodbye to each other and as I got up to leave his office, I suddenly realized that the large window of his office looked out onto the train platform, and there was the entire group of train passengers assembled on the platform, watching us through the window. I have no idea how long they had been there watching the two of us laughing and chatting as if we were life-long friends. There was really nothing I could do except step out of the office and join the group on the platform. Whereupon one of the more bold members of the tour group said to me: "OK, let me guess - you know THAT guy, too, right?"   

I did eventually tell a couple of the passengers discreetly that I was meeting all of these people to go to AA meetings, and they explained to me that there had been all sorts of colorful theories among the rest of the passengers - maybe I was a diamond smuggler, maybe a mercenary, some kind of spy, you get the idea. When I explained that it was just AA meetings, the people I told this to were amazed that there was AA in such places. Frankly, so was I. It was an amazing experience.

I love these beautiful and inspiring stories.  I was surprised to find an A.A. meeting full of American tourists when we went to Yugoslavia back in the early 90's.

Mike D.

I used to go to a meeting in a chapel , in a Funeral home .

It moved to an old dental surgery , complete with chair . I have not been

to it's new location at the local hospital yet , it's a 100miles away .

Under th 12 Palm trees @ Waikiki Beach - got a pic of those 12 palms as well .

On a couple of sandy beaches @ Kona - on Big island . Next to the 'runway' at old airport at Kona .

At some rallies I have been to in Aussie , some have known to have 'Alkothons' - continuous

meetings All day. At the NT - Northern Territory , they do a week-end camp at Douglas-Daly ,

at th head of th D-D river , which is a thermal springs . They start off each morning with a

b/fast meeting , we wanted to 'freshen up' a bit with a swim in the warm water , we were

close enough to hear some of th speakers , wifey says , "I feel like skinny-dipping" , go for it.

I says , as we were on a bend with a couple of shrubs , I was a bit more modest , I kept my

"budgie smugglers" on . Th biggest church I have seen , the 1st Baptist church of Salt Lake City .

They had th meeting right in th middle of th church , and every bloke that shared , "dropped"

at least a half dozen "m-f's" . I thunk at least there is some "happy bappies" in this town.

Here's another - I usually travel solo, but I did a trip to Belize with a sober friend of mine several years ago. We found the location of a AA meeting, but it was a small 'summer shack' and they only had meetings there during the months when the owner was present, and it was closed up.   But a few days later, while we were riding in a taxi from a hotel to the airport and having a conversation with the cab driver, the driver just kinda opened up and started telling both of us about how his drinking was messing up his business and ruining his relationship with his wife... It was really unusual and unexpected, since neither of us had made any mention of being in AA or the fact that we didn't drink. He seemed to be really relieved to spill the whole story to us, and told us that he just wished he could quit drinking. His openness and honesty was very surprising, given the randomness of the situation. We then told the guy what a 'coincidence' this seemed to be, and it was only then that we told him about AA and that we were recovering alcoholics. We each told him a bit of our own stories, what we had been like, what happened, and what we were like now. My friend reached into his backpack and pulled out his travel-size paperback Big Book and handed it to the driver. We gave him some info that we had about finding meetings in Belize and gave him some encouragement to get in touch with AA right away, then we were at the airport and said our goodbyes to him and we were off to Costa Rica.......

WOW Dave, ... what a fantastic story ... I'm thrilled you shared this here ... Loved it ...

Here's another one. This time the part that really amazed me happened about a year AFTER I found the meetings....

In 1998 I spent a few weeks traveling around the western half of Turkey, in a counter-clockwise loop that began and ended in the amazing city of Istanbul. I had no trouble finding English speaking AA meetings there (they are at the American Hospital), but I also wanted to find some in other places during the trip. I had made a preliminary contact with an AA person in the southern coastal city of Izmir before the trip started, and when I was checking into my hotel there a few weeks later, he was waiting for me in the lobby (not the first time that has happened to me, and it's a remarkable feeling every time!). He was a young guy named Ircan who had been sober for a couple of years and he spoke fairly good English. He took me to a small AA club in the top floor of a very old and atmospheric apartment building, where we had a nice small meeting with three other people.

After the meeting, as we were walking through the downtown streets, there was a massive city-wide power failure which plunged the entire city of Izmir into darkness for many hours. If I had been on my own, I would have been in big trouble and I'm sure I never would have been able to find my way back to the hotel. But of course he knew the city very well and he guided us to a very modest little restaurant, barely more than a barbeque grill and a few tables in a one-car garage. But they had some propane lamps and didn't need electricity for cooking so we had a great meal and a long 'meeting after the meeting' conversation all about AA stuff, our families, etc. He told me that in the next year he would be moving back to his home town in northern Turkey and would see his parents for the first time since he had gotten sober.... When I eventually got back to the hotel, I realized that the other people in my small group tour had spent the entire evening stuck in the hotel in pitch blackness with no power. I was really glad I had met up with Ircan.

But then, about a year after I had returned home from the trip, northern Turkey was devastated by a massive earthquake which resulted in a terrible loss of life and left nearly half a million people homeless due to the widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure. I wondered if Ircan had been there at the time and how his family was doing...

A few months after that, I was at my home group meeting here in the SF bay area, and I noticed a new copy of The Grapevine on our literature table. In this issue, there was a remarkable article written by a guy who had been just about to travel back home from Izmir to his home town in the north when the earthquake happened. You guessed it, the article was written by Ircan. Some of the specific details included in the article left no room for doubt that it was the same Ircan that I had met.  In the article, he gave an amazing description of how he traveled home just after the quake, managed to find his family, and stayed there to help them and the rest of the people to deal with the aftermath, and especially all of the work that he and other AA members were doing to help find each other again and get meetings established again. It was a very powerful and moving article of hope and service, and I'll never forget that guy.

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