The Wandering Widow - Travel, The Balm For All Ills, Bettina Goes On A River Cruise Looking For A Soulmate

Archie Loving had travelled to over sixty countries in his long career as an international management consultant. On behalf of the World Bank, Chase, Citibank, and the United Nations, he assisted Third World countries manage their investments. 

After a particularly nasty time in Angola - the rival militias that had fought a decade-long civil war had not yet been demobilized, and the country was as lawless and ungovernable as today's Somalia - he retired, happy that he never again would have to experience the malarial, rat infested miasmic horror of an African airport and be shaken down, robbed, and threatened by border police, customs, and security.  Enough was enough, particularly since after so many visits, so much foreign assistance and investment, and so much Western hopefulness, these countries were still desperately poor, corrupt shitholes.  

So it was was with no little measure of amusement that he watched the widows of his coffee mates, tennis partners, and business associates head for the green hills of never-never-land.  One had been particularly eager to get on a plane.  Hers had been a good marriage as far as the old fashioned kind goes (no one arranged marriages between Vassar girls and Yale men, but that was why they went Ivy League), nothing to write home about, one of those love-her-loathe-him kind of couples.   She was no peach, an increasingly screechy, demanding woman; and he was a bully, everything from the way his shirts were folded to why his wife was always late. 

It was no surprise, then, that Bettina booked a Danube River cruise with Lindblad, ten cities in ten days, first class dining, and fellow passengers all from the same social couche - prosperous widows and widowers all fleeing the bier for some deserved adventure before their number was called. 

Things are never what they seem, and although the food was good, it was not the five-star banquet customers were led to believe.  The sauces were pasty, oversalted, and speckled and dotted with what was to pass for artistry but caused diners to pause.  The cabins were ample but airless, the staff accommodating but impatient, and the on- and off-loading at each stop badly timed. 

Nevertheless no one was there for the food, the air, or Europe.  This was to be a sexual jamboree, an open market for future romance and companionship.  There was an eagerness on board, a kind of sprightly spring in the steps of the men and a coquettish charm about the ladies.  There was always a bit of a scramble at meals - the company deliberately did not assign seating so that the rough-and-tumble of courtship could happen organically. 

The trip, said Bettina, did not turn out exactly as she had hoped.  The men were all still memorial, 'when my wife and I, etc....' and the women as catty as women can be; and although there were some interesting prospects, they seemed more interested in the grandkids or the farm in Chillicothe than seriously pursuing a romantic future. 

By and large, it was a boatload of Babbitts, wealthy men who over the years tethered to the same woman had lost any interest or ability in sexual pursuit - a claque of leisure-suited old men, pure and simple. 

Bettina, however was far from discouraged.  She had picked the right church but the wrong pew.  Tours were the right venue for enterprising mature singles but one had to vet, suss, and triage carefully. 

'Africa is for me', said Bettina, sensing that those who chose Congo, Niger, and Zambezi River tours would be more alive, more willing to open long-shuttered emotional doors and share real feelings. Bettina consulted Archie Loving.  Bemused and surprised that anyone would want to travel to Africa except for business reasons, Archie hesitated.  Where might he send this naively hopeful woman that wouldn't end in misery?  

He scanned his virtual map of the continent along the four axes of the compass and could come up with nothing.  Each place was either a malarial swamp, a crime-ridden ghetto, or a potholed uncivil backwater.  He mentioned Egypt but Bettina quickly dismissed the idea.  'No, Archie, I want the real Africa', the same response she gave when he suggested Morocco; and so it was that against his better judgement, she booked the Bend in the River tour up the Congo River from Kinshasa to Kisangani.  

The European tour company, advertising multi-story air conditioned first class cruise ships, playing the old bait-and-switch, subcontracted the business to N'gomo Tours, Ltd. of Lagos, and hoped for the best.  

The passengers huddled on the foredeck of the steamer as it made its way up through the choking tangle of water hyacinths, its 1960s-era diesel hammering away, smoke belching out of the single stack amidships.  It was Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn on the African Queen all over again, and for all intents and purposes they were heading into the heart of darkness. 

Engine trouble, a stop or two at village outposts, manioc and monkey meat ('Our traditional, local cuisine'), and bitten alive, was the routine; and no group of travelers was more happy than Bettina and her fellows when they returned to Kinshasa. 

Archie had No Congo and No Nigeria clauses in his contracts.  Lagos and Kinshasa were considered among business travelers to be the very worst places in all of Africa, and that was saying something.  From the minute you set foot on Nigerian or Congolese soil, you were accosted, harassed, intimidated, and bullied; and the only survivors of this primitive jungle chaos were diplomats met by embassy armed guards and carried off in armored convoys. 

Somehow, mirabile dictu, Bettina managed to return home safe and sound but without purse, cell phone, watch, or string of pearls. 

'I miss Harold', she wept as she slipped into an empty bed her first night home, but after a few months of desultory pursuits - book clubs, volunteering, coffees at Caffe Nero she was restive, feeling alone, and watching the time tick away while she languished in the Washington suburbs. 

'Something in between', she decided. Not the Tower of London or the stinking waters of the Congo but something congenial, pleasant, and responsive to her simple needs. Turkey was it - more or less civilized, not quite Europe but European in style and popular culture, a bit too Muslim but there was romance in the muezzin's call to prayer. 

The trip sounded exciting, following in the footsteps of St. Paul (his letters to the Ephesians were required reading), the stone dwellings of Cappadocia, the modern city of Izmir, the historic Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia of Istanbul. 

Yet the on-off sightseeing, the endless traffic-choked highways, and the same brutal diet of ground meat and eggplant every day, left little time or opportunity for romance. There was Harry Otter, a businessman from Kansas City who had lost his wife in a freak accident five years before; Billings Potter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Potters, Eddie Koons, heir to the Koons Ford Northern Virginia mega-car dealership, and Pinky Rivera, a first generation Filipino-American who was the real estate king of San Antonio.  

These were the men who noticed her, chatted, mostly about home, but went to bed early.  The rest were dutiful travelers with their heads in books on Suleiman the Great or the Greek wars, who actually signed up because of the docent, Mehmet Baltaci, a Turkish historian and men for whom women - especially their dead or divorced wives - were royal pains in the ass. 

'Why can't I get it right?', Bettina asked herself after yet another fiasco; but undaunted tried and tried again, all to no avail.  She wasn't exactly looking for Mr. Right, but at this point in her life any swingin' dick would do.  Why was she being so picky?

At least every one of these tours cleared her head - it takes time to get rid of junk in the old emotional attic - and her husband Arnold had left quite a clutter.  So, it was chaise lounge on the patio, gourmet takeout thanks to DoorDash, women friends for tea and gossip, and a rather boring set of golden years.

Neither marriage nor gay widowhood are what they're cracked up to be, so man up, she told herself; and yet...and still...Poor Bettina could simply not give up the idea of company, any company, except, God forbid a clone of that prick of a husband, Arnold.