ES-Jesus
We are leaving Rome today and taking the day to transit to Cairo to start our Egyptian leg of the trip. If anticipation is a big part of any trip, we now have anticipation coming out of our ears. I’ve always wondered how mountain climbers feel when they are hanging out at Camp 4, preparing for the summit. They are acclimating and preparing themselves for the most important and probably most dangerous part of their trip. Part of that acclimation is a physical thing and part of it is psychological. I’m not sure that we are heading above 8,000 meters by going to Egypt, but the U.S. State Department does classify Egypt as a Level 3 Risk (Reconsider Travel) and has done so since October, 2022 due to a combination of reasons. The State Department website says “Reconsider travel to Egypt due to terrorism. Exercise increased caution in Egypt…” If we were going to Sinai we would be in a Level 4 Risk region. To give you an example of what that means, countries like Peru, Lebanon and China are Level 3 whereas Level 4’s would include Russia, Afghanistan and Belarus. I’m pretty sure I would not consider going to Peru or Lebanon right now and China would take some thinking. But then again, our President just traveled to Ukraine, which is a Level 4, so I have to assume that there is some circumstantial thinking that has to happen in these decisions. We are taking the view that the touristic parts of Egypt will remain safe. Lots of people we know travel regularly to Mexico and the State Department doesn’t even give the country a rating , but rather makes a special circumstantial discussion about violent crime due to cartels in certain areas. The bottom line is that Egypt is too unique and special as a travel destination to get scared off by a bureaucratic designation.
For the years that I traveled to the Emerging Markets of the world, I always categorized risk as political, criminal and biological and treated the first two as manageable (absent an outright revolution or war) whereas the third was random and uncontrollable. I’m not sure I have ever chosen not to go somewhere I really needed to go due to political or criminal risk, though they might well modify my behavior and specific travel paths while in-country. In the same way that I never saw or experienced a mugging in NYC in my 45 years there, I don’t think I have ever experienced extreme political or criminal risk when overseas. The closest to that came in Nigeria where two days in Lagos felt like a lifetime and I was most anxious to get the hell out of there when I did. Nevertheless, I did go back (with Kim to boot) to Benin for a CARE Board meeting, and I think its fair to say that Benin is and was more dangerous than Lagos. All went well, so I think the circumstantial and preparatory approach to higher-risk travel proved appropriate.
Almost everybody we know has been or wants to go to Egypt. You can’t be a National Geographic subscriber, as I am, and not want to go (in my case, go back) to spend some time with the antiquities that abound there. In fact, we are using the National Geographic affiliate, Kensington Tours, to organize our trip. That alone lends some degree of comfort as to safety. To address the biological risk, we are using a combination of common sense (avoiding street food) and having a subscription to MedJet to get us the hell out of the country if a medical emergency arises. None of that will prevent the normal travelers diarrhea, so for that we have to just keep our fingers crossed…and perhaps our legs crossed as well.
Like all risk in our modern life, you end up taking a probabilistic approach. We all fly and try and avoid “Rain Man” syndrome, wishing to be only on Qantas, while reminding ourselves that there is more risk in crossing the street or driving around town. With all the domestic terrorism and mass shootings in the U.S. these days, I suspect those arguments have more currency to them than ever before. We will do our best to keep those risks out of mind while we amaze ourselves with the wonders of the ancient world in Giza, Saqqara, Luxor, Edfu, Aswan and Abu Simbel. I hope the biggest risks we encounter will be nasty camels and ruthless souvenir vendors.
I do not know how to weigh most of the risks in the world today. I don’t like jumping to the conclusion that risk is a function of what I have to lose or fear. We should be smart enough to be more objective than that. COVID was a time when the risk of travel took on a whole new dimension. Indeed, it became a bigger barrier than most any we had ever endured. The war on terror that started in earnest twenty years ago after 9/11 was also a barrier and cause for caution, but by that time I had mostly spent my time in the Middle East other than several years and trips to Israel. But then, the risks in Israel are far more complex than the added concerns of 9/11 and the ensuing search for an eradication efforts against terrorism and where it hides in the Middle Eastern region. During that time I recall having to travel to Pakistan, which spent more time in the Level 4 world than most places, and indeed, could be described as a hotbed of terrorism. There was a need for security protection of a rather extreme nature (jeeps with AK-47 toting men), but in the moment I did not feel insecure in any way. I’m sure that during the world wars, those on the ground felt that risk was higher than ever and that would only feel more so with proximity to the fighting. But a few years ago we traveled through southern Turkey, a mere two hundred miles away from the active fighting underway near Aleppo. We felt no angst and, quite frankly, saw little angst or fear in the locals who would be there far longer than we. That certainly seems very different in Ukraine right now, but that feels miles away as long as it stays traditional in weaponry. Risk seems never to be far away and yet never to be overwhelming in its impact on everyday life.
The biggest risks we all seem to face today far exceed those of pandemic or terrorism. The real risks are not the criminal or the biological. The real risks are the political ones, and by that I mean the things that are standing in the way of getting our runaway world back under control. It is, indeed, the environmental, the social and the governance risks that smolder across the entirety of the world and are, even now, burning the edges of our existence. I recently read the admonitions of the treasurer of South Carolina against ESG and especially Blackrock and other managers for espousing the importance of ESG in business building. The accusations were stridently partisan and so wrong-footed as to be absurd. Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock responded that only $4 billion in funds had left the firm due to those views and that $230 billion had been added to the firm’s ledger. The implication was clear, the risk is not the medicine, but rather the disease itself. ES-Jesus is my reaction to this all.