Tom Garrett (left) and Father John Behnke, CSP, stand in front of a Buddhist temple in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma).

Tom Garrett (left) and Father John Behnke, CSP, stand in front of a Buddhist cave in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma).

On the road to Mandalay. Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem. Frank Sinatra sang the song. Mandalay is an exotic city that was once the capital of Burma as an independent kingdom. It was one of the destinations halfway through my journey to visit priests and brothers who had attended Friendship House in Talapady, Karala, India, an alcohol and drug treatment center for priests and men religious. Also included on the agenda were visits to other countries and dioceses in Asia to spread the word about recovery ministry.

The trip was part of a typical venture that I make once or twice a year to help out at Friendship House, founded by my dear friends Tom and Marlene Garrett. It was a typical adventure following Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

The journey began three days late because of the snowmageddon that crippled Washington, D.C., where I live, and much of the east coast in early February. Day one was canceled and rescheduled three different times before I took off from D.C. to Atlanta. The plane in Atlanta took off four hours late, meaning I missed my transfer in Amsterdam and leaving me to spend the night at the airport.

After a night at the Mumbai airport and having missed seeing a friend as well as a seminar I was to attend in Travandrum, I finally caught up with Tom Garrett at the airport. We got on the next plane to Chennai, and boarded another plane to Port Blair after staying with the MC Brothers at Little Mount. We arrived in Port Blair a day late, so we couldn’t get to the village where we to meet a priest friend. He did take the eight-hour trip from his village to meet us. It was great seeing him sober some seven months after treatment, and his bishop was happy to see him back in full-time ministry. It was now Ash Wednesday, and we attended the 5:30 a.m. church services conducted by the bishop in the cathedral.

Tom Garrett (left) and Father John Behnke, CSP, stand outside of the former King’s Palace in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma).

Tom and I flew back to Chennai to get our plane for Sri Lanka. We found out a new customs regulation dictated we could not return India for two months. That was fine for me because I wasn’t coming back to India on this trip, but Tom was caught unawares. Once we were ensconced in the bishop’s house in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, we spent our first full day at India’s embassy trying to get Tom permission to go back into India at the end of our trip to Senegal. Tom got permission to go back to India for three days to collect his belongings. All he needed to do was to come back to the embassy on Monday and prove that he did indeed have a plane ticket to the United States. The only trouble was that we would be in Bangkok by Monday. Tom would be going to the U.S. without collecting his belongs. Our host at the bishop’s house, Father Hyacinth, was gracious enough to provide us with transportation for the hour-long trip to Negombo to visit with the Marist Brothers and meet with a prospect who lived in that city.

From Sri Lanka we traveled to Bangkok to change planes for Myanmar. The brother we were to visit was not at the airport when we arrived. We waited a bit and then took a taxi into the city to the Provincial House. The provincial was not at home, but made arrangements for us to take an overnight bus to where our friend was working at a pre-novitiate. The bus was stopped three times along the 15-hour journey with government officials inspecting the identification of all passengers.

Father John Behnke, CSP, stands with Brother Dominique in St. Anne’s Cathedral in Thies, Senegal.

It was about 85 degrees when we arrived in Myanmar’s capital city of Yangon, but close to freezing upon our arrival the pre-novitiate in the mountains. We brought no warm clothing with us, and our hosts bought us sweaters that were much appreciated. We spent time with the brother we had come to visit, talked to provincials in the area and celebrated Mass in English for the 108 pre-novitiate students, who knew the English responses to the Mass. One of the priests at the community translated my homily in to the vernacular. We also visited Buddhist temples, caves and pagodas. We visited an extremely well manicured park and aviary. And on our way back to Yangon we visited the ancient fortified capital city of the kings of Burma in Mandalay.

Our overnight bus trip from Mandalay was only 13 hours long, including the obligatory government checkpoints. On one of the stops, road construction caused us to spend half an hour on a dirt, sand and mud path through an open field. From Yangon we took a plane back to Bangkok to change planes for Istanbul to get a plane to Dakar, Senegal. One, ten and seven hours plane rides interspersed with hours long waits at the airports.

Our friend met us at the Dakar airport after we went through the gauntlet of taxi cab drivers. We stayed in Dakar for a couple of days visiting different provincials and diocesan officials talking about the Friendship House program and of the possibility of setting up some recovery programming throughout Senegal. Everyone was excited about he possibilities presented since at present there is not one Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in all of Senegal.

Tom Garrett (left) and Father John Behnke, CSP, on Ash Wednesday 2010 in Port Blair, India.

On our way to Thies (pronounced something close to our word “chase”) where our friend worked with students in the novitiate, we stopped at the Benedictine abbey at Keur Moussa to attend Sunday liturgy. Once in Theis we talked with more provincials, visited a mental hospital, and talked to student nurses, seminarians more diocesan officials. Again, all were particularly interested in what we presented about alcoholism, as there is no recognition of alcoholism being a disease.

In each country we spent but a few days. We could have spent a month in each place carrying the message to those who would listen, but three weeks for the whole trip was all we could do this time. Friendships were made, ideas were exchanged and seeds were sown for others to harvest on the road to Mandalay and back.