Well, if you were Jim Deutsch, you'd spend a lot of your time thinking about these challenges. Jim is a Program Coordinator for the Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. This year, the Folklife Festival will focus on the cultures of people along the Silk Road, an ancient trade route between Europe and Asia.

Jim travels the world as much as any of the traders who used to travel the Silk Road hundreds of years ago, so he's a great fit for his job. He's been a professor and teacher in Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Slovenia, and Turkey, and he will spend the 2002-03 school year in Norway. Jim's travels - and his work on the Folklife Festival - have been made easier by his love of languages. In addition to English, he speaks Russian, German, French, Spanish, Polish, and Bulgarian!

In between his travels, Jim has been working on Smithsonian Folklife Festivals nearly every year since 1990. This year, for the Silk Road Folklife Festival, Jim's in charge of all the festival's logistical needs. That means that he is responsible for:

• Making shipping arrangements for 22 cargo containers being shipped by APL from India, 1 container being shipped from Pakistan, and smaller parcels and packages coming from many other locations along the Silk Road. Jim had never moved cargo before, but now that he's been working with APL he's become a real shipping expert!

• Organizing the demonstration areas for nomads from Kazakhstan, carpet weavers from Tibet, Turkey, and Turkmenistan; and two kitchens where food from Silk Road countries will be prepared.

• Arranging menus and organizing a public food court with Afghan, Chinese, Italian, and Japanese foods.

• Coordinating a crafts bazaar.

• And, of course… the camels!

The Kazakh nomads who are coming to the Folklife Festival to demonstrate their way of life need Bactrian camels to haul their yurts (portable homes) up and down the D.C. Mall. But where do you get camels? Jim spent a long time researching this problem. Should he bring camels over from Central Asia? But how would he get them to the U.S.? And would they even be allowed in to the country? As Jim worked, he learned that he couldn't bring camels to the U.S. from Central Asia. The camels would need to be 'quarantined' or kept apart, for a long time to make sure they weren't bringing diseases to the U.S…. and as a result, they'd miss the festival! There had to be another way.

Jim continued to research, using the Internet and asking everyone he knew the same question: "Where can I get some camels to bring to Washington D.C.?" His work paid off. He found a small company in Texas that uses camels for desert expeditions in the American Southwest. Jim and the Folklife Festival will be 'borrowing' a few of these camels and transporting them to Washington D.C. this summer for the festival.

This may be one of the most unusual shipping problems one of APL's partners has ever had, but it's all in a day's work for Jim Deutsch!

The Folklife Festival will be held from June 26-30 and July 3-7, 2002 at the National Mall in Washington D.C.