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"Check back all week for blog posts and photos from WD editor-in-chief Jane Chesnutt. She&amp;#039;ll cover First Lady Laura Bush&amp;#039;s trip to Africa, promoting anti-malaria and AIDS efforts as well as clean water and education. Before I left on this trip, both my husband and Suzan, my assistant, gave me the same lecture: Be careful, don&amp;#039;t even think about going off on your own, blah, blah, blah. Who, me? They needn&amp;#039;t have worried, and not just because I&amp;#039;m not as daring and unafraid as they apparently think. When you&amp;#039;re in the bubble, as the security blanket over a prominent figure such as Mrs. Bush is called, your life is not your own. When Kerry, the Secret Service agent assigned to the press, would indicate with a motion of his head that I had strayed a bit too far from the press area where I was supposed to be standing, I moved. When they said we needed to be in the lobby of the hotel at 6 a.m. for security sweep (dogs sniff your bags before they&amp;#039;re searched), we got there at 6. And while we waited (there&amp;#039;s a lot of that), you didn&amp;#039;t just saunter off to the hotel coffee shop for breakfast without asking permission. Because the moment Mrs. Bush is seated in the vehicle, the motorcade moves. If you&amp;#039;re not in it, tough noogies, and heaven help you trying to get past security to get back inside the bubble. For someone like me who lives a fairly high-powered life in which she essentially makes her own rules, this was all a bit of a novelty\u2014and also a certain amount of fun. I like experiences that are way outside of my norm, and this certainly was. The trip got off to a wild start on morning one, in Dakar, when the press went ahead of Mrs. Bush to the presidential palace, led by a local policeman who spent most of the ride speeding with neither hand on his motorcycle, instead using his arms to gesticulate wildly to cars on both sides of us to get out of our way. At one point, we came up on heavy traffic, and instead of trying to get through he simply jumped the median and led us speeding against cars that had absolutely no warning we were coming. The vehicle had no seat belts, and I thought, &amp;quot;Oh dear. If only my husband knew.&amp;quot; After that, most of the motorcades seemed positively decorous. Getting in place for events was something else, however. The press vans were usually about 10 vehicles back of Mrs. Bush. By the time we got to a location, she was already there and out of the car, being greeted. The thing was, we needed to be in position for the event (say, in a classroom) before she reached that spot. Which meant we had to run around her, carrying our equipment (cameras, laptops, etc.), often through sand, over rocks, etc. That I never fell is astonishing to me (though I&amp;#039;ve got plenty of bruises). The only near-chaotic visit was our four hours in Bamako, Mali. I suspected it would be that way before we even landed. Prior to each stop, the Secret Service would huddle at the top of our cabin to discuss strategy for the next city. This time, though, they filed up to the front of the plane, where there was a nerve-center room, and stayed there for at least a half hour. Coming back, they seemed tense. Kerry, our until-then mild-mannered guy, asked us in the press corps to help him out by sticking together. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t need to worry about you guys, too,&amp;quot; he said. The minute we got off the plane\u2014wham! This was our only daytime arrival, and the tarmac was jammed with both official welcomers and local press. I said in my first blog that the press is expected to stand under the wing to cover arrival and departure. We in the White House press pool were good little boys and girls about that, but the local press weren&amp;#039;t buying it. One camerawoman in particular, a very tall and broad woman with an outsized personality, just wouldn&amp;#039;t take &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; for an answer. She and Kerry were essentially chest-to-chest for the entire time, and I saw a steel in him that I had not known existed. At the next stop, the Presidential Palace, I met a local radio reporter while we were all waiting for the two First Ladies to make a statement. &amp;quot;Our people don&amp;#039;t have your equipment,&amp;quot; she told me. &amp;quot;Your film crews can stand far back and still get good shots. We&amp;#039;ve got old cameras, and if we stand where they want us to, all we get is tiny figures.&amp;quot; Makes sense, but that knowledge didn&amp;#039;t do anything to defuse the tension. Tempers would probably have been short in any event, because it was hot and humid, with flies everywhere. (Several actually got on the plane later, and buzzed around for a few hours before disappearing.) Suzan, my assistant, got a sense of the situation a couple of hours later, when I called in that day&amp;#039;s blog. Mrs. Bush was making her Embassy stop, and we were in a residence next door, having been told we&amp;#039;d have 20 minutes (not a long time) to file our stories. There was no WiFi, so I was on my cell phone, dictating, when all hell broke loose. &amp;quot;Leave! We&amp;#039;re going! Go!&amp;quot; Mrs. Bush had cut her visit short (her prerogative), and we were out of there. (I filed the rest of my blog from the van, with everyone around me also on their cells.) My respect for what the press does on these trips is now immense. There were six of us: a three-person CBS crew who were providing pool broadcast coverage; a CNN reporter; the Chicago Tribune White House reporter, who was doing the pool coverage for print, and me. (To provide pool coverage means that they not only do their own stories but also feed reports to other news outlets.) Someone like me, who doesn&amp;#039;t practice daily news journalism, is practically an alien to White House reporters\u2014not a &amp;quot;real journalist,&amp;quot; as the camera guy jokingly said to me one day when I came close to stepping in his shot. But they accepted me and were very helpful and just lovely to me. They also worked a lot longer and harder than I did. When we got into Maputo, Mozambique, at 1 in the morning, for example, after about 8 hours in the air plus refueling time, I could go to bed. But the CBS crew had to prep for the morning show interviews Mrs. Bush would do the next day (they were filming them), then get up at 4:30 a.m. to start setting up and testing the equipment. Just getting the story isn&amp;#039;t always easy. The White House Press Office provides reams of very helpful background information. But at the event, it can be hard to get the kind of great quotes that give a story life. Official statements are\u2026well, they&amp;#039;re official statements. And many of the people who participated in the round-table discussions, which were much less scripted, spoke in such low tones that I couldn&amp;#039;t hear. It&amp;#039;s the same with the pictures. I do not pretend to be anything but a very amateur photographer, but I know enough to see that the conditions were tough not just for me but also for the pros. The lighting was bad in a lot of the venues, and certain situations\u2014people standing on a stage, for example\u2014didn&amp;#039;t exactly make for exciting photos. I often found that someone would step right in front of Mrs. Bush when I was ready to take my shot. Or she&amp;#039;d be placed so that she was back-lit from the position I was in, making her face a dark blob. One of the best photo settings was in Lusaka, where she sprayed a house for mosquitoes. But the time of day was off: It was late afternoon, with a setting sun that set up deep shadows that were very difficult to deal with. Then, once you had your material, you had to file it. But, as I&amp;#039;ve said, the connections weren&amp;#039;t always easy to make, and we often had almost no time in which to make them. I give my colleagues lots of credit and will read and watch news reports of other such trips with greater respect. This report is hugely long, but I assume if you&amp;#039;re still reading you&amp;#039;re either interested or my mother. A few miscellaneous points:  The plane was a 757 called Bright Star that&amp;#039;s also used by Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Rice. It&amp;#039;s divided into five areas behind the cockpit: a room filled with computer gear that can serve as an office/nerve center; an enclosed state room that I&amp;#039;m told includes a desk and cot; a senior staff area with two tables and four seats on either side; a lesser area with 12 seats; and finally, the back of the bus, where I was, which has about 25 seats. I had a window seat, so I couldn&amp;#039;t see up into the main cabin most of the time. But I was told Mrs. Bush spent a lot of time sitting there with her staff instead of sequestered in quarters, and we in the press were impressed by that. There&amp;#039;s a kitchen at the very rear, and the flight attendants actually cook back there. Even I, as a New Yorker used to tiny kitchens, was impressed by what they pulled off; most of you would be astonished. I especially liked the salmon with dill sauce and rice pilaf. As on long-haul commercial flights, there&amp;#039;s a menu of films. On the first flight, the movie was an Italian one about a little boy, and you just knew the women on Mrs. Bush&amp;#039;s staff chose it. When we settled in for the next flight, the agents in front of me were looking at the list of films even before we took off. I thought, they don&amp;#039;t want another girl film. Sure enough, we got Russell Crowe in Master and Commander. The Secret Service agents are just as alert and serious as you&amp;#039;d expect, but they&amp;#039;re also cute and funny. On Day 3 I finally got up the nerve to do a tiny bit of minor-league flirting with one, but he still called me &amp;quot;ma&amp;#039;am&amp;quot; for the rest of the trip. And, yes, my husband knows about this. In Lukasa, which I&amp;#039;m guessing most of you, like me, had never heard of before, I was eating dinner with the CBS film crew when someone at another table exclaimed, &amp;quot;Omigosh, Alex Trebek [Jeopardy] just walked out of the restaurant!&amp;quot; We heard he sponsors a village in the area.  And that, my friends, is just about it. Thanks for sticking with me. I&amp;#039;m pretty sure flying with the First Lady was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I am deeply grateful for it. I&amp;#039;m also pretty sure this is not my last trip to Africa. After two very different times there, it is in my blood. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a40623/post-trip-wrap-up-6622/>