As we all begin to get pangs of wanderlust again, is there anywhere that conjures up the magic and mystery of exotic travel more than Zanzibar? The spice-scented, quintessential Indian Ocean idyll - turquoise-hued shallow waters lapping miles of palm-fringed white-sand beaches - does not disappoint. For centuries, traders and travellers have eulogised about Zanzibar’s intoxicating aroma of spices, its beautiful beaches and the bustle of its Moorish capital, Stone Town. There’s a strange halo around Unguja, the main island in the Zanzibar archipelago: a stretch of pristine 5-star beaches that disavows the extreme poverty that exists throughout the rest of the island. Originally part of the Omani empire, Zanzibar fell under Tanzanian rule in 1964, following the bloody Zanzibar Revolution in which thousands of Arabs and Indians were killed. For centuries prior to the revolution, the sale of slaves and ivory made Zanzibar one of the principal East African trading outposts, and a melting pot of cultures and vested interests. In 1896, Zanzibar took part in the shortest recorded war in history, when the local Sultanate surrendered to Britain after 38 minutes of naval bombardment. Now home to just a million people, Zanzibar is made up of small rural townships that comprise permanently-unfinished breeze-block buildings, corrugated iron roofs, crowded marketplaces where no one spends more than a dollar a day, thousands of people sitting on dusty street corners with nothing much to do, or say, or wait for. Poverty, tropical languor, and hunger pervade everything - the air itself seems heavy with it. Yet the work goes on in earnest. No one is so lethargic they don’t feel hunger: sat in weathered doorways gesturing into borrowed cell phones, trying to sell armfuls of last week’s cassava, yesterday’s kingfish, small piles of dusty peppers, sitting on old threadbare sofas or piles of coconut husks or squatted on old upturned truck tires. The women carry cooing bundles, rubbing one red clay foot against the other, one stone, one word, against another, for hours on end, picking their teeth with a blade of grass, bundling firewood. Everywhere you look there are people repairing old motorbikes. Blank eyes pass over everything as though it were one thing - anything to make the time pass easier, though really there’s no notion of it. Last year’s sun-faded election posters are plastered everywhere. Hussein Mwinyi, a local physician, won 75% of the vote. He has already starting opening the country up to foreign investment, beginning this year with the construction of a USD230 million port in North Unguja. Yet the rural poverty here is as ubiquitous, to an outsider, as it is incidental to the locals themselves. Girls with dirty feet and bright scarves, smiles full of light, carry their baby sisters on an outstretched hip, carry machetes, limes, a piece of paper, the rim of a wheel, walking the long worn dirt-road home from school - clothes more holes than rags. Outside the towns: miles of lush sun-drenched plantations, dry scrubland, crop-fields, little huts, rags drying on a line. A few emaciated cattle wander around the front porch, while chickens and babies and goats scratch around in the dusty leaves. Each family has a patch of earth, a small plantation, enough food for the day. Rural Africa. Where humankind took its first upright steps. You can taste the sweet putrid smell of nature’s incessant labours, decaying, blossoming. And the people - the sour sweat smell - are as much as product of the terrain as it is of them. Piety, hunger, civil order define the region more than the beaches and sunsets you see in the brochure. The enduring image for me remains the heavyset Muslim men, half asleep, sitting on dusty steps in little embroidered Taqiyah caps and long white djellabahs, sharing the age-old ritual of sipping a words over coffee, just after dawn, after the adhan, before the clamour of the day's trade commences. Past the edge of town, the corrugated iron roofs give way to thatched-cane huts, as more of the land is occupied by farms and homesteads, wattle and daub structures in the shade of dense vegetation. Under palm-woven roofs large families sit yawning, waiting for nothing, watching the buses go by. Dust all around. Vast plantations. The interminably heavy air. Dense vegetation and dust and time and hunger. For miles and hours. Nothing else but dust and time and hunger. From a distance, the rubble-and-stick houses look unkempt and sorrowful. But you notice they're diligently swept, that everyone is happy, that everything is in order, and in God’s hands: children carrying smaller children, parents taking care of their parents - the inscrutable hierarchy of age, followed obediently from cradle to grave. And maybe the money will come in tomorrow and Insha’Allah everything will be fine. Of course it won’t - but that’s okay too. They just wait, as time doesn’t seem to matter. And indeed it doesn’t. As my friend in England observed: if only sitting quietly was what people did when they had nothing to do or say. In the towns, a white outsider is immediately surrounded by the hawkers, bombarded with a thousand offers for taxis, massages, hashish, headscarves, looking is free, skewered octopus, ugali, beer, cashews, good price my friend, snorkelling trips, saffron, fridge magnets, biscuits - the endless haberdashery of touristic wares. A conciliatory smile, an angry rebuke, feigned ignorance, polite humour - the response is irrelevant, as long as the sun is shining they will keep coming back. They are neither hostile nor friendly, they simply want to eat, to get through to another meal, another day of life. One of the highlights for tourists in Zanzibar is Nungwi beach, at the northern tip of the island. The long stretch of powdery white-sand beaches boasts crystal-clear waters. Though still relatively undeveloped, it's by no means inexpensive, and gets crowded during the high season. A short distance south, on the west coast, is Kendwa Beach. Though it doesn’t quite rival those of Thailand, there are Full Moon Parties there each month, where the crowds spill out onto the beach, drinking and dancing 'til dawn. Back in Stone Town, Forodhani Park is the best place to pass a pleasant evening on the waterfront. The kerosene stoves are lit around 5pm and the place starts to swell not long after sunset. It’s the best value food you’ll find on the island: crab claws, calamari steaks, sugar cane juice, skewered shrimp, octopus, chicken masala - each no more than a few dollars, and the twilight atmosphere provides the perfect setting for a romantic stroll. The best way to get around on Zanzibar is the shared bus known locally as the dala dala. It costs TSH 2000 ($0.85) per person for the 2-hour journey from Stone Town to the Nungwi. It stops on the roadside every few kilometres to pick up and drop people off. And there is no schedule, the bus departs when full. For shorter journeys you can take a motorbike-taxi, known as a boda boda. Again, the standard price is around TSH 2000 ($0.85) per person. Blending Moorish, Middle Eastern, Indian, and African traditions and architectures, it's possible to spend days winding through Stone Town's labyrinthine alleys, the narrow shaded streets typical of old Arab towns. They're punctuated here and there with towering white coral-stone boutique hotels, such as Upendo House, where people go to the dangle their feet in the small infinity pool and watch the sunset with a cocktail, cool breeze and overpriced steak. Nearby is the newly opened Cafe Africano, a chic little rustic open-air coffee bar run by Abdul, who's very welcoming and informative, and speaks with an intriguing cockney-Swahili accent. Just across the street you’ll find the Zenji Food Lover’s Joint, which serves fresh soup, a good ugali and various local dishes, all at low prices. Besides snorkelling, spice tours are the island's most popular tourist activity, with short excursions offered by numerous companies. They take you out to a spice farm, where your guide will show you how things like cinnamon, jack fruit and kukurma are grown, and let you sample them. The sleepy atmosphere of Zanzibar is perhaps its most prominent feature - that ubiquitous slow sandal-dragging dusty shuffle. They are masters at conserving energy - indifferently rubbing their eyes, bellies, hands, moving through the blazing sunlight from one patch of shade to another. The streets seem to be piled on top of one another, and all somehow lead to the port. For the locals, life is endless toil. Yet, despite the poverty, people live generously and joyously, and crime is negligible. The languid attitude is a form of acceptance: there’s a sense that everything will work out okay in its own time and, even if it doesn’t, someone else will take care of it anyway. Alongside the day-to-day poverty, the slave trade has left a permeant scar on the African psyche. Ryszard Kapuscinski referred to it as an inferiority complex since, as slaves, Africans were made to feel subhuman, a separate species. And Zanzibar - Stone Town in particular - was a stronghold for this grim trade. The port saw over 50,000 slaves a year chained, dehumanised and shipped off around the world. By around the 8th century, the Swahili people had begun trading over the Indian Ocean and, as a result, were influenced by Arabic, Persian, Indian, and Chinese cultures. Perhaps the most significant and long-lasting change came in the form of religion. The traditional Bantu beliefs and practices were superseded by Islamic ones. Later, Christianity was also added to the mix. Islam is now the predominant religion in Zanzibar, but the indigenous population retains distinctly African physiological features. What’s more, Islam doesn’t seem to be deeply embedded in people’s way of thinking here: they wear the religious attire and bear Muslim names, but it all seems somehow incidental, a borrowed appearance. Before the Arabs and Christians arrived, peoples’ beliefs were more closely tied to the land itself, and their mythology was oral, ancestral, spiritual. People prayed, for example, to the land itself during a drought. God was associated with the sun and referred to as the oldest of all ancestors, rather than as a creator. In most Bantu mythologies the universe is eternal and has no beginning. That said, for the original Bantu people, God was intimately bound up with the world: animals were sometimes referred to as “His people” and in some of the myths about God moving away from humankind (up onto a mountain, or rising as smoke from a fire) it is shown that His discontent had to do with humans’ habit of manipulating and corrupting the natural world. Angamizo La Majini loosely translates as ‘Destruction of the Spirits'. It was the picture on the box that initially caught my eye: a frightening, albeit slightly comical, picture of a demon with crazed yellow eyes, pointed beard, thick fiery hair and little white horns. In both the Quran and traditional Bantu mythology there is a rich and strangely detailed history regarding malignant spirits: how they possess, torment and “bother” the human body, how each particular “genie” manifests itself, and how healers should identify and treat them. One of the men sitting by the stall, watching me with a wry smile, told me the ointment was used by practitioners to exorcise evil spirits from the victim’s body or house. On the back of the box it was described as a cure for epilepsy and "strained marital relations". A few drops should be applied to the victim’s doorpost to banish evil spirits from the house, or on the body to vanquish them from within. I asked if he really believed such spirits existed - yes - and if he'd ever witnessed them - no. But he believed in them all the same because it was “written in the big book”. I asked if he thought we should believe all the things written in all the books. He chuckled, then looked me in the eye and said very seriously: “you should always be prepared, my friend, because the eyes do not understand everything.” Sunday morning in Stone Town’s port-side Forodhani park. A rich girl from Dubai, dressed in plain clothes, and a Masai seller wearing traditional garments sat chatting on a stone bench. They both spoke in broken English, giggling, curiously asking about each other’s cultures, without any pretence, or awareness of the passing stares. It was a delight to listen to. After an hour, the shade of the baobab tree had moved, but I couldn’t leave, not before they did, I had to see what would transpire in the parting exchange. After some time, he pulled a blue and white beaded necklace out of his pocket and fastened it around her neck. They held hands. She said he was crazy, and giggled like someone in love, promising to write to him when she got home. Neither of them wanted to leave. I couldn't either. A warm breeze blew in from the south, so soft I closed my eyes, or perhaps because it was Sunday. The tall palm trees fanned the sky and the couple embraced before resuming their conversation. Finally they stood up to leave, walking in the shade of a line of trees, out into the narrow streets, stopping outside a small hotel to talk a while before going inside, disappearing into the cool shade and what must have been the most beautiful unspeakably tender embrace on earth. Back at the shore, I watched the billowing sails of a wooden dhow boat drift across the setting sun. I could hear a mother and her daughter singing softly, washing their clothes in the shallows. A simple song, sung in unison and with such detached tenderness and simple beauty that I felt a knot in my throat and I was reminded that we are not, none of us, separate beings. I felt more alone than ever. That night I found myself drunk on a deserted strip of shore. The immense African night, bright with stars. I'm convinced there's no greater feeling on earth than smoking by the sea after dusk - a warm wind coming in, beside a woman who loves you, falling asleep wrapped in the ocean's sound and her arms, having found the closest most delicious thing in life together. The next day back at the hotel, a Scarborough Fair saxophone instrumental topped off a lacklustre morning. A Russian girl sat at the next table made inane chitchat to anyone who’d listen, laughing at her own jokes without noticing no one else was. She laughed so hard, in fact, her eyes began flexing like a madman's and I stopped wondering why she was there alone. There are no masks or social distancing anywhere in Zanzibar. The vast majority of people don’t believe Covid exists. It’s just something the politicians talk about. There was a small story in the newspaper about it, at the bottom of page 6. Absolute chaos at Zanzibar airport. It’s essentially one large airless room where it’s still 1975. A few dozen uniformed men wearing felt berets wait around, unsure how to stand, how to approach the next influx of humanity. They all look round at each other, trying to gauge from the others’ reactions if they're doing things right. The photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qBAjJpdDfEF9T6ZG8
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I’ll always like the peaceful hour best, when the feast is finished and the cold blue stars are there, while she’s asleep, and you slip away and sit by the window, and let the silence reach into you and the feeling of empty stillness so sublime. It’s the same kind of peace you get when having a quiet drink alone before a night out, or when the clean air touches your nostrils after too long away from the hills, and you give yourself over to it completely. You can’t beat that magic, when time slips and, for a moment, everything is quiet, open, still, when life becomes a feeling unto itself, and there is no desire or doubt or fear, because you know everything will happen in its own time anyway, and you let the universe go about its changes or, rather, let them happen inside of yourself.
Herzog's delightfully strange use of language, his cast of human oddities and passion for wild nature and the strangeness of being alive is rivalled perhaps only by the stories of Bruce Chatwin, author of the brilliant In Patagonia.
The documentary My Best Fiend is about Herzog's relationship with the equally bizarre Klaus Kinski, who Herzog once pulled a pistol on to stop him leaving the set. In another incident he attempted to burn down Kindski's house. (Herzog himself has been shot at several times, and describes it calmly in interviews as "exhilarating".) Kinski, the star of Aguirre Wrath of God, entered filming having just completed a "Jesus" tour, in which audiences (who filled entire stadiums) basically paid to come and watch him rant and rave like a psychopath: "he arrived at the filming location as a derided, misunderstood Jesus. He had wholly identified with his role and continued to live on in it. Often, it was difficult to talk to him, because he answered like Jesus." If I had the patience and the skill I’d write a poem called the ecstasy of sauntering. Beautiful words. Saint terre. Holy ground. Ex stasis. Outside oneself. I’d carve out an incomparable subtlety in the fissures between words! But I can never find a solid image. Instead I’ll just keep scribbling little notes, lost in my own device, thinking about how the truck drivers rise earlier than the imams, and how sublime it is sometimes when you look at me, and how I started to feel at home on earth after 3 decades, in Lowell, Massachusetts, swimming naked in Walden lake, scared now of dying, just walking along dully, while millions suffer incomprehensibly and all I know is the sound of my own footsteps, and the things that can be taught in no other way than through silence.... when sometimes just being there is enough, when you give yourself over to the wind, in its sound, and like Auden said, become aware of those tiny points of ironic light where the just exchange their messages.... and not feel so bad today about going to work today because there is an empty sheet of paper waiting at my table for when I get home and in my mind I swear I will write upon it the greatest ever symphony, seated upright, like Beethoven, with furrowed brow, as the walls recede and the roof vanishes and I float, quite naturally, thanks to that subtle continuous rhythm, driving to work now down the Wakrah highway in the light of the morning sun….
Downtown Jakarta. The most depressing place on earth. Thousands of bedraggled little roadside stalls with car-oil concrete cardboard floors hundred-year-old weathered shelves selling Chinese walkie-talkies rubber boots broken microphones copper springs plastic rubies, and everyone crammed in there perspiring mumbling working around each other like maggots in a box, waltzing across the cardboard shuffling papers slurping dish-water Bakso flicking ash from the corners of their weary mouths. Seven million streets like this, full of woe-begotten god-forsaken sons of the soil working their fingers to the bone 14 hours a day until they die for nothing, for the absence of knowing any other way, making enough money to buy another day’s rice, scratching off another day of life, a few cigarettes, a cinema ticket once a year, and pay for their offspring to do the same, until they wind up with a mouthful of smog too and a cigarette at the corner of their lips, worrying, passing it on, all in the name of Allah the merciful and the honey-skinned virgins that await you once all the dirt has been shovelled. Jakarta, they say, is sinking. I doubt it will look much different after. A decaying concrete cesspool of smog and suffering - even the water tastes of misery. The second day started more pleasantly - somewhat ethereal in fact! A beautiful girl I’d been sweet on for months finally came to spend the night and we embraced until dawn curled up practically cooing together. I could have married her right there and then. Kind smile, good heart. I tried to avoid having sex in the morning, because a little 18-year-old firecracker called Adella was coming over after my massage. But it happened anyway. She looked like an apparition sitting there in the morning light, held me against her breast afterwards. Then I banged the masseuse. I was exhausted by the time Adella walked in, but she was spectacular, the pre-Raphaelites never sketched a finer figure: so plump and lithe. Insatiable, wanted it every hour. Fit right in the palm of my hand. Had me hard with a wink of an eye. Said she was in love with me. Maybe she was. Pleaded with me to stay with her forever. We rolled around together the whole afternoon. The sheets were soaking by the time we’d finished and “I made love to her in the sweetness of the weary morning. Then, two tired angels of some kind [...] having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together, we fell asleep and slept till late afternoon” (Kerouac). After she left I got drunk, smoked a few cigarettes and jumped in the pool to let everything cool off. Found a billiards hall nearby. The idea of sitting alone, breathing in smokey sexless air, seemed like heaven. I walked down an alley, opened the door, the place was dark, full of old men smoking and playing pool. Perfect. They gave me a cold glass of beer, chalk, a cue, a quiet table in the corner under a spotlight. Perfect! “And wanting girl partner for play billiards iya sir?” What? A girl? No! Well. Seriously? Alright then. Ritna was pleasant enough; a little dead-eyed from one too many smokey nights at the bar, drinking halves of Guinness and listening to lonely old Chinese men’s drunken sleeze. But she seemed at ease: I was in good spirits and went easy on the sleeze. High heels, stick-on eyelashes, black cocktail dress. By the second drink of course I was in love. Pathetic. “My eyes keep me in trouble,” sang Muddy Waters, “want every woman I see.” Ritna’s eyes shone in the spotlight when she smiled. It finished four games all. She went over to another table and I went home to sleep. On the way back, got talking to this light-skinned Chinese girl at the supermarket. She said she'd come over after taking her groceries home, but never showed. Thank god. There was no way I’d’ve been able to satisfy her. Only air coming out by then. I’m not even sure if it’s enjoyable anymore, just masochistic. But, for better or for worse, it’s what I’ve come to love: the hunt; a young woman’s haunches; that sly little come-hither love-smile she makes you think is just for you; the slow pleading moans. Perhaps it’s the only thing I’ve ever really understood or truly loved. It all sounds sublime, to be sure. But reading this back reminds me of something Henry Miller once wrote: “Going back in a flash over the women I've known. It's like a chain which I've forged out of my own misery. Each one bound to the other. A fear of living separate...” I tell her “I miss you”, but what I’m really saying is “I miss that look in your eyes that reminds me I exist. But the more I let myself love you, the less I know who you really are." Really the mechanism is the same: that blind sudden flash of craving: for food, photos, females, places - it's all the same really - the childish craving of the ego wishing to capture and covet. But which ultimately moves us further away from the things we seek to appreciate. For all the thrills and ecstasies - the slow swell of early love, the wild moments and tender afternoons - we know we are bound to solitude and that, when the feast is finished, even the reddest rose is a ghost. I forgot who said that, but it will ring true for all eternity. When I sit down quietly, as I am doing now, with an open heart and a quiet mind - a rarity these days - I know that what I really need, what any of us really needs, is just to get back to the old ways, the earth's own rhythms, then simply being there is enough, when we let the universe go about its changes. If you asked people in the villages here what their job is, they wouldn’t understand: they just get on with life. For me, there is nothing I would like to do or see that I could just as well not do or see. The world is a blank. I don’t remember when it happened: when I lost the thrill and wonder of this being alive. I know I should learn to be curious again - that's for sure - to listen, really listen to what people say when they speak, and listen to the earth again and to my own senses quietly, which is nothing less than the earth becoming conscious of itself. I do not yearn for new experiences, only to record them, like this sorry diatribe. Yes, better I learn to listen again: to those things that can be taught in no other way than through silence - remembering that it is through my speech that the earth sings itself into existence. And I should remember, at the end of the day, just to take it easy - because everything will happen in its own time anyway. For the most part, we lead very ordinary lives, but not very simple ones. I miss the peace and quiet of the hills, the open country roads, the mountains and rivers without end, the clear stars, wind, trees at night. I don’t remember when I became lost in this voluptuousness of looking, when my eyes clouded over. Just that I’ve forgotten how to let go - craving, instead, from one moment to the next, for the object of my desire: that dark delicious flash, that is not an antique of first-love, but a factory-made plastic replica. Now too many exclamations marks have spoiled the page! But oh for the chance to hold her flesh, to hold her ecstasy, in the palm of my hand! In that privileged moment, a truth comes rushing forward that we simply cannot find in ourselves, or a habitual mate. And it only ever blushes onto the page. Our hands stutter to say those things that only really exist in the fissures between words or “in the heart” as they say. Last night Adella the firecracker came back and brought her friend. We rolled around for hours on the bed playing and caressing, rutting in the dark. At some point, though, Adella's face changed: she had become insanely jealous and ran off into the bathroom, shouting she was going to kill herself. I heard the door lock and a glass smash on the floor. I banged on the door and she opened it with a piece of glass pressed against her wrist. I grabbed hold of her, shook the glass away and carried her out screaming. She calmed down. The two girls left. I slept like a baby. Maybe only a pregnancy will change me now. But there are ways around that too. I deserve whatever happens to me now anyway. I’m sitting in Jakarta airport, waiting for a flight to the Indonesian island of Lombok. Thinking about my (four) girlfriends back home and wondering what I'm going to do. I do have some morals left and feel guilty. Any one of them would make a perfect wife. I have a room booked in Lombok by the sea, a quiet cove east of Kuta overlooking a nice deserted strip of shore where I will swim each morning [I swam once] and drink [had to stop because of my sciatica] and read [Colossus of Maroussi, never left my rucksack] try to climb Mouth Rinjani volcano [no chance, the sciatica] and hope the thing goes off and that I think of Romina’s smile when I go, or look up at the sky and see it again for the first time. The true meaning of ecstasy. Ex-stasis. To be outside one’s body. Your feet find their way somehow along the boulders, never miss a step. Leaping, bending, taut. Maybe in a flash you catch a thought of the age of the rocks. Otherwise no thoughts. Yes, back to the old ways. Up with the dawn. Climb. Cool off in the sea later. Jim Morrison's question was a good one: How many of us really know we’re really alive? It all gets lost, and we just get swept along after a while. Quiet country roads cross-cross the island. No rain for 8 months, but still green. I was walking for hours, set off at dawn shirtless, unhurried, through overhanging trees, rice paddies, scorched hills, farmers out there already quietly toiling, kids going to school laughing at the “mister,” no cars on the roads, just the occasional motorbike, the sound of Cipoh birds, roosters, butterflies, a cool breeze, cumulus, all the families in little roadside bamboo huts, dusty patches of land in the yard, placid cattle grazing there, torn clothes drying on a wire, man chopping wood, woman chopping food, baby cooing in the shade, what more really is there? Well, there are beautiful young dark-skinned Balinese girls going by, tiny, laughing on motorbikes, fixing their bright eyes as you fall in love with the blur-face, your imagination going wild, heart pulling itself out of your chest, set loose on the wind. I try to let it go. Remember what Exupry said: love doesn't consist in staring into each other's eyes, but looking out together in the same direction. Never a truer word spoken. But sweet Jesus those honey-coloured thighs. I got lost, headed for the coast to follow it west, scrambled up the hillside to get around to the bay, feeling like a tropical mountain goat, rather than a sweating hairy pale shapeless beast. The cold water tasted so sweet in the village. One of those mornings completely given over to the senses. So vivid. The sound of the palms fanning the sky, the swell of the tide, the changing light. Sometimes it all becomes so sublime, reaches into you, that each sensation is a feeling unto itself. After a few cold beers by the sea, watching the waves break far out and come in slow, the tropical languor sets in. A breeze so soft you have to close your eyes. I met a beautiful young Javanese girl called Kartika on the beach. Cut-off jeans, long black hair, kind eyes. She invited me to her bungalow and we ate rice, played ukulele, I ran my fingers through her fine long hair. She said it was too soon for a kiss, but would see me on her day off. That was enough to send me into a frenzy for the rest of the day. I wrote her a poem right there on the way home [stole Neruda’s line about wanting to do to her what spring does with the cherry trees, but used Melati trees instead], found a barbers and had a shave, cleaned my shoes with a rag, even rented a motorcycle so I could pick her up. A sad state of affairs, really, as deep down I knew she wouldn’t show. Every day she'd meet handsome young surfers at the bar where she worked. She saved her smiles and kisses for them, and yet it's me they stay with now. Better news in the morning. My Egyptian girlfriend - buxom, smile full of joy - had slept with a girl and would bring her to join us to “celebrate Christmas” when I got home. Iranian Qatari. Tattoos and big breasts hidden under her abaya. At 14 fucked her teacher and the teacher's husband. Hard to describe just how pleasurable it is to have all those hands and tongues and eyes working over you at the same time. The mere presence of another person in the room is an indescribable magic. [Better to read David Abram Spell of The Sensuous than Greta Thunberg as, although pressure is mounting on governments to act, without the psychological (phenomenological) underpinning, any changes will not be sustainable, and lack substance.] Came upon a quiet bay where a hundred people were wading in the shallows picking seaweed ($1 per kilo). Out on the village’s only street (muddy from last night’s downpour, the first in 8 months) everyone was dozing on the bamboo benches in front of their houses. I walked passed gesturing for a haircut. One guy stood up and went to get his neighbour who came out yawning and told me to go to another village. Then a fisherman came running out waving his clippers, sat me down in his living room and went to work. I don’t think he’d cut a human’s hair before: it was pure guess work - but how different could it be from plucking a chicken or sheering an animal, I thought. His face said he wasn’t so sure and apologised each time he buzzed a clump off. When he was about half way through, my hair in patches, beard half shaved, patches of blood, he whipped the towel off my shoulders and said with a triumphant smile: "mister finish!" He didn’t wait for any money, just scuttled off to morning prayers while I finished myself off with the clippers, his fat son inspecting me, grinning nervously with his thumbs up. Hung around by the roadside after missing the early bus, hoping someone would stop and take me to Mataram. Word must have got around as a guy approached on his motorcycle carrying a spare helmet. He wanted 100.000 to take me, and I said yes without bargaining. Big fancy 4 star hotel for 15 pounds a night with breakfast. Checking in got the receptionist's phone number and an upgrade, so my room opens out onto the pool. Will stay here in discomfort and luxury for a few extra nights, like some kind of forlorn colonial beast, eating and swimming, in a stupor, fucking beautiful young Indonesian girls and getting $5 massages and ah the sweet dream sometimes, of this being alive, living in the realm of the senses. A strange revelation at the hotel. I was sitting in the lobby, between girls and massages and beers, hunched over with crippling sciatica back pain, when an old Chinese lady noticed me listening to the music coming from upstairs and invited me to join her - it was her church group singing. Everyone smiled as we went in and shook my hand. So many people came over to greet us that I felt dizzy after a while. It was as though they'd be waiting for us. The gospel singing was so powerful, and still everyone coming over with humble joyous smiles known only by those whose souls have been unburdened, blessed, forgiven - washed so clean even their eyes shine. I felt my own guilt welling up inside. Years of it festering there. Lust and selfishness. The singer closing her eyes now, making a fist, the spirit of the music moving through her. The choir and band reached a crescendo, a huge swell of sound shook the walls and everyone there. I began to weep uncontrollably. Yet, at the same time, as this River Jordan of renewal was washing over me, my gaze went on seeking out the most beautiful girl in the room: the Chinese keyboard player with the slender neck. I noticed the old woman, sitting there beside me with her eyes closed, praying, her wrinkled hands clasped together. I felt ashamed about my life. I know I belong to this earth, though we were thrown here - but everywhere I go I feel like an imposter. Maybe it’s the Jewishness in me, but it sometimes seems more satisfying to possess a thing than consume or use it, saving it for a rainy day that, deep down, you know will never come. And there is something about families that makes me feel a deep heart-wrenching sadness. The simple care and dignity and day-to-day chores of clothing and feeding and teaching as they young ones develop and grow and take their turn at raising the next wave of offspring and like this forever perpetuating existence. It is the most natural thing on earth and yet, for some reason, it seems to me to have a strange core of sadness. Until love seems to be nothing more than a photograph faded in the sun. Living in the realm of the senses has rotted my soul. Couldn’t be more shallow or self serving. But when I try to settle down with a woman I always feels trapped, bored, alone, take her for granted. That organic bond, the Care, is never there. The only lesson really worth learning now: let things happen in their own time. Be grateful for, and receptive to, the simple things, the earth itself. IT MIGHT TAKE TWO TO TANGO, BUT IT TAKES A CITY TO SALSA
COLOMBIA’S CARIBBEAN COAST is defined by its laid back beauty: from the elegant walled city of Cartagena de Indias - a UNESCO World Heritage Site replete with cobblestone backstreets and colourful colonial buildings - to Tayrona National Park, where backpackers and tourists rub shoulders with the local indigenous tribes. The jungle-fringed beaches stretch for hundreds of miles, flanked by the Sierra Nevada, the world’s highest coastal mountain range. Colombia’s true hidden gems, though, are the villages buried in the vast swathes of Pacific rainforest in the south west - famous for their biodiversity, and the locals’ zest for life… and Salsa. Having heard other travelers’ stories of wild all-night salsa parties, and the best Ceviche north of Lima, I slung on my rucksack and took the ($50 24hr) bus to Cali, the region’s gritty economic hub, to sample the delights. I wasn’t disappointed as I ran into the little-known Festival de Música del Pacífico Petronio Álvarez, a six-day celebration of African musical heritage, food and dance which takes place every August - widely regarded as Latin America’s most important Afro music festival, but largely a secret outride of Colombia. Although Cali has marked itself out as the world’s Salsa capital, it’s the more traditional sounds of the Marimba (a kind of wooden xylophone) and the choral harmonies of the conjunto choirs that the local Caleños will tell you represent the true musica del Pacifico. CALI’S TOURISM GROWTH Each day 100,000 people filled the streets around Cali’s enormous Coliseo del Pueblo. It was an extraordinary spectacle. In the distance the West Andes blocked out the sky. Smoke from the grills curled up into the air, and a swell of people nudged their way along the narrow streets towards the coliseum. Most visitors to Cali stay in San Antonio, the oldest part of town, and ostensibly the hippest. Unlike the city's traffic-choked thoroughfares, the neighbourhood enjoys a village-like calm. There’s no shortage of rooms to rent in San Antonio (starting at around $15 per night) and there are lots of chic little cafes where a good menu del día rarely costs more than $5 and fills you up until dark. Descents of African slaves shipped in by the Spanish hacienda owners to work the land, Afro-Latinas make up around 50% of Cali’s population. Colombia’s third largest city, behind Bogotá and Medellín, Cali has a developing economy and growing industrial sector, though widespread poverty remains and unemployment hovering around 10%. This year 20% of festival goers came from abroad; a sign that the secret’s now out and Petronio’s appeal is reaching a wider audience. Taking the “Mio” bus to get around Cali is highly recommended, as it has its own lane and traffic often becomes congested. You can buy a travel card, or single journey card, from the vendors at any of the roadside stations. Since the Colombian government’s 2016 peace accord with FARC, which ended half a century of violent conflict, the Pacific region has begun to prosper, as increasing numbers of tourists feel comfortable enough to visit. The festival, then, in a sense served as a celebration of peace as well as music. TRADITIONAL HANDCRAFTS According to the mayor’s office in Cali, this year’s festival generated over $1,000,000 for the local economy. Of the hundreds of food, drink and handcraft stalls, the most popular were those selling ladies' ancestral turbans: elegant, pastoral-toned headscarves wound tightly round the wearer’s head and tied off in a neat bun at the side. One of the headdress designers, Nancy Lozano, told me that the turbans of the enslaved workers served a number of different functions: “To keep seeds for sewing later, to store small pieces of gold for trading and also to hide the women's beauty from the jealous wives of the slaveowners.” The turbans also carry another significance. If the bow is tied to the right it means the woman is spoken for. To the left, she's single. And the middle is understood to represent a strong powerful woman. CALI NIGHTLIFE Beyond a handful of churches and museums, Cali itself is low on sights. But what it lacks in architecture it more than makes up for with the electrifying atmosphere of its nightlife. Out on the streets there was an interminable buzz of conversation. Cold little glasses of Águila beer perspire on the tables where couples sit peacefully, leaning in closer with every sip. The hush, and their eyes, became more amorous as the evening sun started to sink. Those surreptitious little love smiles contain something of pure magic - like the thing one feels sometimes in looking at a canvas or dreaming of a place you’d like to be in but never find. As long queues formed outside the city’s glitzy Salsa clubs, a cool mountain breeze eased the heat of the day. It seemed as though world-class salsa dancers were filing into the room but, on closer inspection, you saw they were young Caleño couples, wearing old trainers and jeans, chatting with a beer in one hand and their partner in the other, curling effortlessly around each other, gliding across the checkered tiles, barely breaking a sweat. Music in Cali is more than mere entertainment: it’s a unifying factor that ties the city together. Petronio is one huge party and it spills out onto the streets each night after the concerts are over and continues until after dawn. African rhythms, endless bottles of viche, and dancing so frenetic it would put even the salsa-dancing Caleños to shame, were they not joining in too. CLOSING NIGHT Around midnight on the final night the 100,000 strong crowd swayed together, twirling 100,000 white handkerchiefs in the air to the melody of the marimba de palma chonta, and passing around bottles of viche and arrechón (a somehow-bitter locally-brewed creamy sugarcane rum). That night, headliners Herencia de Timbiquí were joined onstage by the Cali Philharmonic Orchestra. The success of Petronio lies in its ability to remain faithful to its roots. But the climactic precision of the orchestra formed an extraordinary dialogue with what was an already mesmeric blend: the traditional music of the Colombian Pacific, the Timbiquí River miner’s lament, the modern urban sounds of trumpets and electric guitars and, now, the classical underscoring. It gave Herencia’s sound a new vitality and depth. For almost two hours they thrilled the crowd with their unique blend of high-powered choral harmonies. All the while, flowing beneath the symphonic flourishes of the orchestra, the melodies of the chonta-wood marimba fell like warm southern rain. It was all driven along by the pounding of the deer-hide cununus and seed-filled percussion of the guasá. Add the duelling electric guitars and an incendiary brass section and the result was a super-charged blend of rich Pacific rhythm and it seemed like the whole city got up to dance. The songs themselves were comprised less of protracted lyrical musings than visceral repetitions of simple phrases and the tempo of the drums. After all, like the pulses of two lovers, sometimes the rhythm is all that’s needed to entrance. At times, you almost felt as though you were sat by the Timbiquí river, listening to the sound of the water, as one call flowed into the next, the Marimba’s soothing melodies coming back again and again, inevitably yet never quite predictably, breathing together each time the opening melody resurfaced. Over the course of the six days it became obvious that Petronio was more than just a music festival. It was a celebration of nature itself, of tradition, place and history, community values and, perhaps above all, those beautifully intangible things born out of living in conviviality with the land; of which speech and dance are manifestations no different to birdcalls or sunrises; those atavistic things which can be taught in no other way than through song and silence. You sometimes even get a sense that the Pacifico music bears the hallmarks of the earth, singing itself into existence. IF YOU GO The best way: Flights from LAX to Cali (via Bogotá) start at $600 rtn inc. taxes with Avianca (avianca.com 3600 Wilshire Blvd LA CA, 800-284-2622) U.S. citizens can visit Colombian on a tourist visa (on arrival) for up to 90 days Where to stay: Hotel Americana Carrera 4 8-73, Cali, (+57) 28823063 hotelamericana.com.co 3-star downtown hotel with continental breakfast. Doubles begin at $20 Hotel Obelisco Av. Colombia 49, Cali, (+57) 28933019, hotelobeliscocali.com 4-star downtown hotel with outdoor pool and buffet breakfast. Doubles begin at $40 Four Points by Sheraton Calle 18 Norte #4N - 08, Cali, (+57) 24866000, marriott.com 4-star downtown hotel with outdoor pool and buffet breakfast. Doubles begin at $75 Where to eat: El Valencia Restaurante Español Calle 3 10 35, San Antonio, Cali, (+57) 316 6210136, restelvalenciacali.jimdo.com. Traditional Spanish cuisine (with 5 types of paella). Entrees run about $3-$10. Charrua's Parrilla fusion Calle 18 #105-75, Cali, (+57) 2 3087951, charruasparrillafusion.com. Family style steakhouse with gourmet standards (Uruguayan beef). Entrees run about $4-$15 Waunana Restaurante, Calle 4 # 9-23, San Antonio, Cali, (+57) 2 3450794, waunana.com. Spectacular pairings of local ingredients and flawless presentation (try the 7-dish tasting menu). Entrees run about $5-$18. To learn more Highly informative Colombia tourist information site: colombia.travel Travel advisories and general travel information: travel.state.gov Clubs Tin Tin Deo (tintindeocali.com) a Cali institution that’s regularly touted as the best place in town. Zaperoco (zaperocobar.co) an old school salsa bar, small dance floor but a big reputation. La Topa Tolondra (facebook.com/latopabar) a swinging venue with live bands, salsa classes and long queues after 11pm. Events Delirio (delirio.com.co) on the last Friday of the month, Cali's answer to Cirque de Soleil, with hundreds of dancers, acrobats and musicians. Festival Mundial de Salsa (festivalsalsacali.com) in September, a competition between around 5,000 young dancers from Colombia and worldwide. Feria de Cal (feriadecali.com) 25-31 Dec, the biggest party of the year with live music and carnival-style parades across the city. Petronio Alvarez (petronio.cali.gov.co) mid-August Salsa classes Private classes start at around $10 per hour and are available from a variety of companies including Sondeluz dance academy (sondeluz.com), La Topa Tolondra (facebook.com/latopabar) and Sabor Manicero (salsa-classes-in.cali-colombia.co) Does the US women's football team need to win the World Cup to win their fight for equal pay?5/25/2019 I watched a few more games, to see if I'd Chinese-whispered myself into over-criticism... but women's football really is a bag of shite. Unless, that is, you like your energy drinks watered down; cars that only go up to 3rd gear; mini sized chocolate bars etc etc.
The USA women's team are still trying to justify their claims for higher pay by appealing to their "efforts made". As I've said before, this is a flawed argument. Sanjid the Pakistani farmer does more work than Renaldo. Perhaps he should be paid more, but we live in a Capitalist world, so he isn't. The USA women's team should just focus instead on the numbers. That is, after all, what grabs the executives' (and policy makers') attention. The USA women's team bring in more revenue - nationally - than the men's team, so their claim for higher pay is indeed justified. But the same cannot be said of their worth relative to the men's game internationally. So their case should adopt a national focus: "As Dwight Jaynes pointed out four years ago after the U.S. women beat Japan to capture the World Cup in Vancouver, there is a big difference in the revenue available to pay the teams. The Women's World Cup brought in almost $73 million, of which the players got 13%. The 2010 men's World Cup in South Africa made almost $4 billion, of which 9% went to the players. The men still pull the World Cup money wagon. The men's World Cup in Russia generated over $6 billion in revenue, with the participating teams sharing $400 million, less than 7% of revenue. Meanwhile, the Women's World Cup is expected to earn $131 millionfor the full four-year cycle 2019-22 and dole out $30 million to the participating teams." https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2019/03/07/world-cup-soccer-pay-disparity-between-men-and-women-is-justified/#5f44ecd46da4 The alarmist "Climate Crisis" language now being normalised by the media is becoming problematic in that it detracts (attention and resources) from other critical environmental issues.
I don't know how funding works for international environmental conservation projects, but on the back of the recent IPCC report, hundreds of millions of dollars are now being pumped into limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees. This is to my mind a risky gamble, as it may have absolutely no beneficial effect whatsoever in the long run, and result in other initiatives such as education, reducing deforestation and an increased focus on biodiversity being given less funding than they deserve. My main worry, though, is that environmental discussions are still being framed in an overtly anthropocentric way. So-called Green businesses use the environment merely as a marketing tool. Governments are only being forced to consider the impact of environmental problems because human populations will suffer economically if ecosystems deteriorate. Until we attack the root of the problem (and recognise the natural world as having value, and legal rights, in and of itself - I think currently only Colombia and Ecuador do so) the language we use and the initiatives we fund will have minimal longterm effects. Denying a platform (I’m going to use the term the Guardian is refusing to) to Climate Skeptics - as the BBC has - is an attack on free speech. There is proof that CO2 levels are increasing and that human activity directly contributes to this. But, other than intuition, there is no proof to suggest this in itself has a severely detrimental effect on the health of the planet. Climate change is not an environmental problem - the climate has been fluctuating for millennia. Species adapt. Ours will too. Green energy, sustainable development, conscientious living: all these value-based shifts signal huge positive steps in preserving the health of our planet, but remain in their (post-industrial) infancy. Solar and wind currently provide less than 1% of the world’s energy. More money needs to be pumped into research and development first. Yes, global warming is a problem, but it is nowhere near a catastrophe. The IPCC estimates that the total impact of global warming by 2070 will be equivalent to an average loss of income of 0.2-2% – similar to one recession over the next half century. The panel also says that climate change will have a “small” economic impact compared to changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, and governance. In addition, attributing the causes of weather disasters such as hurricanes to human activity is based not on science but speculation. The Guardian is now using phrases like “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” whilst, in the same breath, stating that “the overall number of hurricanes has remained roughly the same in recent decades” and “prior to 2017, the US had experienced a hurricane drought that had stretched back to Hurricane Wilma in 2005.” It's wise - and long overdue - for us to be more mindful about the health of the ecosystems which both precede and sustain us. But it feels to me like people are gathering up all their worries about environmental negligence and lumping them together under the banner of Climate Change without really examining the science behind the headlines. |
AuthorEnglish teacher from the UK. Living in Granada. Currently working in Doha. Archives
February 2022
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