Learning about the world

Barbados - Winning at Cricket in Babylon

2012-02-03T08:52:00.000Z

Writing this blog gives me an opportunity to research unfamiliar topics. As I’ve been learning about Barbados, I’m beginning to understand the cultural importance of cricket, not just to this tiny island nation, but to other former British colonies in the West Indies. It has been interesting to learn how this most English of sports was once dominated by the West Indies, just as the sport is dominated by other ex-British colonies today.

Cricket is not a sport I grew up with. Although Ireland has a national cricket team, it’s all very low-key and the game carries an association with England and colonisation that is much more negative than it appears to be in the Caribbean or India/Australia/Pakistan. Even in England, it seems to be somewhat of an upper-class game and I find it very quaint, when walking in the English countryside, to see the cricket teams in their white flannels whiling away a summer’s afternoon.

Fire in Babylon

Cricket on the beach by Republic of Avalon Radio

As part of my research I watched a fascinating documentary called Fire in Babylon. The documentary was released (in the UK) in 2011 and, even if you have no real interest in or knowledge of cricket (like me), it’s well worth watching. The film tracks the history of the West Indian cricket team and explains how they came to dominate Test Cricket (ie. International cricket matches) in the late 70’s and during the 1980’s.

The movie also explains how winning at cricket has been incredibly symbolic for the ex-British colonies in the West Indies. By becoming a dominant force in world cricket and defeating England on their home turf, the people of the West Indies were able to restore a sense of pride to their culture and competed with their ‘ex-masters’ on an equal footing.

Cricket - a violent game?

Cricket player by Alister667

One thing I hadn’t realised about cricket is how incredibly violent it can be. Fire in Babylon documents the way the Australian team changed cricket in the 70’s, by introducing ‘fast bowling’, an incredibly dangerous form of bowling that can see batsmen injured or even hospitalised. The Australians thrashed the West Indies team during the 1960’s, until the West Indies decided to do some fast-bowling of their own and got their revenge, defeating England in 1973 and Australia in 1975.

The West Indies team has produced some of the world’s most formidable fast bowlers and I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for their opponents to bat against balls that were bowled at up to 95 miles per hour!

The Calypso Cricketers

The documentary also explains the racism faced by the West Indies' cricket team, initially a patronising racism, referring to the West Indies team as the ‘Calypso cricketers’ when they played in Australia in the early 60’s, the racism became more hostile, as the West Indies started defeating the white European and South Asian teams. All of this was happening at a time when the Civil Rights movement was in full swing in the United States and the Apartheid regime was at the height of its power.

Babylon v the Rastafarian movement

The name of the documentary refers to the Rastafarian term for ‘non-African nations’, ie. Babylon. Rastafarianism exists all over the Caribbean and espouses a return to African culture and pride. Its most famous proponent was the Jamaican, Marcus Garvey, but I’m sure Barbados has had its fair share of Rastafarian thinkers.

West Indian unity through sport

What’s also quite interesting about the West Indies cricket team is that the sport managed to unite the West Indian nations in a way that has never been possible politically. Political unity was tried out, when West Indies Federation was formed - a short-lived political union that lasted from 1958 to 1962. When the chance came, the British islands of the Caribbean preferred to choose their own paths and independence.

Famous Bajan cricketers

George Headley, the 'black' Bradman

Barbados has produced a fair share of the West Indies’ best cricketers. I watched part of another (Australian-made) TV series, Legends of Cricket, which included a few episodes about famous cricketers of the West Indies. This included Bajan players such as, George Headley, known in Australia as ‘the black Bradman’ (although Bradman is known in the West Indies as ‘the white Headley!). Also, Sir Frank Worrell, who is considered to be one of the most graceful players in cricket history. There was also the ‘rock star’ of Test Cricket, Sir Garfield Sobers, who learned to play cricket on the beaches of Saint Michael.

Something that really struck me about the Australian-made documentary was the deference paid to the West Indies cricketers by the modern Australian (white) sports commentators and cricket-players, who were interviewed for the show. It’s unusual to see white people talking about their ‘black heroes’ and it would seem that the West Indies cricket team earned the respect of a white audience that might, otherwise, have been incredibly racist and hostile.

Is West Indian cricket in decline?

I guess I’m beginning to understand how cricket can be a great source of unity for countries located on opposite sides of the world. True, it’s incredibly exclusive and there is a limit to the number of national teams that can play Test Cricket. Unlike rugby, the French haven’t really taken up the sport and neither Scotland nor Wales are not represented in Test Cricket, which makes it feel like a very English game. Still, it is an important part of English culture and a positive link with parts of the world, like Barbados, that share a lot of history with England.

By all accounts, the popularity of cricket is waning in Barbados and other West Indian nations. Young Bajans, Jamaicans and Trinidadians are looking more and more to the United States and basketball as an opportunity to express themselves through sport. It would be a shame to see West Indian cricket go into decline, but I guess it's natural for young sportsmen and women to find those opportunities that are most relevant to their generation. I wonder if cricket in England is facing the same competition from other more 'high-profile' sports such as football (soccer)?

Image credits:

The image of the young boys playing cricket on the beach in Barbados is by flickr member Republic of Avalon Radio aka Jim Fidler who is from Newfoundland in Canada. You can see more of Jim's images on his photostream.

The image of the cricket player is by flickr member Alister667, aka Ali Jackson. Again, you can see more images by Ali on his photostream.

The image of George Headley is from Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain (and therefore copyright free). You can see more information about this image at its description page on Wikimedia.

Barbados - Pride and Industry

2012-01-15T16:57:00.000Z

It's 1800 kilometres (1100 miles) north from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, to Bridgetown in Barbados, the place that I will be blogging about for the next month or so.

Barbados is one of the those places I've always dreamed about visiting. I've only ever been to the Caribbean once, to Cuba, but Barbados would be high on the list for my next visit. The country's motto is Pride and Industry and, from what I have read about Barbados so far, they have good reason to be proud; of their culture, of their democracy and the fact that Barbados is considered to be somewhat of a success story in the developing world.

Beach in Barbados by Loimere

It's a tiny country - the smallest one I've blogged about so far - it's slightly bigger than the Isle of Wight, a bit smaller than Lantau Island in Hong Kong and roughly the same size as Brooklyn and Queens put together. I've also discovered that it's located a little bit apart from the other Windward islands of the Caribbean (eg. Martinique, St Lucia or St Vincent) lying about 100 miles to the east of the Windward chain.

Barbados is also geologically different than its 'neighbouring' Windward islands. Whilst they are mostly the volcanic summits of submerged mountains, Barbados is made up of coral and protected from the seas by a series of reefs. It's very flat compared to other Caribbean islands and the difficulty of navigating ships to Barbados meant that, despite its Portuguese name (meaning 'beards'), Barbados remained continuously in the hands of the English from the 17th century until it gained independence in 1966.

Anglican-style church in Barbados by Loimere

Barbados has often been referred to as 'a little piece of England in the Caribbean' and ties with the UK remain strong. It's believed that the island was originally inhabited by the Taino, a Carib people whose disappearance from Barbados is unexplained. One theory is that the entire native population was transported by the Spanish to work on their plantations in Hispaniola (compare the fate of the Carib tribes in my earlier blog post about Jamaica).

The word hurricane comes from the Taino word for their 'storm God', Juracan, who lived on El Yunque mountain in (what is now) Puerto Rico. When he was angry, he would stir up the winds and seas and wreck havoc on the Caribbean islands, much as hurricanes do today! Although Barbados lies directly in the path of many hurricanes, they tend not to hit the island directly and usually pass harmlessly northward.

A busy street in Bridgetown by Loimere

The national language is English, but most people speak a dialect of English called Bajan. The dialect is believed to have been influenced by languages of West Africa, such as Yoruba. Like Yoruba, Bajan has no past tense, pronouns such as we have no accusative form (like English us), eg. in Bajan you would say - He see we (not He saw us).

I'm hoping that, in the next few weeks, I'll be able to experience more Bajan culture. I want to cook a traditional Bajan dish and read one of Barbados' most famous novels, In the Castle of my Skin by George Lamming. I want to learn more about the role of sugar in the Atlantic slave trade. I want to find out more about the West Indies' love affair with cricket, that most English of games!

Scene from The Tamarind Seed

I've already started listening to Calypso music and, as an introduction to Barbados, I watched a 1974 movie called The Tamarind Seed, starring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif - one of the few movies to be set in (and filmed in) Barbados. I really liked the movie, which is about a love affair between a young English woman and a Soviet military attache. You can catch glimpses of the island, as they drive around the countryside looking for a Tamarind tree that Julie Christie's character believes will have unusual seeds, shaped like the face of a man. It's a movie about innocence and espionage. The glimpses of Barbados were tantalising, but not nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity!

Image credits:

The photos of Barbados, used to illustrate this blog post, were taken by flickr member, Loimere, aka Derek Hatfield, who is a self-confessed 'geek with a personality' from Wawa/Thunder Bay in Ontario. You can see more of Derek's work on his website.

The image of the still from the movie, The Tamarind Seed is from a photo taken by me. This image is being used to illustrate this blog post and promote Blake Edward's film. By publishing this image, I'm not condoning or encouraging reproduction of this image on the Internet or anywhere else. This image is not meant to bring the actors into disrepute or suggest their endorsement of this blogpost, but is meant to highlight the performances of these actors in this movie.

By coincidence, this is the second time I've blogged about a movie starring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif - see my earlier blog post about the movie version of Dr Zhivago.

Amazonas - Pichocu rü iperütogü

2012-01-07T14:08:00.000Z

I'm going to finish my blogging about Amazonas with a greeting from the Ticuna language, which is spoken by about 25,000 people in Brazil. Pichocu rü iperütogü means 'welcome' and, despite the fact that this is my last blog post about the Brazilian state of Amazonas, I feel that I'm just at the beginning of my Amazon journey, as possible themes for the future branch out in all directions.

A summary of the themes so far

In the month or so that I've been blogging about Amazonas, I've learned about the History of the Amazon region and the fight for survival faced by its indigenous peoples. I've learned about Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's first female President and I've learned about the many tributaries of the Amazon, mighty rivers in their own right. I learned about the music of Brazil and the importance of rubber in everyday items around the world. This month I taught myself how to make Peixe Assado com Farofa - cooking a dish from the region is always one of my favourite forms of research!

Other themes

Other themes that I would like to explore further, at a later date, are:

Paradise, or the Garden of Eden

A comparison of the world's biggest forests/jungles
Jiu Jitsu, which is incredibly popular in Amazonas!
The symbolism of the Southern Cross
Butterflies
The different Amazonian tribes and their languages
The Garden of Eden
The Tordesillas Treaty, dividing the world between Spain and Portugal
The myth of El Dorado
The Jaguar
The Madeira-Mamore Railway
The Amazon River dolphins
Orchids
The story of Forlandia

Other research

As part of my research I read three books:

The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon was written by Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn. It's a really interesting book, but quite heavy-going and academic with a wealth of information about the history of the Amazon region. One of main themes that the book addresses is the danger of romanticising the Amazon and the natural world.

Hecht and Cockburn argue that our ideal vision of places like the Amazon are as big, empty, pristine forests, protected from the environmental destruction of man. Often in our attempts to save the environment, we don't really consider man as part of that environment and this is something, the book argues strongly, that we shouldn't lose sight of. The Amazon has suffered terrible environmental damage from rubber extraction, gold mining etc., but there has also been a human price, with the loss of population and culture amongst the Amazon's tribes. The ideal picture that many of us hold in our imaginations - a 'big, empty forest with no people' has major implication for the Amazon's indigenous tribes, who have been living there for hundreds of years.

Book covers by me

I also read a travelogue called The River of Singing Fish by Polish-born writer and adventurer, Arkady Fiedler. Despite the interesting title, the book itself was a bit dry, full of an affected personification of the Amazon's animals, it also had a thin veneer of racism that might have been acceptable when the book was first published in 1935. It was mildly amusing, but I wouldn't really recommend it.

I also read a novel called At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen, which I would recommend. It tells the story of a missionary couple and their child, who travel to a remote Amazon tributary in Peru, in an effort to convert the (fictional) Niaruna tribe to Christianity. Another major character in the novel is a 'soldier of fortune' called Moon, an American adventurer of Native American heritage. The novel explores the tensions between the missionaries and their misguided attempts at communicating with the Niaruna, but also shows a parallel spiritual journey of Moon, who goes native and ends up living with the Niaruna and adopting their customs. It's a really interesting book and I wish I had more time to blog about it! Apparently there is a movie version, but I couldn't get my hands on it.

As well as reading, I watched Bruce Parry's TV series Amazon, which was really interesting as an overview of the whole region. I also watched John Boorman's The Emerald Forest starring his son, Charlie Boorman who plays a young man kidnapped, as a boy, by an indigenous tribe and brought up in their culture. I thought it was a really interesting movie, although the depiction of the 'bad tribe' was a bit simplistic.

Dinner Party Trivia

I've learned some interesting facts along the way, which I'll add to my growing repository of dinner party trivia! I learned that:

- The Amazon contains 1/5 of the world's fresh water
- Uruguay used to be Brazil's most southernmost state, known as Cisplatina
- Brazil was the last country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888
- the current native 'Indian' population in Brazil is around 300,000 people
- the term 'Rice Christian' is used, pejoratively, to describe people who convert to Christianity for economic or food gain
- Ayahuasca is a psychedelic drug that is used ceremonially by Amazon tribes people
- Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, means 'Mother of the Gods'

Women dancing by Gustavo Morejon

- Amazonian tribes include the Kalopalo, Tembe, Timbira, Guajajara, Omagua, Mayoruna, Tapajos, Txukahamei, Suya, Mundurucu, Kayapo, Apinage, Craho, Yanomami and many others
- Roger Casement, the Irish patriot, exposed the barbaric enslavement of indigenous tribes people on the Putumayo River in 1912
- there are an estimated 5 million species living in the Amazon region
- palynology is the study of pollen, an important component in paleoecology
- some of the Amazon's tribes believe that fire was stolen from the Gods by the Jaguar, which is similar to the European Promethean myth
- an epiphyte is a plant that grows on top of another one (orchids often do this), without feeding off it
- successional vegetation refers to sun-loving plants that pop up in the places where trees are felled
- Brazilian laws which are referred to as pra ingles ver (for the Englishman to see) are laws which are made to please foreigners and which the government has no intention of enforcing

Image credits:

The reproduction of Paradise or the Garden of Eden by Lucas Cranach the Elder is from Wikicommons and is in the public domain.

The wonderful image of the tribes women dancing is by flickr member Gustavo Morejon, who is a blogger and photographer from Ecuador. You can find out more about Gustavo's work on his website. Thanks to Gustavo for sharing this image with us using the Creative Commons license.

Amazonas - How I made Peixe Assado com Farofa

2012-01-02T14:30:00.000Z

I've struggled a bit to find a suitable dish from Amazonas that I could learn how to cook. The most traditional dish from this region seems to be Pato no Tucupi or 'Duck with Tucupi sauce'. Tucupi sauce is made with the liquid extracted from wild manioc roots and is poisonous unless boiled thoroughly. Try as I might, I couldn't find anywhere to buy Tucupi sauce in London and, not wanting to poison myself by making my own, I resorted to searching for another Amazonian-style dish that would be easier to prepare!

I'm calling the dish I made Peixe Assado com Farofa, which sounds a lot better than 'Baked Fish with crumbs', which is the English-language translation! Farofa is a very traditional Brazilian side, made from Cassava flour. I imagine that the people of the Amazon would eat their farofa with Pirarucu (also known as Arapaima) but again, being London-based, I settled for a nice piece of cod. Whilst it would have been great to taste a real Pirarucu, it's not an ethical option (not to mention the cost). The Brazilian government has banned commercial fishing of Pirarucu, due to it's vulnerable conservation status, so I don't expect to see this Amazonian monster on supermarket shelves in the UK any time soon.

Ingredients for Farofa

Ingredients:

For the Farofa:

Chilli oil - óleo de pimenta
150g butter - manteiga
1 onion - cebola
1 red chilli - pimentão vermelho
200g Cassava (manioc) flour - farinha de mandioca

For the Baked Fish:

500g cod fillet - filetes de bacalhau
1 bell pepper - pimentão
2 spring onions - cebolinhas
3 plantains - bananas-de-terra
3 tomatoes - tomates
raisins - passas de uva
prunes - passas de ameixa
black olives - azeitonas pretas
3 eggs - ovos
Fresh coriander - coentro fresco

Preparing the Farofa

I did this bit last, but when I make this dish next time, I'll prepare the farofa first, which will give it a chance to cool down. I started by heating some chilli oil in a frying pan. Once the oil was hot, I added loads of butter - farofa can be quite dry, so it's good to add lots of butter (not to mention that butter is one of my main vices!). Almost immediately afterwards, I added the chopped onion and chilli, frying these for a few minutes to let them soften. Finally I added the Cassava flour and stirred this into the mixture until it formed a crumb-like mixture - I continued to fry the mixture for a few minutes before transferring it to a plastic bowl.

Heat the oil and melt the butter

Add the chopped onion and chilli

Fry until the onion softens

Add the flour and mix to get crumbs

This is the third time that I've cooked with cassava/manioc (see my earlier blogposts on West African Fufu and Paraguayan Payagua Mascada). I'm not sure that I'll ever get used to the 'woody' taste of cassava and it's amazing to think that this root is eaten by millions of people around the world every day! I didn't quite realise that farofa is often crumbled over the top of a dish to give it a distinctive woody taste. In retrospect, I might have preferred this to the patties that I made out of the farofa (no doubt I've been influenced by having made Payagua Mascada and Fufu).

Preparing the fish

This bit was easy although, rather surprisingly, I realised that I've never baked fish before! For anyone reading this blog for the first time, I'd like to reiterate that this post is in no way meant to be a professional guide to baking fish or preparing farofa!

Prepare the fish

Add the chopped vegetables

I pre-heated the oven at 180 degrees celsius, put my cod fillet into a metal container layered with tin foil and olive oil, to prevent the baked fish from sticking to the tin. I then added the sliced peppers, spring onions, plantain and tomatoes and baked these in the oven for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, I took the dish out of the oven and added the olives, raisins, prunes and coriander. I could have added the raisins and prunes to the farofa, instead of the main dish and this is something I'll consider next time round.

Add the olives, raisins and prunes

I baked the fish and vegetables for another 15 minutes before adding the cassava patties and topping with three fried eggs. I then covered the whole dish with tinfoil and put it back in the oven for 10 minutes on a much lower temperature (120 degrees and then 0).

I impressed myself with the results and I'm really pleased that I learned how to make farofa and bake fish!

Top with fried eggs and farofa

Plate up!

Sources:

All photos are by me - please feel free to reuse these using the Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog)
Share-alike
Non-commercial

I looked at a variety of sources which influenced the way that I made this dish. The most important of these was the following Youtube video from Cucabaruca.com (Nando Cuca), which taught me how to make farofa. Enjoy!

Amazonas - the Music of Brazil

2011-12-29T13:56:00.001Z

No journey to Brazil would be complete without reference to music. As part of my research for this blog I bought a copy of The Rough Guide to the Music of Brazil which has been my background listening as I've blogged and researched about Amazonas. It's a great album, with a thoughtful collection of tracks, including some 'golden oldies', like Chico Buarque to more modern artists, like Vanessa Bumagny. Brazilian artists have contributed a lot to the world music scene it would be impossible to capture all of this in one blog post, so I'll concentrate on some of the main musical styles that I've been learning about.

Samba

The music of the carnivals, Samba is arguably Brazil's most famous musical style. In true Brazilian style, Samba is a real mixture of influences - African, European and indigenous - it seems to unite the country each year during the parades in Rio, Bahia, Sao Paolo and elsewhere. It has a strong rhythmic style with a 2/4 beat that characterises samba dancing, combined with romantic melodies such as Aquarela do Brasil - one of the country's most famous songs.  Samba was popularised by Carmen Miranda in the Hollywood movies of the 1930's and 40's. This clip from YouTube, shows Carmen Miranda singing Aquarela do Brasil in the 1943 movie, The Gang's All Here.

Bossa Nova

Equally synonymous with Brazil is the style of music called Bossa Nova. An offshoot of Samba that became popular in the 1960's, Bossa Nova is much slower, jazzier and more sophisticated than other Samba styles. It was popularised by artists from Rio de Janeiro like Chico Buarque and artists from Bahia, like Joao Gilberto.

Bossa Nova emerged at a time when jazz music was gaining mainstream popularity in the United States and a 1964 album Getz/Gilberto was a collaboration between Joao Gilberto and the American jazz musician, Stan Getz. Amongst its tracks was that most famous of Bossa Nova songs, known in English as The Girl from Ipanema. This YouTube video is from the original recording by Getz/Gilberto and features Joao Gilberto's wife, Astrud, on the English-language vocals.

Afoxé

Much less well-known to the rest of the world are Brazilian musical styles such as Afoxé, a type of music that accompanies religious ceremonies of Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion that is popular amongst the descendants of slaves in Salvador and Recife. It's also very rhythmic, with strong vocal chanting. The following YouTube video featuring a group called, Afoxé Oyá Alaxé will give you an idea of what the music sounds like.

MPB

This stands for Música Popular Brasileira and is a mixture of samba, jazz, folk and the Brazilian version of 'pop' music. The Rough Guide features a track by Chico Cesar, a singer/songwriter from Paraiba, a small state to the north of Pernambuco (Recife). It's sing-along music, which has a very modern feel to it, as you can hear for yourself in the following YouTube video, a recording of Mama Africa, one of Cesar's most famous songs.

Sertanajo

Arguably even more popular in Brazil than Samba is Sertanajo, which is Brazil's version of Country and Western and is popular in those states at the heart of the Brazilian outback, like Mato Grosso and Parana.  The following YouTube video is by the famous brothers, Chitãozinho & Xororó who have sold more than 30 million albums, since they first started out in the 1970's. They have gained some international recognition and seem to be quite a big deal in Brazil.

Forró

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me on The Rough Guide album, was a song called Coração by the Forro group, O Karaiva. Forro originates in the North East of Brazil and reminds me a lot of cajun music, I guess because of the use of accordions. This might explain why Forro has become quite popular in countries like France, where accordions are also part of the traditional repertoire. It also explains why I like it so much (being Irish!). Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video of Coração on YouTube, so I've had to settle for another song by O Karaiva, called Xote Das Meninas (Ela So Quer).

Choro

Perhaps the most traditional Brazilian music style, Choro means 'lament' and immediately made me think of Portuguese fado.  Choro music uses a lot of guitar and, whilst I'm sure the lyrics are about lost love and heart-break, it seems to be a lot more upbeat than fado. One of the most famous Choro songs is Tico-tico no Fuba, which was composed by Zequinha de Abreu in 1917. The version from YouTube below, is by the flamboyant MPB singer Ney Matogrosso.

Other influences

The seven styles of music I've highlighted above are just a sample of the musical styles that have come out of Brazil. Like many other countries, the musicians of Brazil have also embraced modern styles such as reggae, rap and rock. There is a growing interest in tracing the roots of Brazilian styles back to Africa, especially the Lusophone countries of Africa, like Angola and Mozambique. Brazilian artists are also well-known for experimental electronica and European Classical music has found its home in places like the famous Amazonas Opera House in Manaus.

Indigenous music of the Amazon rain forest

It's a shame that indigenous music from the Amazon hasn't been given more exposure on compilations like The Rough Guide. Although I've heard some indigenous music and chanting on programmes like Bruce Parry's Amazon, there seems to be very little out there, in terms of professional recordings of Brazil's indigenous music. I have managed to find the following video on YouTube which shows Chief Paiaré, leader of the Akrãtikatêjês tribe, singing a traditional indigenous folk song in the Timbira language. Enjoy!

Amazonas - the World's Longest River?

2011-12-18T14:26:00.000Z

It goes without saying that rivers have played an important part in the development of human civilisation. In the age of air-travel, it's sometimes difficult to fathom the historical importance of rivers, whether as modes of transport or obstacles to colonisation. Whilst researching for my partner blog Walking the Chesters, I was surprised to learn how much of an obstacle the River Severn was to the conquering Roman armies, as they tried to subdue Wales.

When I lived in Bangkok, I was impressed with the way that getting a boat down the Chao Praya is still used as a quick and easy method of travelling from one part of the city to another (certainly avoids all those traffic jams). I know that some people use river transport on the Thames to get to work every day, but it's not really comparable, being the exception rather than the rule. The Amazon is still a place where river transport is often the only logical option and I find that exciting, being so used to land- or air-based travel.

Also, when I was blogging about Paraguay I learned that Paraguay is like a 'land-locked island', being surrounded on all sides by rivers, which made colonisation difficult for the conquistadors.

Is the Amazon the longest river in the world?

Well, officially, the Amazon is the world's second-longest river, the longest river being the Nile. It can be difficult to decide exactly how long a river is and the decision really depends on where you decide the mouth of the river is and where its true source lies.

The Nile by Michael Gwyther-Jones

How do you determine the 'true source' of a river?

The 'true source' of a river is understood to be the source of a river's tributary which is furthest away from the river's mouth. Rivers tend to originate at high altitudes, as ice melts and flows downwards to the sea. The world's longest rivers, including the Amazon and the Nile, have many tributaries which add volume to the rivers as they join them on their way to the open sea.

Europeans have been interested in finding the source of the Nile since Greek and Roman times. At various times in the past, the source of the Nile was believed to be in Ethiopia and even in places as far away as the Niger. The Victorians and their obsession with finding the answer to every question, were determined to locate the source of the Nile for once and for all.

After the 'discovery' of Lake Victoria in 1858, there was a very famous public quarrel between the British explorers, Speke and Burton, as to which one of them had discovered the source of the Nile and whether the source was at Lake Victoria, or further south at Lake Tanganyika. Interestingly, the most remote source of the Nile is still undetermined in the 21st century, but believed to be at the Ruvyironza River in Burundi.

The Source of the Amazon

The 'most remote' source of the Amazon is believed to be at Nevado Mismi, in the south of Peru. As part of my research for this blog, I watched Bruce Parry's fascinating TV series, Amazon. Bruce started his journey at this 'official' source of the Amazon, on the Ucayali river. Ed Stafford, the first person to walk the entire length of the Amazon (finishing in August last year), also started his journey at Nevado Mismi.

The Amazon by CIFOR

Other major river sources

The source of China's longest river, the Yangtze, is believed to be at Geladaindong Peak in Qinghai province near the border with Tibet. The Mississippi River is believed to start at Lake Itasca in Minnesota. Russia's longest river, the Yenesei flows from its source at Mungaragiyn-Gol in Mongolia all the way to the Arctic ocean. Western Europe's longest river, the Rhine is a real minnow, in world terms, being the 123rd longest river. It has its source at the Tomasee in Switzerland.

The rivers of the Amazon

The thing that has suprised me most, on this learning journey, is that the Amazon is really a sum of its parts, rather than one single river. Although I'd not heard of any of them before I started researching for this blog, I've come to realise that the Amazon's tributaries are magnificant rivers in their own right.

I'm listing some of the main tributaries of the Amazon below.

First are the Negro and Branco, the black and white rivers. The Negro comes in from Columbia and is the world's largest 'blackwater' river, ie. a slow-flowing river that winds through forested wetlands and swamps. The quality of the earth it flows through is incredibly poor and it's called Negro (black)because of the tannins that leach into the river, giving it a tea-stained colour. In Bruce Parry's Amazon, there is an interesting shot of the Amazon/Negro confluence, where the dark waters of the Negro add a cloudy mix to the clearer waters of the Amazon.

The Japura also rises in Columbia and flows into the Solimoes, a river with several names, also called the Ica in Brazil and the Putumayo as it forms the border between Columbia and Peru.
The Napo river comes in from Ecuador and the Ucayali comes from the official source of the Amazon in Peru. The Juruá river also comes in from Peru, as does the Purus.

People of the Amazon by CIFOR

The great Bolivian rivers such as the Beni and Mamoré join the river Madeira just after Porto Velho, where they flow on to meet the Amazon just east of Manaus. Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia, was built to serve the needs of the Mamoré-Madeira railway. An unsuccessful attempt to link Bolivia with the Amazon and ports of the Atlantic, the Mamoré-Madeira railway cost millions of dollars and thousands of lives to build.

The Madeira is the Amazon’s biggest and, arguably, most important tributary. I've learned that the name madeira, also the name for the Atlantic archipelago, comes from the Portuguese word for ‘wooded’. The Madeira-Mamoré is pretty impressive, being only slightly shorter than the Volga, it's the world’s 19th longest river.

The Amazon’s eastern-most tributaries, the Tapajós, the Iriri and the Xingu all rise in Brazil. They mostly flow through Amazonas' neighbouring state, Pará. They are the closest to ‘civilisation’ and, therefore, quite often the scene of mass deforestation and conflict between the indigenous people and the corporations that are keen to exploit the Amazon region's resources. Currently, the most controversial project is the proposed construction of the Belo Monte Dam, which faces opposition by indigenous peoples such as the Kayapo of the Xingu river.

The Araguaia and Tocantins rivers aren’t really tributaries of the Amazon, but both flow into Atlantic at Ilha de Marajo, close to the mouth of the Amazon.

Aerial view of the Amazon by CIFOR

A sobering fact for someone from Western Europe is that, even the shortest of the Amazon tributaries that I've just mentioned - the Iriri - is still longer than the Rhine!

The Amazon-Congo river?
One interesting hypothesis is that the Amazon and Congo were once part of the same river system, which drained into (what is now) the Pacific ocean. When the continental shelves divided, separating Africa from South America and after the Andes rose, it's posited that the Amazon changed direction to flow into (what is now) the Atlantic ocean. If this hypothesis is true, then it means the Amazon-Congo was the longest river in history, at an estimated 7,500 miles (12,000 km).

Image credits:

The view of the River Nile is by flickr member Michael Gwyther-Jones who is an architect from Cardiff in Wales. You can see more of Michael's photos on his photo stream.

The photos of the Amazon were posted on Flickr by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a nonprofit, global facility dedicated to advancing human wellbeing, environmental conservation and equity. They have a really interesting website where you can find out more about the work that they do.

Thanks to Michael and CIFOR for sharing these images with us, using the Creative Commons license.

Amazonas - A World made of Rubber

2011-12-10T14:32:00.000Z

Before I started researching for this blog, I'd always assumed that rubber is something that has been around since time immemorial. So widespread is the use of rubber these days that it's hard to imagine a world without it. But I was surprised to find out that rubber wasn't known in Europe until the 18th century, when the French explorer, Charles Marie de la Condamine, brought back some samples, after a trip he'd made to the Amazon region.

So what is rubber?

Natural rubber (or gum rubber) is a solidified form of the milky liquid latex which is produced by a variety of plants, including plants like Dandelions. Latex from the Para Rubber Tree (Hevea Brasilensis) of the Amazon region, can be collected in containers and made into the elasticated form of rubber that we all know and love. Latex itself, like a lot of plant sap, evolved as a defense mechanism for trees, to protect their leaves and barks from insects and animals. It's not surprising that many people are allergic to latex (which includes being allergic to sticking plasters or Band-Aids). Latex and rubber are nowadays combined with more toxic substances, which could also be the cause of allergic reactions.

The origin of the word

The word that La Condamine used to describe the sap from the Amazon trees was caoutchouc, believed to be an approximation of the word cahuchu (basically, tree sap) from the Tupi language. It's the term that is used in languages like French, Spanish and Catalan. Many other languages use some form of the word gum - Gummi (German), gomma (Italian). In Portuguese, it's borracha, which came from the Spanish term for a 'skin on wine' (but now means 'drunk' in Spanish!). The Portuguese word seringa (English syringe) has also been used to describe rubber. It's quite telling that the first thing the English did with this new substance was use it to rub out pencil marks (hence the term rubber). I'm sure many a 19th century English bureaucrat's life was revolutionised by this new substance!

Rubber plantation by goosmurf

Rubber around the world

19th century Brazilians refused to believe that rubber could be produced anywhere else in the world, but they were proved wrong by the English explorer, Henry Wickham, who brought seeds from the rubber plant back to Kew Gardens in London and ultimately to the British rubber plantations in Ceylon and Malaya. The advent of the Industrial revolution, the motor car industry and two World Wars led to a boom in rubber production in the ex-British colonies and a sharp decline in rubber production in the Amazon region. Manaus and Belem, the capitals of Amazonas and Para, also went into a decline and have never really recovered their erstwhile glory. When we talk about natural rubber production today, it's all about Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Rubber and coffee

As I outlined in a previous blog post, Brazil has become the world's leading coffee producer, although this plant has its origins in the highlands of Ethiopia. Whilst rubber still grows naturally in the Amazon region, attempts at creating large-scale rubber plantations have failed miserably (have a look at this blog post about the failed Fordlandia and you'll see what I mean!).

In their natural environment, rubber trees need to be separated by irregular distances, to prevent pestilence and blight. Outside their natural environment, rubber trees function well in concentrated plantations, as they no longer have an equal concentration of 'natural enemies'. In the same way, coffee has thrived in Brazil and I can't help but wonder whether all of this wasn't meant to be?

Rubber ducks by Felix63

Rubber production in the 21st century

In the 20th century, the Russians, Germans and British managed to find ways of producing rubber synthetically, which is capital-intensive, but not labour-intensive and therefore more suitable for economies where labour costs are high. 72% of today's natural rubber is produced in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, but India and China are the world's biggest consumers of natural rubber.

For a variety of reasons, the production of natural rubber is in decline and, according to The Rubber Economist Ltd, there is likely to be a shortage of natural rubber in the near future. A quick look at statistics from the ANRPC (The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries) shows that the price of natural rubber has doubled in the past two years. I wonder if natural rubber is going to become somewhat of a luxury item in years to come?

Things we use rubber for

Balls - rubber balls have existed in the Amazon region for a very long time and, along with rudimentary footwear, this seems to have been the main use for rubber in traditional Amazonian societies.

Waterproof clothing - the Scottish inventor, Charles Macintosh, found an even better use for rubber than his English counterparts, ie. in creating water-proof clothing, certainly a very useful invention for Scotland and the world! Macintosh is responsible for the process of vulcanisation which helps turn latex/rubber into a more durable product.

The Car Industry - the boom in rubber was partly a result of the development of the motorcar industry and the use of rubber in car tyres. I'd imagine most natural rubber tyres have now been replaced with more durable and economically viable synthetic versions.

Erasers - I remember we used to collect these, when I was at school, in the same way that you might collect fridge magnets or other souvenirs. I'm not sure I've used erasers much since I left school - except the virtual ones that live on, in digital form!

Unlearning by Jacqueline Tinney

Rubber-bands - the weapon of choice for school bullies, as well as an essential item of office stationery, despite living in an increasingly digitalised world.

Rubber has also entered the most intimate parts of our lives:

Teats for dummies/pacifiers/soothers - rubber has also replaced that most sacred area of human contact, between a baby and its mother, although in recent years, the practice of breast-feeding is once again coming into fashion.

Condoms - as well as enabling Europeans to conquer half the world, by providing us with quinine, the Amazon region has also, arguably, given us a solution to the world's growing population. There is some speculation as to whether condoms are named after La Condamine. Whilst 'reproductive barriers' have been around for a long time, using latex to produce condoms has given the world a more fail-safe and cost-effective way of controlling reproduction. No small legacy, to be sure!

Fetish wear and sex toys - rubber and latex products have also been used to produce clothing, which has become a bit of a fetish in the modern world. Rubber has become like a 'second skin' for fetishists, which I guess means that you are somehow 'naked' when you wear rubber clothing. For hygenic reasons, natural and synthetic rubbers are also used to produce sex toys.

There are many, many more uses of rubber in 21st century life - along with plastic and wood, we've constructed a world made of rubber.

Image credits:

The image of the rubber plantation in Malaysia was taken by flickr member goosmurf aka Yun Huang Yong, who lives in New South Wales, Australia. You can see more of Yun's work on his website.

The image of the rubber ducks is by flickr member Felix63 - you can see more of his photos on his photostream.

The wonderful image of a baby's soother (dummy, pacifier, whatever!) is by flickr member jacquelinetinney who is from Nottingham in England. You can see more of Jacqueline's photos on her website.

Amazonas - Wonder Woman in a Man's World

2011-12-04T13:13:00.000Z

When the 16th-century Spanish explorer, Francisco de Orellana, led a break-away expedition from (what is now) Ecuador, down the Napo river into (what is now) Brazil, he encountered a war-like native tribe made up of women, who fought back against the plundering Europeans with as much fierceness as any of their male counterparts. Orellana told the world about this fierce tribe of women and the myth of the ancient Amazonians was reborn and immortalised in the name of the world's greatest river.

The Amazonian myth

Amazon frieze by London Looks

I guess, the Amazonian tribes have always represented resistance to colonisation. The ancient Amazonians lived around the Black Sea area, on the edges of the Greek and Roman empires, in modern-day Ukraine and northern Turkey. The origin of the term, Amazon, is obscure - it could come from the Greek μαστος (mastos) 'breast', with the prefix 'a' meaning 'without/no', in reference to the myth that Amazonian women cauterised their right breasts, so it would be easier to shoot arrows and launch spears. Another theory is that the word comes from the Persian hamazan which simply means 'warriors'.

Great Women throughout History

However you look at it, the ancient Amazonians have come to symbolise the power of women to resist domination by men, even in that most manly of pursuits, war. Throughout history, women have proved their worth in terms of leadership and war, whether it was Boudica leading the ancient Britons in rebellion against the Roman invaders, Joan of Arc fighting back against the English or Yaa Asantewaa, who led the Ashanti rebellion against the British in Ghana, or the more diplomatic manoeuvres of Cleopatra, the Queen of Sheba, or Khoja Iparhan. That's not to mention the powerful women of world mythologies; Artemis, Kali, Oya, Marishi-Ten, Medhbh, Freyja, Ishtar and Vishpala, to name but a few!

Wonder Woman and the Amazons of Themyscira

Wonder Woman by Mark Anderson

20th century feminism was also bolstered by the role that women played in the two World Wars. Perhaps, it's no surprise then that the 1940's saw the birth of another Amazonian heroine, Wonder Woman, who was dreamed up by DC Comic book writer, William Moulton Marston. I grew up watching Wonder Woman, aka Diana of Themyscira on my TV screen, due to the 1970's adaptation of the comic book series about Wonder Woman and her Amazonian sisters.

Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman in the TV series, is a fabulous-looking woman, of mixed Irish and Mexican heritage and was a former Miss World USA, which seems somehow at odds with her portrayal of Wonder Woman in the TV series. I guess readers of this blog who didn't grow up in the 70's or 80's, will relate more to Xena Warrior Princess, another modern Amazonian.

Brazil's own Amazonian Warrior

On the 1st of January this year (2011), Dilma Rousseff was inaugurated as Brazil's first female president. Despite being from a fairly affluent middle-class background, Dilma belongs to the Worker's Party of Brazil and has a fascinating life-story, starting out on her political career in the 1960's, as a young student Marxist revolutionary. She has been associated with Colina (Comando de Libertação Nacional), a far-left organisation that advocated guerrilla warfare against the state and she was captured by the Brazilian military in 1970 and allegedly tortured for 22 days.

Female World Leaders

President Rousseff by Agencia Brasil

Dilma's father was Bulgarian and her election caused quite a stir in Bulgaria, which is also on the Black Sea and very close to the original 'homeland' of the ancient Amazonians! Other countries, including Ireland, have had female presidents in the past and I've counted 8 countries that currently have female presidents (not including countries like the UK, where Queen Elizabeth II is the nominal Head of State). This list includes; Finland, Liberia, India, Argentina, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, Costa Rica and Kosovo.

A further 10 countries have female Prime Ministers or leaders, including; Germany, Bangladesh, Iceland, Croatia, Trinidad and Tobago, Australia, Slovakia, Mali, Thailand and Denmark. It's interesting to note that the current list of female leaders is not as dominated by Europe and 'the West', as one might assume. Whilst it's great to see modern women around the world gain this level of political recognition, it's still only 18 countries out of 204 (recognised) states, which means more than 90% of the world's countries currently have men at the top of their political ladders.

Image credits:

The image of the frieze depicting an Amazonian woman was taken by flickr member London Looks, a native Tennessean who currently lives in South London. The original frieze can be seen at London's British Museum and you can see more of London Look's work at http://www.flickr.com/people/londonlooks/

The image of Wonder Woman is by cartoonist, Mark Anderson, who lives in the Chicago and has shared this image via Flickr. You can more of Mark's work on his website.

Thanks to London Looks and Mark Anderson for sharing these images with us using the Creative Commons License.

The image of Dilma Rousseff, the current President of Brazil, is from Wikimedia Commons and has been released as the official photo of Brazil's president by Agência Brasil. My use of this image to illustrate my blog post does not mean than my blog is endorsed in any way by the image creator. You can see a full description of the Image's origin at its wikimedia page.

Amazonas - South America's 'Heart of Darkness'

2011-11-28T11:50:00.000Z

It's just over 6,800 miles (almost 11,000 kilometres), as the crow flies (not that a crow would ever fly this distance!) from Zanzibar to Manaus, capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. Covering an area that is more than 10 times the size of England and slightly bigger than Mongolia (or ten times the size of the US state of Georgia and slightly smaller than Queensland, Australia), Brazil's Amazonas has a population of 3.5 million people.

More than half of Amazonas' inhabitants live in the state capital, Manaus, which is a mere 3 degrees south of the Equator and sits at the confluence of two of the Amazon's great tributaries, the rivers Negro and Solimões. Manaus is almost 1800 miles (or 2900 kilometres) from Rio de Janeiro, which is like travelling from London to the other side of Europe.

It feels like quite a big task, taking on Amazonas - not only because it encompasses the world's greatest river and largest rain forest, but also because this is my first time to blog about Brazil, a country that has gradually taken its rightful place on the global stage and a place that fascinates me, although I know very little about Brazil and its history.

Flag of Venezuelan Amazonas

Of course, the Amazon isn't just about Brazil - Peru, Columbia and Venezuela, also have regions or districts called Amazonas. Whilst I'll mostly be focusing on the Brazilian Amazonas for the purposes of this blog, I'll try to keep an eye to the other Amazonas regions in neighbouring countries.

Something I fail to understand about Brazil is what happened there before Europeans turned up. Whilst the western part of South America had the Incan empire and fabulous wealth, I've heard very little about the native tribes who lived in the eastern part of South America, on the Atlantic coast. Whilst blogging about Paraguay, I learned a lot about the Jesuits and the history of South-Eastern Brazil, but the Amazon is a mystery to me that I'm hoping to make more sense of in the coming weeks.

From what little I've read so far, I can see that early European attitudes towards the native Amazonian tribes were full of racism, feelings of superiority and a belief that the native tribes were 'lazy' and had wasted a great natural gift that God had given to mankind. The first Portuguese, Spanish and other Europeans who visited the Amazon region, believed that, with proper farming methods, the Amazon could be 'tamed' and made into a productive agricultural area. Four centuries on and the Amazon rain forest remains untamed. Efforts at making the region economically productive have resulted in ecological devastation on a scale that is almost impossible to fathom.

Flag of Columbian Amazonas

During the next few weeks, I want to further explore the impact of human activity on the Amazon rain forest. I want to learn something about the native Amazonians and the history of European colonisation. I'm also using the Amazon myth as an opportunity to explore themes around feminism. As usual, I'd like to learn to cook a dish that is popular in the Amazon region or Brazil. I've already started listening to Brazilian music and I have several books and movies lined up that deal specifically with the Amazon.

Of course, typing Amazon into a Search Engine, will most likely bring you to the online book seller. I've used Amazon (the book seller) a lot to find material for this blog and I'm a big fan of theirs, although I only really buy second-hand books, which you can get for as little as 1p (plus postage). It's particularly useful for buying old editions of guidebooks (I usually buy the Insight guides).

I used to think that the company was called Amazon, because of it's second-hand book section, ie. circulating already existing books, instead of cutting down trees to print new books. I realise now that it was a bit naive to think this and that, actually, Amazon's founder just really liked the name. Perhaps with their growing ebook market and the popularity of the Amazon Kindle, there is an opportunity for the company to adopt a Green agenda.

Image credits:

All flags are taken from Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain.

Zanzibar - Kwaheri

2011-11-20T13:43:00.000Z

So, the time has come to say kwaheri (farewell) to Zanzibar. As usual, it's been a fascinating (virtual) journey and, as usual, I'm left with a burning desire to go and see this part of the world for myself!

A summary of the themes

Outside the blogosphere, I've been incredibly busy recently, so Zanzibar has taken me a bit longer than expected, almost two months in fact! During that period I have learned about the History of Zanzibar, its connections with Oman and the Arab world and its bloody revolution in the 1960's. I've also learned about the cultivation of cloves and how this spice made Zanzibar wealthy. I learned how to cook Octopus and the traditional Zanzibari dish pweza wa nazi. I learned about Emily Reute, aka Salamah bint Said, the Arabian princess who left Zanzibar and went to live in Germany. I discovered that Zanzibar is the home of KiSwahili - both the language and culture. I read Abdulrazak Gurnah's enchanting novel Paradise and I learned about Zanzibar's thriving slave trade, which dominated the East coast of Africa.

Freddie Mercury by Virginia Mayo Garcia

Other Themes

As usual, there were many other themes that I touched upon during my research into Zanzibar, but didn't have time to explore fully. I'm listing some of them below, which might be worth looking into, if you have time:

- the life of Freddie Mercury, who grew up in Zanzibar
- the influence of Zoroastrianism on Zanzibari culture
- the ornate doors of Zanzibar
- the practice of swaddling
- the life of Tibbu Tib, East Africa's most notorious slave trader
- the Sufi mystic Rumi
- Dhul-Qarnayn - the 'Green man' of Islam
- Iblis, Shaytan and Islamic interpretations of the Devil
- Sir John Kirk, the Scottish botanist

Still from Road to Zanzibar

As part of my research, I watched a movie called Road to Zanzibar starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. It was a silly, rambling movie, with a thinly-held together plot and unexplained intervals of song, but I enjoyed the experience of seeing a movie I would otherwise not have bothered with. It was part of a series of Road to . . . movies starring this trio and some of the scenes from the movie are captivating. Its depiction of Africa might be considered racist nowadays (ie. a place full of savages), but I guess we have to take it in the context of its era. It's a movie which has dated and offers little entertainment to a modern audience used to more sophisticated formulae, but I'd imagine it was fairly popular at the time of its release in 1941.

Dinner party trivia

During my research into Zanzibar, I also discovered lots of little tidbits of information, which you can use as dinner party trivia. I learned that:

- the Chinese sent a diplomatic mission to Zanzibar in the 15th century, which is interesting, as we often assume that China's interest in Africa is a more recent phenomenon
- the leader of Zanzibar was called the Mwinyi Mkuu or 'great lord'
- Dr Livingstone said he was going to Africa to spread civilisation, commerce and Christianity
- Europeans didn't enter the hinterlands of Africa until the mid-19th century, when they 'discovered' Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria.
- An estimated 13,000 people of Arab descent were killed during Zanzibar's 1963 revolution
- the father of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere spent three years studying Economics and History at the University of Edinburgh
- The shortest war in history was fought in 1896 between Zanzibar and Great Britain. Zanzibar surrendered after just 38 minutes!
- Traditional Swahili beds are high enough for a slave to sleep underneath.
- William Thackeray's cousin, Caroline, spent the last 25 years of her life working in Zanzibar as a schoolmistress

Kirk's Red Colobus by woodlouse

- Kirk's red colobus is an endangered species of monkey. It was isolated from other primates for a period of 10-15,000 years, which means it has developed unusual features, such as the four stomachs it needs to digest food. It's called 'poison monkey' in Swahili.
- There are lots of superstitions in Zanzibar related to different animals, such as chameleons, land crabs and plate lizards.
- Zanzibar's stunning white sand beaches are created by parrot fish, who chew up coral and spit it out as a white dust
- Modern Zanzibar is an incredibly popular destination for honeymooning couples

Taarab - the music of Zanzibar

Another aspect of my research that I didn't have time to blog about is the music of Zanzibar, known as Taarab. I bought an album of Taarab music, which has provided me with a soundtrack for my blog. Traditional Taarab music sounds much more like the music of Arabia than the music of Africa and different types of Taarab owe their influences to the music of Egypt, Yemen and India. After the revolution, more African rhythms and styles were incorporated into the existing repertoires, so that modern Taarab music, like the Swahili language, is an interesting fusion of African, Indian and Arabian cultures.

Taarab is all about the musical clubs, rather than the individuals and a lot of the most famous Taarab groups have been supported by the revolutionary government and provided with an official 'seal of approval'. This is really apparent in lots of the names, like Ghazzy Musical club and Royal Air Force musical club which show that these groups belong to the official government cultural music clubs. Women sing Taarab even more frequently than men, but the musicians tend to be exclusively male. Some of the female ensembles like Sahib El-Arry also function like co-operatives and have vegetable plots which help support the group's members.

Although Taarab is all about the clubs, rather than the individuals, one notable exception is Bi KiDude, one of the world's oldest singers. As you will see in the YouTube video below, she certainly has stage presence and, although she's more than 100 years old, her voice seems to be as strong as it ever was. She's definitely one of Africa's greatest singers and a legend in her own time.

Up next month, we're moving around the alphabet again from Z to A . . .

Image credits:

The drawing of Freddie Mercury is by a Spanish artist called Virginia Mayo Garcia. Virginia's artwork can be seen on the Artelista website, where you can also purchase copies of her work. She has shared this image using the Creative Commons license, as a way of promoting her work.

The still from the movie Road to Zanzibar is from a photo taken by me. This still is being used to illustrate this blogpost and promote the movie. By publishing this image, I'm not condoning or encouraging reproduction of this image on the Internet or anywhere else. This image is not meant to bring the actors or studio into disrepute or suggest their endorsement of this blogpost, but is meant to promote the performances of these actors in this movie.

The still shows Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, as they sit in the jungle and try to work out the scheming of the two female characters (played by Dorothy Lamour and Una Merkel).

The image of Kirk's Red Colobus is from flickr member woodlouse who is a web editor from Brighton. You can see more of her images of her photostream

Zanzibar - Slavery in the 21st century

2011-11-07T13:53:00.000Z

Whilst most of us are well aware of the history of the 19th-century slave trade in West Africa and the Americas, I think that many people will be less aware of the thriving slave trade on the east coast of Africa, during this period, which centred on Zanzibar and its links with Oman and the Arab world. As I'm blogging about Zanzibar this month, I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a look at slavery, not just in the past, but also in the 21st century.

Slavery in the modern world

Slavery has existed, in one form or another, since time immemorial and, despite the reforms of the 19th century and the abolition of slavery world-wide, the number of people living in slavery today, an estimated 12-20 million, is higher than it's ever been at any other point in human history. Just last month, in Bedfordshire, England, a man was charged with slavery offenses, when a group of 24 English and Eastern European men were released from 'servitude' at a caravan site where they had been kept, either by force or dependency.

Slavery is a massive subject area and there is a lot of information out there. Organisations like Anti-Slavery work hard to campaign and inform the public about modern slavery around the world. I can only hope to scratch the surface of this topic area in this blog post, but it's something I'd like to research in more detail at a later date.

Slavery by Quadelirus

The Language of Slavery

The word 'slave' comes from the Greek, σκλάβος 'sklavos, which is also the origin of the word Slav/Slavic. It's believed to have come from a verb meaning 'to strip the body of a slain enemy'. When we talk about slavery today, it's a term which is incredibly loaded, historically, and one has to find a balance in the use of this word, that recognises the more complex nature of modern slavery but, at the same time, doesn't trivialise the oppression and suffering experienced by slaves in the pre-modern age.

Whilst chattel slavery, ie. the explicit ownership of slaves (chattel from the same root as capital, ie property) is less common nowadays, there are many other forms of slavery that have taken its place.

Unpaid work

A wider definition of slavery could refer to anyone who does work that they are not paid for. Whilst this is hardly the same as being chained together and sent across the Atlantic in ships and being denied even basic freedoms, the form that modern slavery takes is complex, but no less repressive.

The most common form of slavery is Bond Labour, ie when someone is required to work for no or little pay, to pay back a debt, often one that has been handed down from their parents. It's estimated that 40 million people in India are bonded workers paying off a debt. Whilst bonded labourers are free to marry and lead their own lives, they are, nevertheless, trapped in an endless cycle of work and debt that binds them to their 'employer'.

The enslavement of women

Perhaps enforced marriages could be seen as a kind of slavery? If we're talking about unpaid labour, I can't think of many countries in the world where the labour of keeping a home and rearing children (generally work done by women) is paid for and women still suffer enormous oppression and 'enslavement' to the needs and decisions of their husbands/brothers/fathers.

Petitioning Downing Street by 38 degrees

Human trafficking

Although slavery is illegal throughout the world, the law is often not enforced, especially on the International scene and most readers of this blog will be familiar with issues around human trafficking and will have heard of cases in your own country where people moved from somewhere else, with the hope of creating a better life for themselves, only to fall into the hands of traffickers, having their passports taken away and being forced into unpaid or low-paid labour or, in extreme cases, into a life of prostitution.

Other examples of unpaid labour

When I was teaching in Uzbekistan, I had to cancel a whole month of lessons during October, as almost all of my students from the university were sent off to pick cotton for the State. As far as I know this was unpaid labour and I heard some horror stories about appalling working conditions in the cotton fields. Anyone with a bit of money would try to buy their way out of this obligation, but poorer students had no option but to sacrifice a month's study to bring in the cotton harvest.

Perhaps military service could also be seen as a kind of slavery? Again, in lots of countries I've lived in, including France and Russia, young men go to great lengths to get out of this obligation - often damaging themselves mentally or physically, so they won't be put in uniform and lose their freedom (usually up to a year or two years). Young men from ethnic minorities or men who are gay or bisexual fear military service most, because of the terrible hazing of new recruits. A shocking incident occurred when I was living in Russia, were a young recruit lost both of his legs because of the cruelty of his commanders.

Wage slaves

In a more abstract sense, being a wage slave is also incredibly oppressive and limiting. 21st-century society in the West functions in such a way as to discourage you from giving up your job and the wages you receive for the work you do, so that many people find themselves trapped in lives that are unfulfilling. Let's face it, most of us are slaves to the capitalist system. Our jobs, livelihoods and living conditions depend on the whims of the global economy and the actions of a handful of incredibly rich people.

Are we any less enslaved that people in the 19th century? Well, I guess it's an unfair comparison as we do get paid for our work and we do have the option of changing employers or changing the direction of our lives (however difficult that might be), something that wasn't an option for slaves in the 19th century.

The abolition of slavery

William Wilberforce, anti-slavery campaigner

Slavery was abolished in Zanzibar, when it became a British protectorate in 1897. I think Britain has played an incredibly important role in the abolition of slavery around the world and reformers like William Wilberforce paved the way for a world where individuals would have more control over their lives. It's obvious that slavery is not a thing of the past, however and modern generations should continue to campaign and educate others on the nature of slavery, as it exists in the world today.

A small number of countries, like Japan, have no real historical baggage relating to slavery, although even Japan in the 21st century is a centre for human trafficking, especially of young women who move from places like Thailand and Columbia and are forced into prostitution.

Iceland abolished slavery as early as 1117 (previous to that, most slaves in Iceland had been kidnapped from Ireland and Britain and taken to the island by force). Other countries have been much slower to catch-up, especially in the Arab world, where slavery was still legal in Yemen and Saudi Arabia until 1962 and in Oman until 1970. Mauritania (in west Africa) was the last country to abolish slavery in 1981.

Image credits:

The image of the young slave girl statue was taken by flickr member Quadelirus - the original image can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/john-christopher-bowers/1370446201/

The image of the petitioners was put on Flickr by a UK-based campaigning organisation called 38 degrees - you can find out more about their campaign work at their website.

The image of William Wilberforce is from Wikipedia and is in the public domain.

Zanzibar - Gurnah's Paradise

2011-10-30T17:37:00.000Z

One of my main motivations for starting this blog was because I was interested in discovering literary gems from other countries and cultures that I might otherwise have missed.

It's been such a pleasure to read Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah. The novel is quite well-known in the West, having been shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994. Gurnah was born in Zanzibar but has made a career for himself in the UK. He currently lectures at the University of Kent. Paradise didn't win the Booker prize - this was awarded to James Kelman's, How late it was, how late - a controversial decision that led one of the judges (Julia Neuberger) to resign from the judging panel.

Themes

Paradise is set in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) during the period of German colonisation. The main character is a young man called Yusuf who is taken away from his parents at a young age and sent to live with his 'Uncle' Aziz, a relatively affluent merchant, who spends a lot of his time journeying into Africa's dark interior to trade with distant tribes who live beside the lakes of the Great Rift valley.

Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah

The urge to trade

One of the biggest themes of the book is the importance of trade and the great lengths that Uncle Aziz will go to trade with distant tribes and make a profit on his return home. Not all of the trade is legal and it's revealed that Aziz is stock-piling rhinocerous horn, in a village at the end of the train line, where it can easily be transported to the coast and sold off to Indian merchants, when times are tough.

A lot of the action of the novel centres on a disastrous trading expedition to visit a tribe on the far side of the lakes. The journey itself is horrendous, with Aziz paying a fortune in 'gifts' to the tribal villages they pass through, some of his porters die in the jungle before they even reach their destination. When they get to the village of the faraway tribe, they are held hostage and have all of their goods taken from them by force. They eventually negotiate themselves out of the situation and leave with most of their goods, selling everything off at a cut-down rate as they make their way home.

Yusuf reflects on the human desire to trade 'it made him wonder what it was that people wanted so much that they could overcome that terror in search of trade' Trade is certainly an interesting human impulse - wars have been fought over trade, societies have been corrupted and ruined in search of profit, and yet, it's an impulse that has driven forward progress and opened the world up to (what we consider to be) civilisation. Uncle Aziz only seems happy when a trading expedition is in progress - it's as though it's the trade itself that gives his life meaning and not the settled life he comes back to and invests most of his profits into.

Zanzibar was at the heart of the East African and Indian ocean trade routes. The wealth of Zanzibar was built on the trade of cloves and other spices and the trade in slaves from the African interior to the Arab world and beyond.

The pain of movement

Despite Uncle Aziz's desire to trade and travel into the interior, the language of the novel depicts the movement as frightening and unnatural. When they are travelling to the jungle, the wheels of the train screech in high-pitched protests and the homesteads they pass hug the surface of the hurtling earth. After the heavy rains in the jungle, the earth seems alive with movement, which scares the men, as they move further and further away from the civilised world.

A new kind of slavery - Rehani and Magendo

Dhow at dusk by Caneles

Although slavery had been abolished by their European overlords, a kind of slavery persists in the novel and Yusuf finds out that Uncle Aziz isn't really his uncle and that he (Yusuf) has been given to Aziz by his parents as a type of rehani or 'bond', until Yusuf's father pays back a debt that he owes to the merchant. When Yusuf arrives at Uncle Aziz's house, he is befriended by another young man, called Khalil, who is Uncle Aziz's shopkeeper and also bound to him as a result of a debt.

As the novel progresses,Yusuf falls in love with Amina, Uncle Aziz's young wife and servant to 'the Mistress', the widow Uncle Aziz married because of her fortune. Amina's case is even more deplorable, as she is megendo or 'stolen' and was sold to the merchant by Khalil's father, also to pay off a debt.

Yusuf becomes fascinated by the old man, Mzee Hamdani, who tends to the Mistress's garden. He is a freed slave, who decided to stay with the family, even after slavery had been abolished. He only speaks once during the novel and his words fascinate Yusuf when he says 'They offered me freedom as a gift. She did [the Mistress]. Who told her she had it to offer?' It raises an interesting point about whether or not one person can really own another person and that, somehow, freedom is not something that can be given or taken away.

The Garden and the Jungle - desire and brutality

The novel is infused with a powerful and threatening sense of sexuality. Yusuf is considered to be extremely handsome and arouses the interest of the various adults he comes into contact with . He is the subject of unwelcome teasing by Ma Ajuza, one of the customers in the shop where he works with Khalil. He is an object of desire for the men, as they deal with the hardships of the jungle. He becomes an obsession for the Mistress, who convinces herself that she can only be cured of her mysterious illness, if she allows Yusuf to have sex with her.

Brutality and romance are interwoven throughout the novel, a good example being the behaviour of Bachus, the Greek-Indian lorry driver, who constantly sings love songs, only pausing to unleash a string of obscenities, directed at the various porters. Mohammed Abdalla, the mnyapara who manages the porters, is feared because of his great physical strength and his reputation for sexually abusing the men.

Paradise, the title of the book, is ironic, in the sense that it describes 'hell on earth'. The jungle is hell and paradise, at one and the same time - paradise because of the freedom Yusuf experiences there and the wonderful sights that he sees whilst travelling. The garden is a sensual paradise, nurtured by Uncle Aziz's profits. But it's also where Yusuf is watched by the Mistress - it is a prison and the walls are high.

Reaching out by Caneles

Scavenging dogs and the fear of Wolf men

Dogs feature frequently in the book. Yusuf associates them with his move to Uncle Aziz's home. He and Khalil are forced to sleep outside and the dogs attack them, causing Yusuf recurring nightmares that haunt him throughout the rest of the novel. One of their greatest fears in the jungle is of meeting the Wolf men - the product of interbreeding between the wolves of the jungle and the savage tribes. Kalasingh is the Sikh driver who wants to translate the Qu'ran into Swahili, so the native Africans will understand the intolerance of their God. He points out that Muslims are afraid of dogs, just as the Prophet Muhammad feared them. As I've highlighted in previous blogs, dogs often herald death in art and literature and death pervades the novel Paradise. When Khalil first meets Yusuf he nicknames him, kifa urongo which means 'the living death'.

In one of the key scenes at the end of the novel, Yusuf overcomes his fear, when he sees the dogs feasting on piles of excrement and they growl at him, warning him not to come near. He realises that, like the dogs, he will be forced to 'eat shit' for his entire life, unless he does something drastic to change things.

Europeans and Indians - Gog and Magog

There is a real sense of fear in the descriptions of Europeans in the novel and hatred for the Indians who act as intermediaries between the Europeans and the native Africans. The Africans believe that the Europeans have supernatural powers. That they can eat iron and that they breathe fire! They live in fear of the Germans and the brutal way that they make war. The Germans bring an inflexible approach to punishment that fails to respect local traditions of retribution and being able to buy your way out of a hanging or whipping. It is the Germans who rescue Uncle Aziz's property from the jungle tribe and it is the Germans who come searching for young men, at the end of the novel, so they can make war on their European enemies, the British.

The characters seem resigned to their fate and unable to counter the strength of European domination. When Yusuf sees the German officer at the end of the novel, he thinks that the officer is smiling and, therefore, kind. It's only when he sees the German officer up close that he realises the smile is a grimace, created by a physical deformity, it exposes the Germans rotting teeth and gums, prompting Yusuf to think of him as a living corpse.

There are several references to Gog and Magog in the novel - the savage tribes that come from the north of the known world. In the end, Yusuf decides to take his chances in the service of the Europeans, leaving his 'paradise' far behind him.

Other themes

To Paradise Island by Caneles

Paradise is quite commonly compared to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but I also see elements of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (the madwoman in the attic) and Joseph, the son of Jacob in the Old Testament. Like Joseph, Yusuf is abandoned by those who should take care of him and has to find his own way in a world that is incredibly hostile.

The theme of language is an important one - especially the use of Kiswahili and Arabic and how this decides the nature of some of the relationships between the main characters. When they are in the jungle, Nyundo the translator, ultimately holds the balance of power in the discussions between Uncle Aziz and the tribal leader. Yusuf is totally dependent on Khalil to translate between himself and the Mistress. When Khalil refuses to translate any more, Amina takes over and the way she translates opens up a whole new conversation, which made me think about the different language used by men and women in the novel.

The novel also has a lot to say about gender - although there are very few female characters, the world they inhabit is every bit as cruel as the world inhabited by the men.

I see a lot of similarities with the last novel I read for this blog, Zayd Mutee' Dammaj's The Hostage (see my blog post about Yemen) - they both deal with young men who are removed from their families and kept as slaves/servants in a rich household. They both deal with repressed sexuality and the exploitation of young people. Both books have opened up a whole new world of Arabian and East African fiction for me, that I didn't previously know existed.

Gurnah uses a lot of Swahili words throughout the novel and this has introduced me to a whole new language. I'm pasting some of the new words I've learned below:

kanzu, tajiri mkubwa, washenzi, vibarua, mnyapara, kipande, maandazi, mahamri, nahodha, buibui, qasida, mganga, pombe, askari

Image credits:

The image of the book cover was taken by me. I read the 1995 Penguin (2nd) edition of the book (no doubt published by Penguin, as a result of the novel's literary success)

For this blog post, I wanted to highlight the photography of flickrmember caneles, who is originally from Amsterdam. You can see more of his work at his photostream - thanks caneles for sharing these images with us, using the Creative Commons license.

Zanzibar - the home of Swahili

2011-10-23T14:26:00.000+01:00

Spoken or understood by an estimated 100 million people, Swahili or, to give the language its official name, Kiswahili, ranks as one of the world's major languages. It's spoken by many people as a second or third language and the number of native speakers is much smaller, at around 5 million people. It was the language of trade along the East African coast and, although it's a Bantu language, Swahili has many borrowings from Arabic, including the name of the language, which comes from the Arabic word for 'coast' ساحل sawahil.

The Home of Swahili

I think it's fair to say that Zanzibar is the home of Swahili language and culture. The dialect of Unguja, Kiunguja has been adopted as the standard for all Swahili dialects. The name Zanzibar is connected to Zanj (black), the name used by medieval Arabs for the East African coast. As the language of trade, Swahili also has native speakers in the coastal areas of Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia, as well as in the Comoros islands and, due to inland trade, there are more obscure versions of Swahili, such as Kingwana, spoken by small tribal groups in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's a lingua franca in all of these countries, except Somalia and is becoming increasingly popular in neighbouring countries like Uganda.

Swahili on the web

Zanzibar street sign by Al Stevens

The BBC has its own Swahili language pages and there is a Google search engine in Swahili. I often think Wikipedia is a good indicator of a language's web presence, as it is created by ordinary people, as opposed to a government body or initiative. Swahili has a presence on Wikipedia, but it's fairly low for a language of its size. Perhaps this is because people are less likely to use the Internet in places where Swahili is spoken as a native language? There are currently less articles on the Swahili Wikipedia than on the Icelandic one and Swahili ranks 74th in terms of size, amongst the different language Wikipedias. Having said that, it's still one of the biggest African languages on Wikipedia, only Yoruba has more articles, from the Niger-Congo language family (and, of course, Arabic, which is Afro-Asiatic).

The use of Noun Classes

Like most of the other Bantu languages, Swahili employs noun cases to categorise nouns. These are usually indicated by prefixes, eg. m-/wa- (denoting nouns connected to people) or ki-/vi- (denoting things which are man-made, including languages). Linguists have identified up to 16 of noun cases in Swahili, although this is a bit controversial, as it is based on the Meinhof system, which counts singular and plural noun cases separately.

For Example

There are some very good examples of Swahili noun cases on Wikipedia, one of which I'm summarising here, as I thought it was quite interesting. It relates to the Bantu noun classes 3 m- (singular) and 4 mi- (plural), which are often called the 'tree' classes and are mostly used with things that occur naturally, but are neither human nor animal, things like . . . well, trees! This group includes words like, mwitu (forest) and mtama (millet), but also things which are usually made from plants, eg. mkeka (mat - although these are probably made from plastic nowadays!).

Zanzibar beach by Al Stevens

This group also includes natural and supernatural forces, such as mwezi (moon), mlima (mountain) and mto (river). The group is also extended to include 'things that spread', like the branches of a tree, so we get words like mwavuli for umbrella and moshi for smoke. This group also includes more abstract words like mpaka (border) and mwendo (journey). Of course, the noun class doesn't just affect the noun, but also influences the form of the adjective and verb which, I guess, means you really need to know your noun classes in order to speak Swahili properly!

Noun Classes around the world

I think it's fair to say that noun classes are a fairly unfamiliar concept to speakers of Indo-European languages (like English), although I think we do differentiate between animate and inanimate objects, to a degree. It's interesting that noun classes tend to exist in societies that live in closer harmony with the natural world - they can be found in Native American languages, the Bantu languages of Africa and Aboriginal languages of Australia, like Dyirbal and Ngangikurrunggurr. They're also found in a handful of Causcasian languages, notably Bats which is spoken by a small number of people in a remote mountain village in the north-east of Georgia. I wonder if the death of animist traditions and beliefs, led to the death of noun classes in other world languages?

Noun Class v Gender

Three Ways Salon by Al Stevens

Some linguists consider the use of gender in many European languages, as a type of Noun Class. I don't really understand what the difference is and it's worth noting that, whilst we usually think of Gender as meaning masculine, feminine or (in languages like German) neuter, actually gender comes from the Latin word genus meaning 'type' or 'class', unrelated to male/female aspects of the noun. If you've ever studied French, I'm sure you'll have wondered why some words are considered to be masculine and others feminine! In Russian, many of the nouns describing men use the feminine gender and I think there is enough evidence around to understand that the use of this term has been corrupted by the male/female dichotomy.

Perhaps then gender, in European languages, is a vestige of earlier, more complex, noun classes? English has almost completely got rid of gender, each phase of 'modernisation' of the language has used gender distinctions less and less. Perhaps the trend in language development is away from the use of noun classes? There are certainly more nouns (or things) to talk about these days, than there were in the eras of our grand-parents and ancestors and, perhaps, this makes the categorisation of nouns too complex to even bother with? I wonder how Swahili deals with modern inventions, such as computers or iPhones?

I'm going to leave you with a video from YouTube, which was posted by www.bookbox.com - a project which helps children learn languages through story-telling. The story is called The First Well and is spoken in the Kenyan dialect of Kiswahili.

Image credits:

For this blogpost I wanted to highlight the work of flickrmember almacaw aka Al Stevens, who lives in a small village in Sussex. You can see more of Al's images at his photostream and find out more about his approach to web design on his website.

Thanks Al for sharing these images of Zanzibar using the Creative Commons license.

Zanzibar - Memoirs of an Arabian Princess

2011-10-08T10:13:00.000+01:00

One of my favourite things about writing this blog is finding out more about the lives of some of the people who have lived in the places I blog about. One of the most famous records of life in 19th-century Zanzibar, Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar was written by a woman called Emily Ruete. This was the name that she adopted after she had eloped with a German merchant, but her birth name was Salamah bint Said and she was the daughter of the 19th-century ruler of Zanzibar and Oman, the Sultan Seyyid Said. Hers is a fascinating story and reminded me a little bit on another book I've read about Gayatri Devi, the last Maharani of Jaipur (see my previous blog post about Gayatri Devi).

Although she was born and brought up in Zanzibar, Salamah bint Said was eventually forced to leave the islands. She'd become somewhat of a persona non grata in the eyes of most of her family, as she had, rather foolishly, got caught up in a plot against her eldest brother, Majid and then, in an effort to make amends had offended his successor and rival, Bargash, which meant that both sides of the feud turned against her.

Book cover

No wonder then that she sought comfort in the arms of her neighbour, a German merchant, and it caused no small degree of scandal when she turned up pregnant in Aden, where she converted to Christianity and married Herr Ruete before moving back to Germany with her new husband. She bore him another two children before he was tragically killed in a tram accident and she found herself alone, in a strange land, struggling to bring up three small children all by herself, with little hope of ever returning to Zanzibar.

She did eventually return to Zanzibar, many years later, but couldn't settle there and made her way back north to Lebanon and Germany again. As well as telling the fascinating story of her life, Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar also describes Zanzibari life in great detail and deals with a range of themes that touch on culture and society. I've picked out a few of them below:

Race

To the modern reader, Frau Ruete's opinions come across as being terribly racist. Her description of the Africans who worked for the Sultan in the chapter entitled On the idleness of the Negro, show a common 19th-century view of black people as being work-shy and in need of constant instruction. Perhaps I should have titled this paragraph, On the idleness of Concubines and their children, as a more accurate (and 21st century) appraisal of life in the Sultan's harem! She also alludes to the racial tension between some of the Sultan's wives. Her own mother was Circassian (originating in the Caucasus region of, what is now, southern Russia) and Emily refers to the tension that existed between the Sultan's Circassian and Abyssinian wives, with the Circassian women looking down on the Abyssinians as darker skinned and therefore inferior.

She seems to reserve most of her vitriol for the Hindu merchants who managed a lot of the trade on Zanzibar and she refers to a horrific incident when a Hindu was tricked into entering a courtyard where an animal was being slaughtered, his horror being the subject of ridicule and abuse by the Hindu's Muslim neighbours.

Education and Work

Racism aside, I'm always interested to see how 'the West' is perceived in the eyes of other cultures and Emily's stay in Germany gave her the perfect opportunity to compare life in the North with life in the South. She talks a bit about the different approaches to work in Europe and in East Africa and points out the influence of the weather on the European's v the African's approach to work. She struggled to survive the harsh winters in Germany and generally believed that Europeans had a tougher life, as survival itself was a constant struggle.

She also makes an interesting point about Education and how European schools so closely resemble prisons! She criticised the tendency in Europe to teach children lots of useless facts that they will never use in their adult lives. I think it was an astute observation and I was also interested in her views on giving children homework, something that wouldn't have happened in Zanzibar, because it would have disrupted family life.

Attitudes towards Child care

Emily with her husband and two of her children

She also compares life in Europe rather unfavourably, with regard to child care and how children are raised. She felt that European children didn't spend enough time with their parents, particularly their mothers and she couldn't understand how English children would be sent off to boarding schools, where they might not see their parents from one end of the year until the next. This was a stark contrast to Zanzibar, where children were more or less constantly in contact with their mothers and, at least once a day, with their fathers.

I was interested to learn about the tradition of 'swaddling' that existed in Zanzibar and in many parts of the world in the 19th century. According to Islamic custom, children were bound for the first forty days of their lives. I guess swaddling was believed to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (also called Cot or Crib Death).

The position of women in Zanzibari society

She also talks about the position of women in Zanzibari society. Whilst some of her observations regarding the limitations of being a woman might be expected of an Islamic society, she also talks a lot about the rights that women had, such as rights to property and the right to marry above or below your social standing. On one hand, she talks about the enclosed life of the harem, where the Sultan's wives are not allowed to see daylight for fourth months after his death. On the other hand, she tells us about her great Aunt Assha, a fiercely independent woman, who ruled Oman and fought battles to protect the regency of the Sultan, Emily's father. Frau Ruete herself challenges many of the preconceptions we have about a woman in the 19th century and this book was the first autobiography ever written by an Arabian woman.

An apple a day

The medieval practice of cupping

One part of European life that she really respected was the modern approach to medicine that she experienced in Germany. This time Zanzibar compares unfavourably with Europe and she regrets that her homeland remained behind the times and antiquated in its approach to medical science. She refers to old-fashioned practices such as 'cupping' (ie. applying hot cups to the skin) and blood-letting, which was commonly practised in Zanzibar when she was growing up. She also mentions remedies that involved boiling pages containing verses from the Qu'ran and then drinking these in a kind of tea. There seems to have been no recognition of mental health issues in 19th-century Zanzibar and depression was seen as a kind of 'demon' that took possession of the person's body. The best cure was . . . well, cupping and bleeding!

Her mother died when she was fifteen, in a cholera epidemic that swept across Zanzibar. Without her mother around, she lacked appropriate guidance during the turbulent time after the Sultan's death, when different family members took sides with different heirs to the throne.

Torch-lit parades through Stone Town

There is a lot more to this story than I have time to write about in this blog post and the book is well-worth a read, if you fancy getting out of your cultural comfort zone! She went to great lengths to explain the nature of Islamic traditions and festivals, such as Ramadan and I couldn't help observing that, what is quite familiar to most Europeans today, needed a more detailed explanation for the benefit of the 19th century European reader. Perhaps we have moved forward and embraced other cultures after all?

My abiding memory of the book is the scene of rich Zanzibari women paying visits to each other, in the early morning hours before sunrise, with a retinue of servants carrying massive lanterns to light their way through the huddled streets of Stone Town.

Image credits:

The image of Emily Ruete with her husband and two of their children is taken from Wikimedia Commons - this image is in the public domain, as its copyright has expired and you can see more information at the image's description page.

The image of cupping is also from Wikimedia Commons and is originally from a 15th century English manuscript, which is kept at the British Library. This image is also in the public domain and you can also see more information at the descrition page on Wikimedia Commons.

Zanzibar - how I cooked Octopus!

2011-10-02T11:00:00.001+01:00

My search for a traditional Zanzibari dish brought up a few options, including the Portuguese Goan dish Sorpotel but, in the end, I couldn't resist the temptation of the Swahili dish Pweza wa nazi or Octopus in a coconut soup.

I've seldom eaten Octopus before, never mind cooked it, so it was a real challenge for me. Whilst it's relatively common in Mediterranean cuisine, I don't know many people in the UK or Ireland who eat octopus on a regular basis. The islands of Zanzibar have ready access to the fruits of the ocean and octopus is a tasty example of traditional Swahili cooking.

Where does one buy octopus in London?

Frozen octopus from Moxon's

My first quest was to find somewhere to buy octopus in London. Most octopus here seems to come from Portugal and is usually frozen, as octopus doesn't travel well over long distances. I looked at some online options, but with minimum orders of £35 and more, this wasn't really an affordable option for me. Luckily, a work colleague pointed me in the direction of Moxon's, a posh fishmongers in South Kensington. I've learned that octopus isn't cheap(!), £12.95 Sterling per kilo (that's 34,121 Tanzanian Shillings). My next question was . . . how the hell do I cook it?

How does one cook an octopus?

Like a scene from Alien

Octopus bathes in milk

A trawl through the Internet brought up all kinds of options - beat it with a hammer first, smash it against some rocks (like I have rocks lying around in my kitchen!), don't overcook it (then another website said stew it for a very long time), boil it in its own ink and, one of my favourites, chuck it in the bin, who the hell eats octopus anyway?

I settled for the advice of an Italian website, which has a recipe for Pweza wa nazi (they've incorrectly called it Pwewa, but the Swahili word for octopus should be pweza). I'm providing a link to the original recipe for those of you who speak Italian. I must admit that I improvised a lot this time and did things in a different order than the Italian recipe recommended. I also used coconut milk from a tin.

The Ingredients

1 octopus (pweza)
4/5 medium sized potatoes (viazi)
1 onion (kitunguu)
1 lime (ndimu)
coconut milk (maji ya dafu)
tomato puree (nyanya)
garam masala
cardamon (iliki)
cinnamon (dalasini)
2 pieces of garlic (saumu)

Preparing the octopus

First I had to defrost the octopus. The portion I bought was almost two kilos, so I cut it in half and left it to defrost for about four hours, a process resembling a scene from the hit movie Alien. Another work colleague recommended that I marinate the octopus in milk, which was a really good tip and helped to tenderise it. The Italian recipe recommended boiling it for 30 minutes only (ie. not overcooking it, which is a mistake lots of people make, apparently). This seemed to work quite well and when I tasted the octopus after 30 minutes of boiling, it was really succulent.

At first when I was boiling it, the octopus seemed to swell up mightily, like a true creature of the deep, threatening to escape the pot. Then it quickly shrank to a shadow of its former self and turned from a murky brownish colour to an exciting purplish red.

Creature of the deep

After 30 minutes of boiling

A succulent piece of octopus

Preparing the Pweza wa nazi

Once you've boiled octopus, you can add it to dishes, either freshly boiled in a salad or, as I did, as part of a curry/soup. To make the coconut soup I fried the chopped onion and garlic. Then I added the spices and tomato puree. Once everything had softened and fried a bit, I added the octopus, which I had sliced up into bite-sized pieces. I stir-fried the octopus for a bit, before adding the coconut milk. Once this had come to the boil, I added pieces of potato that I parboiled so they would cook quickly.

Fry the onion, garlic and spices

Add the tomato puree and pieces of octopus

Add the coconut milk

Add the parboiled potato

Pweza wa nazi

I was worried about losing the tenderness of the octopus, so I only simmered the mixture for 30 minutes and this was enough to keep the octopus from getting hard or rubbery.

You can see the end result for yourself - easy pwezy!

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me. Please feel free to re-use according to the Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog post)
Non-commercial
Share alike

Zanzibar - the curious cultivating of cloves

2011-09-25T15:00:00.000+01:00

When you look at Unguja (Zanzibar Island) and Pemba on the map, you can't help comparing them to two cloves studding the surface of the Indian ocean. Trade in cloves has a long history, going back as far as Roman times. The cultivation of cloves has played an incredibly important part in the history of Zanzibar and was the source of much wealth for Zanzibar's previous owners, the sultans of Oman.

Along with Mafia Island, which is further south, Unguja and Pemba were often referred to as 'the Spice Islands'. These African spice islands weren't quite as famous as the Spice islands of Indonesia, Maluku, where the some of the world's most valuable spices (including nutmeg and cloves) originated.

The flag of independent Zanzibar

Cloves were introduced to Zanzibar from the French colony of Mauritius in the early part of the 19th century. Cloves were first grown on Unguja, before cultivation was moved to Pemba, which became the biggest clove-producer in the world. To see how important clove production was to the country, you just have to look at the flag of the short lived independent Zanzibar, which contained two cloves on a red background.

The Clove economy

Just as Yemen has lost out in terms of coffee production Zanzibar, in more recent years, has lost its prime position as the centre of clove cultivation. This was mostly due to bad economic policies of Tanzania's socialist government in the 1960's, combined with a massive increase in clove production in Indonesia in the 1980's, which brought down the price of cloves on the worldwide market. Today Tanzania ranks a distant third in terms of clove production, behind Indonesia and Madagascar. There was an attempt to privatise the industry in 2007, but it might be a case of 'too little, too late'

An essential ingredient!

A hot whiskey by bmeabroad

I think the first time I saw a clove was in a hot whiskey, when I was about 20 years old! We had a particularly cold winter and I have fond memories of braving the frost and snow with my sisters, to visit the local pub, hot whiskey with cloves being the best thing to melt the icicles hanging from our noses! The taste reminded me of the stripey sweets I used to love as a child. I now know these are called clove satins, but I'm sure we called them something else back then! As an adult, I absolutely love the taste of cloves and use them quite a bit when I'm cooking, especially in Indian foods like curries and biryanis.

What's in a clove?

It surprised me to learn that cloves are basically flower buds that haven't yet opened. They belong to the wider family known as angiosperms which are plants that produce seeds and flowers. Cloves are related to myrtle and other plants such as Australian white apples and bush cherries. They are red when harvested, but the version that reaches us on the other side of the world, looks shrivelled and black.

Etymology of the name

Cloves by me

The English word 'clove' comes from the Latin clavus meaning 'nail'. They do look like those little wooden nails you see in traditional buildings and furniture and the nail reference has been borrowed into most languages, so you have hřebíček (little nail) in Czech, szegfűszeg (nail spice) in Hungarian, гвоздика gvozdika (little nail) in Russian etc.

There is an interesting relationship between the English word for clove and the verb to cleave, which means to part or separate (possibly by hammering in a nail!). The Latin name for clove is syzygium aromaticum - the syzygium bit referring to the cloves 'petals' being joined together.

Cloves in Europe

Cloves have been used in lots of different ways around the world. Apart from boiled sweets and hot whiskies, cloves have also been used in some European cuisines. The Dutch seem to be particularly fond of the taste, which is not surprising, as they colonised Indonesia and cloves are used in traditional Dutch recipes for cookies and stews.

Clove cigarettes and fragrances

Clove cigarettes by Sarah Mae

One of the things that has been driving forward clove production in Indonesia is the fact that clove oil is used in the production of kretek ie. cheap Indonesian cigarettes. An estimated 90% of Indonesians smoke kreteks and the kretek industry is massive, employing around 10 million people. In the West, in the Goth sub-culture, clove cigarettes gained popularity due to their dark and pungent aroma!

In some countries like China and Japan, Oil of Cloves has been used in the production of incense and even fragrances. By all accounts, anyone who wanted to have an audience with the Emperor of China was encouraged to chew cloves before being admitted to his presence, to get rid of the smell of bad breath.

Good for your health?

Oil of Cloves by Amanda Slater

Cloves have also been used extensively in medicine and dentistry. Oil of cloves is a remedy for toothache and cloves are also believed to be natural anthelmintics, ie. they can get rid of parasitic worms. In the Ayurvedic tradition, cloves are believed to increase heat in the system. Chinese medicine also sees cloves as a 'hot' element, which can relieve stomach ache, but shouldn't be used for the treatment of 'fire' conditions. Perhaps this passionate 'heat' of cloves is the reason why some cultures also believe they can prevent premature ejaculation!

The Spice trade

When I was researching the history of Venice, I learned how important the spice trade was to Europe. Wars were fought over spices and cloves and nutmeg were literally worth their weight in gold. The search for new trade routes to India, ultimately led to the 'discovery' of America by Europeans. Honestly, the lengths people will go to get a decent curry!

Footage from Zanzibar in 1925

I'm going to leave you with a link to some fascinating footage from www.colonialfilm.org.uk - it was filmed in 1925 as part of the British Instructional Film's Empire series. It's amazing really to look at images of Zanzibar from almost a century ago. At that time Zanzibar produced around 90% of the world's cloves and this short film shows the process that was used to harvest the clove crop.

PS - don't worry, there's nothing wrong with the sound on your computer, it's a silent movie!

Image credits:

The image of the hot whiskey with a slice of lemon and cloves is by flickr member bmeabroad - you can see more of bmeabroad's images at their photostream

The image of the cloves was taken by me.

The image of the clove cigarettes is by Sarah Mae who is a librarian, originally from Hyattsville in Maryland. This image was taken from her flickr photostream, but you can find out more about Sarah at her website. Djarum is one of Indonesia's biggest kretek brands, but as you can see from the photograph, these cigarettes are also sold in the United States.

The image of the bottle of Oil of Cloves is by amandabhslater aka Amanda Slater, who is a retired Analytical Chemist from New Malden in Surrey. Amanda has taken up digital photography on her retirement and you can see more of her images at her photostream on Flickr.

Thanks to Sarah and Amanda for sharing these images with us using the Creative Commons License.

Zanzibar - Mambo, vipi?

2011-09-17T13:07:00.000+01:00

We're not travelling terribly far this time, a mere 1500 miles (2400 kilometres) south from Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, to Stone Town on the island of Unguja, aka Zanzibar. Zanzibar is also, culturally, not that distant from Arabia and it's an interesting place because of its history, the diversity of the people who have called Zanzibar home - Arab, African, Persian, British, Indian and many others.

The Basics

The first thing I've learned about Zanzibar is that it's not one island, but two. The bigger island is called Unguja and has its capital at Stone Town or Zanzibar city. The slightly smaller island is called Pemba and has its capital at Chake-Chake. Putting their total land masses together, they are slightly smaller than Luxembourg or Dorset in England and around the same size as Delaware, the second-smallest US state.

History and Today

Zanzibar has a unique culture and, in more recent history has gravitated towards the African mainland. The islands joined with their mainland neighbour Tanganyika in 1964 to form the modern-day country, Tanzania.

Zanzibar by Koffiemetkoek

My first impression of Tanzania is that it's an incredibly fascinating and complex place. The relationship between Zanzibar and the rest of the country seems to be especially tense right now, due to the rival political factions in Zanzibar, ie. those who believe in the Tanzanian union and those who want independence for Zanzibar.

For a long time Zanzibar's history was dominated by the southern Arabian state of Oman. Zanzibar was at the centre of the thriving Indian ocean slave trade between Africa, Arabia and India. I guess it was inevitable that the islands would attract the attention of the British, who had interests in nearby Kenya and Uganda. Whilst the Germans colonised Tanganyika, Rwanda and Burundi (aka German East Africa), the British established a protectorate over Zanzibar and kept the islands remote from German influence.

The German colonisation of East Africa was brief and, like German Togoland (see my earlier blog posts about Togo) ended with Germany's defeat in the first World War. Unlike Togoland, there was no French interest in East Africa, so Britain continued to support the League of Nations mandate and 'protect' Tanganyika until it gained its independence in the 1960's. I can already see parallels with Togoland in that the Europeanisation of Tanganyika seems to have been less intense than in other parts of Africa and I think this resonates in the modern-day politics of Zanzibar and Tanzania as a whole.

Themes

Photo by Koffiemetkoek

The only thing I knew about Zanzibar before I started researching for this blog was its location and the fact that Freddie Mercury was born there! Since I've started my research, I see a few other themes emerging, namely the Slave Trade in the Indian ocean, the trade in Cloves, Islam in an East African context, the birth of Swahili and Zoroastrianism.

I've bought a collection of the distinctly Zanzibari Taarab music. I've also got a few cooking options to choose from, I have two books lined up and I've ordered a couple of movies that were set in Zanzibar.

I'm sure other themes will emerge as I eat, read, listen, watch and learn about Zanzibar. I hope you'll join me on my learning journey over the next 4-6 weeks.

Image credits:

To start us off this time, I've chosen the highlight the photography of flickr member Koffiemetkoek aka Carola, who is from Overijssel in the Netherlands. You can see more of Carola's photos at her photostream. Thanks Carola for sharing these images with us, using the Creative Commons license.

Happy Birthday Blog - Two Years on!!

2011-09-15T18:25:00.000+01:00

It's now two years since I started this blog - 19 countries and 133 blog posts later, Learning about the World has been visited by 4,348 unique visitors from all over the world!

To celebrate another year of Learning about the World, I thought I would use this blogpost to remind myself (and you, my loyal readers) of the things that I have read, cooked, listened to and watched with the express purpose of increasing my understanding of this amazing world we live in :-)

This time round, I can't list everything I've read, cooked, watched and listened to (as there is so much!) but here is a sample of the learning adventure I've been on

The Books

The President by Miguel Angel Asturias (Guatemala)
An Insular Possession by Timonthy Mo (Hong Kong)
Independent People by Halldor Laxness (Iceland)

History of Jamaica by Clinton V Black (Jamaica)

The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J Maarten Troost (Kiribati)

Singing Away the Hunger by Mpho 'M'atsepo Nthunya (Lesotho)
Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia by Louisa Waugh (Mongolia)
A Heart of Stone by Renate Dorrestein (Netherlands)

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (Oklahoma)
(part of) I, the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos (Paraguay)
Remembering Babylon by David Malouf (Queensland)
A Princess Remembers by Gayatri Devi (Rajasthan)
Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif (Saudi Arabia)
An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie (Togo)
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (Urals Federal District)
Miss Garnet's Angel by Sally Vickers (Veneto)
The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (Wisconsin)
Wild West China by Christian Tyler (Xinjiang/Uyghuristan)
The Hostage by Zayd Mutee' Dammaj (Yemen)

The Food:

Tapado (Guatemala)
Sweet and Sour Pork Hong Kong style (Hong Kong)
Liffrarbuff and Plokkfiskur (Iceland)

Jerk Chicken (Jamaica)
Palu Sami (Kiribati)
Chakalaka and Pap (Lesotho)
Tsuivan (Mongolia)
Stamppot and Limburg Beef Stew with Apples (Netherlands)

Cornbread, Choctaw Catfish and Fried Okra (Oklahoma)
Sopa paraguayana and Zoo-Tosopy (Paraguay)
Kangaroo Fillets with Mushroom sauce (Queensland)
Daal Baati (Rajasthan)
Chicken Kabsa (Saudi Arabia)
Chicken Groundnut Soup with Fufu (Togo)
Beef Stroganoff (Urals Federal Region)
Risi e Bisi (Veneto)
Bratwurst and Blue Ribbon Chilli (Wisconsin)
Da pan ji (Xinjiang/Uyghuristan)
Saltah (Yemen)

The movies:

Reykjavik 101 (Iceland)
Dancehall Queen (Jamaica)
The Fourth Man (Netherlands)
Gunfight at the OK Corral (Oklahoma)
The Mission (Paraguay)Swimming Upstream (Queensland)
Dor (Rajasthan)
Lawrence of Arabia (Saudi Arabia)
The Merchant of Venice (Veneto)
The Last Kiss (Wisconsin)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Xinjiang/Uyghuristan)
Solomon and Sheba (Yemen)

The music:

Sammi Cheng (Hong Kong)
Sigur Ros (Iceland)
Phyllis Dillon (Jamaica)
Egschiglen (Mongolia)
Bettie Serveert (The Netherlands)
Woody Guthrie (Oklahoma)

Savage Garden (Queensland)
Jagjit Singh (Rajasthan)
Mohammed Abdu (Saudi Arabia)
Yawo (Togo)
Smyslovye gallyutsinatsii (Urals Federal District)
Negramaro (Veneto)
Violent Femmes (Wisconsin)
Mohamad al-Harithi (Yemen)

Some Stats

I use a couple of different tools to keep an eye on who's reading my blog, which countries they come from etc. It's always exciting to get the first 'hit' on my blog from the place I'm blogging about. With the exception of Guatemala and Kiribati, I've had hits from all of the places I've blogged about!

The blog has had visitors from 91 countries worldwide. The top ten countries that read this blog are:

1. UK
2. USA

3. India
4. Australia
5. Canada
6. Russia
7. Ireland

8. France
9. Netherlands
10. Germany

It gets an average of 12 unique visitors per day, which is around 144 unique visitors per month.

One of the reasons I started this blog was so I would read, watch, listen to and taste things that I wouldn't otherwise have read, watched, listened to or tasted. Two years down the line, I feel incredibly enriched by the cultural experiences I've had through my 'armchair' travelling - I look forward to another year and all the learning it will bring.

In the languages of some of the countries I've blogged about:

Happy Birthday! Feliz cumpleaños! Sun yat fai lok! Til hamingju með afmælið! Letsatsi le monate la tswalo! Tєрсєн єдрийн баяр хvргэе! Vy-Apave Nde Arambotyre! जन्मदिन पर हार्दिक शुभकामनाएं! Janam ghaanth ri badhai, khoob jeeyo! كل عام وأنتم بخير! Medzi dzigbe njkeke nyuie no wo! С днем рождения! Bon compleano! Tughulghan kuningzga mobarak bolsun!

Yemen - Goodbye to Arabia Felix

2011-09-13T18:37:00.001+01:00

The time has come for me to say goodbye to Yemen, known to the Romans as Arabia Felix or 'happy/fortunate Arabia'. My learning journey to Yemen has been really fascinating and, despite the current political difficulties faced by the Yemeni people, I've been left with a very positive impression of their culture and their potential to create a society that is peaceful and prosperous. As usual, my 'armchair' travelling has also left me with a great desire to go and see Yemen for myself!

A summary of the topics

Esoteric by Martin Sojka

During the past six weeks I have had the opportunity to learn more about the History of Yemen - how it's a bridge between Arabia and East Africa. I've learned about the two Yemens, north and south, following separate paths until reunification in the 90's. I learned a little bit more about Islam and the Madhabs, or schools of Islamic thought. I learned about the Queen of Sheba and the current situation for women in Yemeni society. I learned about Coffee and Qat, two plants that were first cultivated in Yemen, they have had very different destinies in the modern world. I also listened to the music of Mohamad al-Harithi. I learned how to make Saltah, Yemen's national dish and I also visited a Yemeni restaurant just off the Edgware Road here in London.

Books about Yemen by me

I read several books about Yemen. Tim Mackintosh-Smith's travelogue Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land was very readable and informative, Mackintosh-Smith is a great authority on Yemen and his book gave me a lot of ideas about the themes I should research for this blog. I also read the popular novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday, which was really funny and enjoyable and I read The Hostage by Yemeni writer Zayd Mutee' Dammaj, which was darkly sensual and frightening. I watched several movies relating to or shot in Yemen, including King Vidor's Solomon and Sheba (1959) and Pasolini's Arabian Nights (1974). I also learned a lot about the island of Socotra, the part of Yemen that isn't really all that Yemeni.

Other themes for further research

Of course I touched on a whole range of themes that I didn't have time to research fully, but would be interesting to explore further, if you want to learn even more about Yemen. Some of the other themes were:

The beach in Socotra by Martin Sojka

- the History of Frankincense and Yemen's role in exporting it to medieval Europe
- the poetry of Imru' al-Qays and the theme of nostalgia
- Mad Mitch and the last battle ever fought by the British Empire
- The Yemeni poltergeist idar al-dar and the Arabian approach to the supernatural
- Yemeni dress and that ultimate male accessory, the djambia
- The skyscrapers of Shibam and the development of architecture in Yemeni towns
- Joseph Wolff, the Jewish Anglican missionary
- Cush and the sons of Noah

I really regret not having time to do some research on the Temani, the Jews of Yemen. To make up for it, I'm posting a YouTube video below from Ofra Haza, one of the most famous Yemeni Jews. This is a traditional Temani song called Im Nin' Alu and comes from her 1984 album Shirey Teyman aka Yemenite Songs. Madonna fans might recognise this, as she also sampled a version of this song on Isaac from her album Confessions on a Dance Floor

Did you know?

As well as the 'big' themes I didn't have time to blog about, I also picked up lots of trivia related to Yemen, which will come in handy in dinner party conversations, I'm sure. I learned that:

- the prophet Mohammad said the Yemenis have 'the kindest and gentlest hearts of all'
- the official Arabic word for 'motorbike' translates as 'fiery bicycle'
- the Yemeni general Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi conquered Bordeaux in the 8th century
- there are baboons in Yemen

Young man chewing Qat by Martin Sojka

- the mountain tribesmen of Yemen didn't use to eat fish, as they thought it was some kind of inedible worm
- the Arabs call rain 'barakah' which is also the word for blessing
- Yemeni fans of Michael Jackson are called mutamaykalin
- by the time the British pulled out of Aden in 1967, it was costing them £60 million a year
- Aden's busiest market is called 'the Suq of rumours'
- Aden was known as the 'white man's grave'
- Al-Maqah was the god of the moon
- There are people on the island of Socotra who have blue eyes
- the 1994 Yemeni census included 'cave' under types of accommodation
- a Kurdish dynasty ruled Yemen in the 12th century
- many cities in the Middle East have a Tahrir square, tahrir تحرير means 'liberation'
- the Queen of Sheba had hairy legs
- Marriage between cousins is permitted in Islamic traditions
- Yemeni weddings usually begin on a Wednesday and end on a Friday
- at 2300 metres above sea level, Sana'a is the 7th highest capital city in the world (just below Addis Ababa and Asmara)
- Yemen is one of only 7 countries in the world that apply the death penalty for same-sex relations

I hope you've enjoyed my virtual trip to Yemen as much as I have. I'm going to leave you with the words of a very poignant poem from Imru al-Qays (Diwan, Poem 2):

Djambia by Martin Sojka

Weep for me, my eyes! Spill your tears

And mourn for me the vanished kings

Hujr ibn 'Amru's princely sons

Led away to slaughter at eventide;

If only they had died in combat

Not in the lands of Banu Marina!

No water was there to wash their fallen heads,

And their skulls lie spattered with blood

Pecked over by birds

Who tear out first the eyebrows, then the eyes.

Image credits:

For this final blogpost on Yemen, I wanted to highlight the work of a very talented Slovak photographer called Martin Sojka - Martin has taken some stunning photos in Yemen and Socotra, but also in places like Iceland and New Zealand. You can see more of his images on his Flickr photostream

Thanks Martin for sharing these images with us using the Creative Commons License.

Yemen - Socotra, the island of blissful Sorcerers

2011-09-10T13:53:00.000+01:00

It's interesting that each and every country/place I've researched about for this blog has a region or an area that is very much 'at the edge' of that country/place's culture. Whether it's Bayan-Olgii, the Kazakh-speaking western province of Mongolia, or Limburg in the southern Netherlands, Oklahoma has its panhandle and Xinjiang/Uyghuristan has the Ili Valley. Even Hong Kong has its New Territories. For Yemen, the island of Socotra is the part that doesn't quite fit in - not really Yemeni, it's closer to Somalia and Africa than to Yemen.

Kent in the Indian ocean

Socotra Landscape by Stefan Geens

With a population of 42,000, Socotra is the same size as Kent in England (or Long Island, for my North American readers). It's an incredibly isolated place, being cut off from the rest of the world for six months of the year by ferocious sea storms that make it too perilous to sail there. No doubt, in our age of air travel, it's more accessible than ever, but Socotra retains an aura of mystery - it's an island of Makolis (or sorcerers), a windswept outpost in the Indian ocean, where witch-trials continued well into the 20th century. Socotra is far from the mountains of Sana'a and the baking desert sands of the Hadramawt.

The Island of Bliss

The name 'Socotra' is believed to have come from the Sanskrit for 'Island of Bliss', dvipa sukhadhara, which the Ancient Greeks called dioskouridou. Perhaps not surprisingly, the people of Socotra speak their own language, Soqotri, which is one of the oldest surviving South Arabian languages, related to Arabic, but linguistically closer to the languages of Ethiopia. I guess it's the equivalent of Icelandic for us, ie. a language that has existed in relative isolation for a long time, which means it has preserved some archaic words and structures that the mainland languages have since lost.

Blood from the Dragon's Tree

Dragon's Blood Trees by Stefan Geens

One thing you might already know about Socotra and, again hardly suprising, considering its isolation from the continent land masses, is that it has incredibly high levels of biodiversity. More than a third of Socotra's plant species are endemic, ie. they're not found anywhere else on Earth. This is similar to the situation in other isolated island groups, eg. Hawaii, the Galapagos Islands and Madagascar. Like those other island groups, Socotra has been recognised as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage site. I've come across UNESCO's work again and again, as I've been researching this blog and I really love what they're doing to help preserve many beautiful sites around the world.

It's also quite interesting that, despite the diversity of plant life in Socotra, the only mammal that is native to the island is the bat! Perhaps one of the most interesting trees on Socotra (and an unofficial symbol of the island) is the Dragon's Blood tree. Not only does it have an interesting umbrella-like shape, but it also has red sap, believed in ancient times to be the blood of a dragon. Dragon's blood was seen as a cure for many ailments and in the 18th-century, dragon's blood resin was exported to Italy, where it was used as a varnish for violins.

A very 16th-century Crusade

Crabs on Qansaliyah beach by Stefan Geens

Perhaps it was Marco Polo who started the rumours about a 'lost' Christian tribe living on Socotra and when the Portuguese arrived in the Indian ocean in the early 16th century, they showed a brief interest in Socotra as a stopping point on the way to India. They also had a religious objective in mind, ie. to liberate their supposed 'fellow Christians' from the tyranny of their Islamic overlords. The British also took an interest in Socotra and I can see why, as an island nation, other islands have always been an attractive subject for the British crown (eg, the Caribbean islands, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Even Aden is an island!).

Eco-tourism on Socotra

Fish for dinner in Hadiboh by Stefan Geens

Modern Socotra seems as oddly out of the place as it has ever been. For a poor country like Yemen, the possible implications of an eco-tourist industry on Socotra must seem very promising, far away from the civil strife of the Arab spring. I guess isolation has its up-side! Even more isolated than the main island of Socotra are the three smaller islands, Darsa, Samha and Abd al Kuri. There is something very revealing by looking at a country like Yemen from the point of view of one its most obscure corners. I would certainly love to visit Socotra, as well as mainland Yemen, when the political situation calms down. It sounds like an incredibly exciting destination, with a lot to offer the curious traveller!

Image credits:

All images accompanying this blog post were taken from Stefan Geen's photostream on Flickr. Stefan visited Socotra in 2006, when he was living in Beijing, China. By an interesting quirk of fate, Stefan has also taken lots of photos from Kashgar in Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, which is a place I've also blogged about. I didn't come across his photos, when I was blogging about Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, but it's well worth having a look at his Chinese photos as well. He's got a very interesting website where you can find out more.

Thanks Stefan for sharing these wonderful images with us using the Creative Commons License.

Yemen - a Country held Hostage

2011-09-02T16:00:00.029+01:00

Published in Beirut in 1984, Zayd Mutee' Dammaj's novel الرهينة or The Hostage is probably the most famous novel ever written by a Yemeni writer. Dammaj was born in a small village just north of Ta'izz and was lucky enough to be allowed to leave Yemen to study law in Egypt. His father was a staunch anti-royalist and The Hostage, which is set in North Yemen during the late 40's, is incredibly critical of Yemeni society, as it existed before the revolutions that brought an end to the Imams' rule. Although the subject matter of his novel is incredibly controversial, Dammaj was a well-respected figure in North Yemen, unlike his contemporary Abdelrahman Munif, whose novel Cities of Salt was banned in neighbouring Saudi Arabia (see my earlier blog post about this).

An English language version of the novel was published in 1994 with a translation by Christopher Tingley and Dr May al-Jayyusi. In 1980, Dr al-Jayyusi, a Palestinian poet and translator, founded PROTA, the Project of Translation from Arabic, which set out to make contemporary Arabic literature more accessible to a non-Arabic speaking audience.

The Hostage by Zayd Mutee' Dammaj

The Hostage refers to the main character, a young male adolescent from one of the many tribes that the Imam wished to control by kidnapping the sons of the tribal leaders. Hostage-taking has a long history in Yemen and was often used by ruling Imams to ensure tribal loyalty. Tradition dictated that the hostages should be well-fed and educated - one English traveller to Yemen during the time of Imam Yahya, described the hostage situation, as a kind of 'compulsory Eton' (from Tim Mackintosh-Smith's book, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land.)

Unfortunately, in recent years, hostage-taking, or kidnapping, has become a blight on Yemen's international reputation. Whilst most hostage situations have ended peacefully, there have also been bloody confrontations, such as the one that left four hostages dead in 1998 or the incident involving nine foreign tourists who were abducted in Saada in June 2009. To Dammaj, the Hostage is a potent symbol of Yemen, a country that was isolated from the world by Imam Yahya, who preferred to keep the people of Yemen inside the country and all foreign influences out.

Yemeni protester by Messay.com

The Hostage is not only a hostage, but becomes a duwaydar, which is a kind of servant - a role he volunteers to do, as he believes that it will liberate him from the imprisonment suffered by all of the other boy-hostages. As the novel goes on, it becomes clear that a duwaydar's role involves a lot more than that of a servant, as the older women of the house visit his room at night and use the duwaydar for their own sexual gratification. The duwaydar is supposed to be pre-pubescent and it is only when he claims to have 'become a man' that he is relieved of his nocturnal duties! I must admit, a novel about the sexual exploitation of young boys is a pretty shocking thing for a reader in the West and I can't begin to imagine how the novel is perceived by readers of Arabic.

Of course, the role of women in the novel is also of crucial importance. The older women are sexually frustrated and abusing a young boy in this way is seen to be somehow 'more acceptable' than having relations with a grown man. The women are also hostages, in a sense, they have no real freedom and are mostly kept inside the palace. A notable exception is the Sharifa Hafsa, who is kind to the young hostage and forms an attachment to him that is emotional, rather than sexual. A sharifa is a kind of princess, supposedly a direct descendant of Ali. Sharifas weren't permitted to marry below their social status, which meant that an awful lot of them remained unmarried (hence sexually frustrated!).

Women protesters by messay.com

Interestingly, like Cities of Salt, The Hostage records the impact of inventions, such as the radio and motorcar, on Yemeni society. Like the descriptions in Cities of Salt, these inventions are regarded with a mixture of fear and excitement in The Hostage. Despite the Imam's distrust of all things foreign, the appearance of these inventions in the novel heralds the dawn of a new age and a curiosity about the outside world, even amongst the Imam's most loyal followers.

When I was blogging about Rajasthan, I became aware of the existence of the book of births, deaths and marriages, which is ritually important to Rajasthani tribes. This also appears in Dammaj's novel, as the most important book, after the Qu'ran, to the Yemeni tribesmen.

Yemeni protest in Washington by messay.com

The Hostage is, perhaps, just as relevant now, as when it was first published. With the ongoing struggle in Yemen to oust the country's leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen has yet to finalise its contribution to the Arab spring. Despite fierce opposition and an attempt on his life, Saleh continues to hold the entire country hostage, in a way that is only too reminiscent of the Imams Yahya and Ahmad.

Image credits:

The images of Yemeni protesters are by Messay Shoakena, who is a photographer based in Washington DC. You can see more of Messay's images on his website. Thanks for sharing these images with us, using the Creative Commons License

Yemen - Coffee and Qat

2011-08-28T11:00:00.002+01:00

It wasn't until I was blogging about the Netherlands that I learned that coffee originally came from Yemen. Well, as with a lot of Yemeni things, it probably originated in Ethiopia but, I guess, Yemen was the first place that coffee was cultivated and turned into something palatable. Whilst Yemen had been exporting coffee beans for quite a while, it was the Dutch who stole the young coffee plants and replanted them in their colonies in (what is now) Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The rest, as they say, is history.

Coffee plantation by ineedcoffee.com

Coffee, from the Arabic word قهوة‎ (qahwah) came to Europe in two directions; exported as beans through the Ottoman Empire to Istanbul and Vienna - it later took Amsterdam, Paris and London by storm, resulting in a proliferation of coffee houses or cafes in 17th century Europe. Looking at the top coffee-growing countries today, it's hard to believe that Yemen was ever at the centre of the trade in coffee beans. Brazil is, by far, the biggest coffee-growing country, followed by Vietnam, Colombia and Indonesia. Ethiopia has also reclaimed its tradition of coffee-growing and is currently the world's 5th largest coffee producer.

In terms of coffee consumption (per head of population), it might surprise you to know that people from Finland, Norway and Iceland consume more coffee than anywhere else. In Ireland we also consume a lot of coffee, 3.5 kilos per person annually, according to 2007 figures from the World Research Institute. In Britain, it's a lot less (2.8) and in the United States a bit more (4.2). The global average in 2007 was 1.3 kilos per person annually. Interestingly, Yemen's coffee consumption per person is almost zero!

Coffee Art by ineedcoffee.com

Whether coffee is beneficial or harmful is debatable - I'm sure the major coffee producing companies would point out the benefits of drinking coffee and it certainly helps increase concentration and stimulates the brain. My rule-of-thumb is that most things are good for you in moderation. I usually have one cup of coffee per day, first thing in the morning or as soon as I get to work. I didn't drink coffee until I was in my early 20's, but I'd find it hard to give up now, so I guess it's pretty addictive! I drank all kinds of coffee for years but then something changed and I can no longer stand instant coffee. I didn't use to be such a coffee snob but I've come to the conclusion that instant coffee is vile, just like drinking coffee-flavoured hot water! I prefer ground coffee in a French press (or сafetière).

Qat plant by A Davey

It's interesting to compare the fate of coffee to that other (in)famous Yemeni plant, Qat. They're similar in many ways - both plants increase concentration and can be addictive. Both are important in social situations and mostly consumed by adults. Qat is chewed rather than drunk. It isn't consumed by nearly as many people every day as coffee is and, if you're wondering why you've never heard of it, that's probably because it's banned in most of the Western world.

Qat contains cathin and cathinone, which are like amphetamines that stimulate the brain, suppress appetite and cause a mild euphoria. In Yemen, qat is consumed mostly (but not exclusively) by men, especially in the hour or so before sunset, when men gather to socialise, talk and listen to devotional music. In his book, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land Tim Mackintosh-Smith rather poetically describes the importance of qat to Yemeni culture. He calls this time the Hour of Solomon and says the songs that are sung then are 'as perilous as they are beautiful'.

Qat at an Ethiopian market by A Davey

Categorised as a drug in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf states, the consumption of qat is strictly forbidden throughout the rest of Arabia. It's also banned in Scandinavia, France, Germany, Ireland, Canada and the United States. Interestingly, the use of qat in the UK is legal. I don't imagine it's available at every corner store and I'm pretty sure its use is mostly restricted to immigrants of Yemeni, Somali and Ethiopian origin. Still, it would be interesting to find out how widespread the use of qat is here in the UK. I reckon it's only a matter of time before the new coalition government redefines qat as a controlled substance, in line with the laws of other European countries.

I guess if caffeine hadn't taken off in Europe in the way that it has, it could well have been classified as a drug. It's interesting to think that one man's socially acceptable stimulant is another man's controlled substance! I'm going to leave you with a song by the popular Yemeni singer, Mohamad al-Harithi which is typical of the songs sung during the Hour of Solomon.

Image credits:

The coffee images are by flickruser INeedCoffee/Coffee Hero aka Michael Allen Smith, a coffee enthusiast from Seattle. Michael has a very amusing and interesting website which is well worth a visit.

The images of qat and the at the market in Ethiopia was taken by flickruser A Davey who is from the Pacific northwest. You can see more of his photos on flickr

Thanks to Michael and A Davey for sharing these images with us using the Creative Commons license

Yemen - the Queen of Sheba and the women of Yemen

2011-08-20T10:00:00.134+01:00

One of the things people from Yemen seem to be quite proud of is the country's claim to be the birthplace of the Queen of Sheba. Sheba is also claimed by the Ethiopians, who called her Makeda and I'm beginning to see a pattern of cultural exchange that has blurred the edges of Yemeni, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali culture.

Archaeological evidence from Ma'rib, a town in the desert just east of Sana'a, is offered as proof of the existence of Sheba. Whether or not Sheba was a real personage hardly seems to be the point - it's what she symbolised that has become so important, not only to the Yemenis, but to the early Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Sheba and King Solomon

Solomon and Sheba by Piero della Francesca

Just as there is a paucity of historical evidence of the Queen of Sheba's existence, I've also found that there are very few interpretations (in the Western world) of the Queen of Sheba's life - the ones that do exist relate to her visit to Solomon, the King of Israel. Most accounts tell how the Queen of Sheba had heard of Solomon's great wisdom and faith, so she travelled all the way to Israel to see his kingdom with her own eyes. She has been depicted as being wealthy beyond belief and brought gifts of gold, spices and jewels which, I'm sure, made an impression on Solomon and his subjects.

As part of my research, I've read Kings 10:10, the paragraph in the Bible that relates to Solomon and Sheba. It's an incredibly short version of the story and I can't help wondering what was left unsaid. Other accounts have linked Solomon and Sheba romantically, but the Bible, rather enigmatically, merely states that 'King Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba everything she asked for'.

The Hollywood movie

Of course, the Hollywood version, King Vidor's 1959 epic, Solomon and Sheba is a lot more exciting. Not only does Sheba (played by the Italian beauty, Gina Lollobrigada) seduce King Solomon (played by Yul Brynner, who was born in Vladivostok), but she is also partly responsible for the fall of Solomon's kingdom and the Hebrew God's destruction of Solomon's temple, when he allows Sheba and her cortege to hold a festival in honour of the Sheban love god, Ragan.

It's a great movie and I really enjoyed watching it. I'm posting the link to a YouTube video, which shows one of the movies' most famous scenes, ie. the pagan orgy in honour of Ragan. Gina Lollobrigada is fantastic and the scene reminded me of a Lady Gaga video. Whilst Lady Gaga might only raise a few eyebrows in our modern times, Lollobrigada's dance in this scene caused quite a stir in late 1950's America!

Claude Lorrain's Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

Also as part of my research for this blog, I went to see Claude Lorrain's 1648 painting The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, which hangs in the National Gallery, here in London. The Sheban port, as depicted by Lorrain, looks nothing like the photos and images I've seen of Yemen, but Lorrain's approach to this story was innovative, not only because of the way he used light in the painting, but also because of the subject matter - most artists and writers have only been concerned with Sheba's visit to Israel, whereas Claude chose to focus on her departure from Sheba, reflecting his interest in the theme of voluntary exile.

The arrival of the Queen of Sheba

Handel's oratorio, Solomon, based on biblical stories about the wise king, was first performed at the Theatre Royal (now known as the Royal Opera House) in Covent Garden, London on the 17th of March 1749. The sinfonia from Solomon is better known as The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba and is a piece of music I have loved for many years. I'm posting a video from YouTube below, so you can enjoy this piece of music firsthand (if you're not already familiar with it).

Soft diplomacy or cultural subjugation

I've been thinking a lot about Sheba's story and how it can be interpreted. The optimist in me sees the story of Solomon and Sheba as one of the first portrayals of a diplomatic mission - one that wasn't based on war and conquest, but the exchange of gifts and cultural ideas. In the biblical version of this story, Sheba leaves Israel peacefully and you get the impression that both Sheba and Israel have been enriched by this cultural contact.

I get the impression that, for many Yemenis, Sheba represents the 'glory days' of Yemen, when it was a land rich beyond any one's wildest dreams. There are echoes of Yemeni history in the story of Sheba and, I think she is more a symbol of fertility and bountiful harvests, than an actual person. Like a fallen queen, Yemen in more modern times has been culturally subjugated to the influences of a wider world. Early Christians interpreted this story as the subjugation of pagan beliefs by monotheism. For modern Yemenis, Sheba symbolises a country that is passive, female and exploited.

Women in Yemeni society

Yemeni woman by localsurfer

The position of women in Yemeni society leaves a lot to be desired. According to the Washington-based NGO, Freedom House Yemeni women have limited access to judicial institutions and the majority of law makers are men. In the tribes, there does seem to be a strong role for women, but this varies from region to region and, in general, Yemeni women are discriminated against under the law. For example, women in Yemen need a letter of approval from their 'guardian', before they can marry a non-Yemeni. Bizarrely, Yemeni law considers the testimony of two women to be equal to that of one man.

There are no laws to protect women from sexual harassment at work - that is, if a woman can find a job, literacy levels amongst Yemeni women are incredibly low - according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 61.6% of women in Yemen are illiterate, which is double the illiteracy rate for men. I'm not quite sure where the Queen of Sheba would fit in to modern-day Yemen!

Image credits:

The image of Piero della Francesca's painting Legend of the True Cross - the Queen of Sheba Meeting with Solomon hangs in the Basilica de San Francesco which is Arezzo, in Italy. This image is copyright-free, as it's in the public domain

The image of Claude Lorrain's Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba is also in the public domain.

The image of the young Yemeni woman was published on Flickr by localsurfer who is from Barnstaple in North Devon. You can see more of his images on his website. Also, it's worth having a look at the information he's written about this image, to get an idea of what life is like for women in Yemen. Thanks localsurfer for sharing this image with us using the Creative Commons License.

Yemen - How I made Saltah

2011-08-14T14:11:00.000+01:00

Research into the national dish of Yemen very quickly brought me to a dish called سلتة Saltah, which is very close to the Arabic word سلت which means salt. I don't know what the real thing tastes like, but the version I made wasn't too salty. There seems to be only one recipe for Saltah knocking about on various different websites and this was the one I used.

Ingredients:

The Ingredients for Saltah, Hilbeh and Zhug

كوب واحد من النفط one cup of oil
بصل 2 onions
البطاطا 4/6 potatoes
لحم مفروم minced meat (I used beef, but you could also use lamb)
لحوم البقر الأسهم beef stock
طماطم 2 tomatoes
بيض 2 eggs (which should be beaten)
عصير الليمون lemon juice
تشيليز 3/4 chillies
فصوص ثوم 6 cloves of garlic
حلبة نبات fenugreek seeds
كمون ground cumin
هال ground cardamom
كزبرة fresh coriander

Preparing Hilbeh and Zhug

Preparing Hilbeh

Preparing Zhug

Saltah is usually served with two condiments called Hilbeh and Zhug which are stirred into the dish at the very end. I prepared these first, so I could put them in the fridge and chill them slightly.

Spices

Zhug and Hilbeh

Hilbeh حلبة نبات is a green-coloured condiment based on fenugreek. It was my first time ever cooking with this spice (the English name comes from the Latin for Greek hay). Fenugreek is popular in Indian cooking and is often used to make curries. I steeped the seeds overnight in a glass of water, as recommended by the recipe, then blitzed them in the food processor, with some water, 2 garlic cloves, a green chilli, chopped coriander and the juice of a lemon.

To make Zhug مهدي الشوق I mixed some red chillies, oil and coriander with 4 garlic cloves, ground cumin and cardamom seeds. Zhug is a popular condiment throughout the Middle East and I'm sure many of us have had this on kebabs or falafel.

Preparing the Saltah

Fry the onion

Fry the beef

To make the Saltah, you start by frying the onions in a frying pan, then adding the minced meat and frying this until it is brown. I fried the meat and onions in a pan, then added them to the main stewing pot later - this was mostly because I'd underestimated the amount of space I would need to cook this dish - however, it worked out quite well doing it this way, so I would also cook the meat separately in future.

Heat the tomatoes and potato

Add the beef stock

I parboiled the potatoes before adding them to the main pot with the tomatoes (which I had salted) and fresh coriander. In retrospect, I probably should have added the coriander later. Once the tomatoes had softened a bit, I added beef stock and brought the mixture to the boil. It was at this point that I added the meat and onions to the pot and reduced the heat.

Saltah

The original recipe recommends simmering for one hour, but I was in a bit of a hurry, so I let the ingredients simmer for forty minutes, before stirring in the egg and adding the condiments.

It was a really straight-forward dish to make and incredibly delicious. I made quite a bit portion, so we also had Saltah for dinner the next day. I'm sure you could add rice to the mixture (which would make it a bit like kabsa) but we decided to eat it with yummy slices of country bread.

Traditional Yemeni food in London

The Queen of Sheba restaurant

Halloumi starter

I decided to add a new element to my learning experience this time, by visiting a traditional Yemeni restaurant. I'm sure that most of the world's cuisines are represented in London and, sure enough, there is a traditional Yemeni restaurant, not far from Paddington Station, called The Queen of Sheba.

Kabsa Lahan

I went there with some friends and, this being Ramadan, the restaurant was pretty empty, most of the bookings being later in the evening, after sunset. Unfortunately, I couldn't try their Saltah, but we had a range of starters - halloumi, falafel, moussaka and kibbah (which I hadn't tried before). We all ordered lamb-based dishes and I tried the Kabsa Laham which was quite good. The portions were massive and, for the first time ever, my partner couldn't finish his dinner (he's usually asking for more!)

It was a nice addition to the learning experience and one I hope to repeat in future blogs.

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me - please feel free to use this under the following Creative Commons license:

Attribution
Non-commercial
Share alike

Yemen - the Madhab (مذهب) or Islamic schools of thought

2011-08-07T11:00:00.240+01:00

It's quite apt to be blogging about a Muslim country during Ramadan. I'd love to say that I planned it that way, but that's not the case. When I was blogging about Saudi Arabia, I touched on the subject of Islam in a very general way, but it's such a rich and fascinating subject area, it will take me quite a few blog posts, I'd imagine to begin to understand the complexities of the Islamic faith.

Shi'a or Sunni?

One thing I learned about Islam when I was doing research about Saudi Arabia, is that it's an incredibly diverse faith. There is no centralised power structure and history has led different branches of Islam in different directions, depending on which caliphate (from the Arabic خلافة khilafa meaning 'succession') you or your tribe believed in.

I'm sure most people will be aware that there are two main branches of Islam, أهل السنة or Sunni, who make up the majority of Muslim believers and شيعة or Shi'a, predominant in Iran and parts of Iraq. I'm still struggling to understand the difference between Sunni and Shi'a, but it seems to relate to a split that happened back in the early days of the development of Islam.

So what is Shi'a?

Arabia Felix by eesti

Followers of Shi'a believe that Muhammad's cousin Ali was his rightful successor, not the three Caliphs or successors (Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman) followed by orthodox Sunni believers. Ali's succession gained early support in (what is now) Iraq and his final resting place is the incredibly important Shi'a shrine حرم الإمام علي in Najaf, Iraq. The politics of Islam seemed to have moved away from Arabia pretty early on, as Syria and Iraq championed these first rival factions of Islamic belief. I'm just beginning to understand the significance of the Iraqi holy sites to Muslim and, more specifically, Shi'a believers.

I'm also trying to understand what all of this means to Islam in the 21st century and what I've understood is that the independence of the Shi'a imams from the rigidness of the Quranic scriptures and the Hadiths has given the Irani imams power that goes beyond the laws of the state. On one hand, Shi'a seems to have a greater capability to deal with 21st century life. On the other hand, belief in the god-given rights of imams and end-of-the-world predictions about the coming of مهدي al-Madhi, a kind of 'messiah', make Shi'a seem arcane and backward.

The Schools of Shi'a

Yemen countryside by eesti

Shi'a is further divided into three main schools:

اثنا عشرية or ithna asharriyah often called the Twelvers in English - is the biggest school of belief in Shi'a and predominates in Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Lebanon

الإسماعيليون or Ismaili often called the Seveners in English - they seem to be a very small sect with a minority of believers spread throughout the Islamic world.

الزيدية or the Zaydi is a Shi'a school very closely connected to Yemen - they are know as the realists of Shi'a and split off from the other two branches very early on so, although they believe in the succession of Ali, they don't seem have the same belief in the god-given powers of the Imam or al-Mahdi

The schools of Sunni

Doorway in Ta'izz by eesti

Sunni believers also fall into various different schools or Madhab. I can't even begin at this point to understand the difference between these, so for now, I'll content myself with identifying the four main ones and where they have most of their followers:

حنفي or Hanafi is the main Madhab in India, Pakistan, Central Asia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, parts of Iraq and amongst Muslim communities in the UK and Germany.

مالكي or Melikiyah is the predominant Madhab in north and west Africa (but not in Egypt or Sudan) - it's also the school of jurisprudence followed by most Muslims in Eritrea.

شافعي or Shafi'i spreads in a great arc across the Indian ocean, from the Muslim populations of Ethiopia, Sudan,Yemen and Somalia to Malaysia, Indonesia and South East Asia.

حنبلى or Hambela is the school of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia.

There is also a Madhab called الاباضية or Ibadhi which is neither Sunni nor Shi'a and is the dominant school of Islam in Oman and Zanzibar.

Of course, all of this is an over-simplification of the spread of Islamic beliefs and each country, as well as many non-Muslim countries, will have a range of Madhabs and believers, from the main schools of Sunni and Shi'a, as well as more obscure Madhabs not mentioned in this blog.

Islam in Yemen

Mosque in San'a by eesti

Yemen seems to have a characteristic north-south split when it comes to religion, with northern Yemen following the Shi'a school of Zaydi and southern Yemen following the Sunni school of Shafi'i. By all accounts, both schools are in the moderate camps of Sunni and Shi'a so (perhaps?) not all that different to each other in terms of religious practice. I get the sense that, whilst religion is important to Yemeni culture, it doesn't seem to dominate all aspects of Yemeni life, in contrast to the form of Islam practiced across the border in Saudi Arabia.

I look forward to learning more about Islam in future blog posts, now that I have added another piece to the puzzle!

Image credits:

For this blog post I've chosen to highlight the work of flickuser eesti who is from Saitami prefecture, just outside Tokyo and Japan. He seems to have photographed half of the world, so it's well worth visiting his photostream on flickr. He's also photographed Uzbekistan and Russia and has a very cute teddy bear who crops up in different places!

Thanks eesti for sharing your photos with us under the Creative Commons License.

Yemen - Allah, al-Watan, ath-Thawrah, al-Wahdah!

2011-07-30T12:47:00.001+01:00

It's more than 3,000 miles from Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan to Sana'a, the capital of الجمهورية اليمنية (Al Jumhūriyyah al Yamaniyyah - ie. the Republic of Yemen), the next place on my list!

The basics

At around 204,000 square miles (or 555,000 square kilometres), Yemen is slightly larger than Spain, more than six times bigger than Scotland and slightly smaller than the Canadian province of Manitoba. It has an estimated population of 24 million people and 43% of the population is less than 14 years old (CIA World Factbook). The capital city, Sana'a, located in the country's highlands, is about 90 miles from the Red Sea and 185 miles north of Aden, a port city which will probably be more well-known to my British and European readers.

A bridge between the Arab world and East Africa

Young girl in Sana'a by kebnekaise

I think I know as little about Yemen, at this point, as most people in Europe. I did touch on Yemeni culture and the diaspora in the Gulf states, when I was researching my blog posts for Saudi Arabia. One thing I learned about Yemen during this research is how different it is to the other states in Arabia. Yemen is much poorer than Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates and lots of Yemeni men travel to the Gulf states for work. The local economy, as in many poor countries, depends on the remittances being sent home by these workers. Interestingly, whilst Yemen's relations with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states has been pretty tense in the past, Yemen has had a much closer relationship with Egypt and countries like Somalia and Ethiopia, that are culturally linked (putting Yemen at the centre of a Semitic cultural sphere, rather than at the edge of the Arab world).

A tale of two Yemens

It can't be nice, being looked upon as some kind of poor relation and I'm beginning to sense the complexity of the Yemeni identity. Steeped in history, with a capital city that is a UNESCO world heritage site and such amazing potential for tourism, Yemen's recent history, unfortunately, has left most Westerners with the impression that it's a haven for kidnappers, pirates, revolutionaries and Islamic extremists. An additional factor in researching the history and culture of Yemen is trying to get my head around the two Yemens, North and South.

The North - الشمال

First, there is the culturally and politically dominant northern part of Yemen, containing the capital and a large chunk of the country's population, this is the Yemen that was part of the Ottoman Empire, gaining independence after the First World war, as the Kingdom of Yemen and in the 60's, after an Egyptian-style revolution, the Yemen Arab Republic.

The South - الجنوب

Then there is the South, with its capital at Aden, which came under British influence, as a convenient stopping point on the route to India. When the north gained its independence in 1918, Britain continued to govern the southern part of Yemen, as part of British India, until 1937, when the status of Aden was changed to 'Crown Colony'. British rule in Aden became increasingly unpopular and the short-lived Federation of South Arabia in the 60's was quickly replaced by the socialist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.

Unity - الوحدة

Sana'a by kebnekaise

Despite numerous attempts to reunite the two parts of Yemen, it wasn't until the 22nd of May 1990 that North and South Yemen were finally reunited to form the modern-day Republic of Yemen. I must hold my hand up at this point and admit that I have no recollection whatsoever of the re-unification of Yemen. Germany, yes, Yemen . . .uhm, I guess I was busy studying for my Inter Cert (an Irish exam, that comes halfways through secondary school, sort of like GCSE's in the UK). Mind you, I don't remember other important things that happened on May 22nd 1990, like the launch of Windows 3.0, although possibly the significance of this (digital) revolution wasn't recognised by most of us at the time!

Yemen's flag is typical of flags in the Middle East and North Africa, ie. with red, white and black stripes, it looks very similar to the flags of Egypt and Syria. The former flags of North and South Yemen included symbols that represented the political nature of each of these countries, whereas the flag adopted after 1990, leaves the white stripe, rather neutrally, blank.

Motto of the Republic of Yemen

In the opening title of this blog post, I've given a transcription in Roman letters of the country's motto:

لله، الوطن، الثورة، الوحدة
I was struck by how simple and direct the motto is and it seems to capture the essence of Yemeni political life very well!

The skyscrapers of Shibam by kebnekaise

لله، 'Allah'
الوطن، 'al-Watan' (home/country)
الثورة، 'ath-Thawrah' (revolution)
الوحدة 'al-Wahdah' (unity)

Yemeni themes

I've just started researching possible themes for Yemen and I've already come up with some areas that I would like to look into further, such as the Queen of Sheba, the use of qat, the history of the coffee trade, the trade in frankincense and the island of Socotra. I've bought some classical Yemeni music, Mohammad al-Harithi's L'Heure de Salomon recorded on CD for the Institut du Monde Arab. I've been listening to this all morning and it's very transcendental, like the Indian Bhajan (devotional music) I blogged about in May 2010. I'm also going to try my hand at the Yemeni national dish, Saltah and I've got a few books lined up, including a well-known Yemeni novel.

The peasant of Hadramawt by kebnekaise

I hope you'll join me, as I learn about Yemen. Comments etc are much appreciated, as long as they aren't intentionally offensive to Yemeni people or culture.

Image credits:

It's always exciting finding images on Flickr.com that illustrate the places I'm blogging about. My research for Yemen has brought me to the work of kebnekaise aka Davide, who is from Trento in the north of Italy. He seems to have travelled a lot in the north of Europe, Svalbard, Iceland etc., but the photos I've used to illustrate this blog post come from a trip he did to Yemen in 2000.

I couldn't put all of the photos here, but you can see the rest of the Yemeni set on his photostream. You can also see his images on his website.

Thanks Davide for sharing these images with us using the Creative Commons License.

Xinjiang/Uyghuristan - saying goodbye to the Music of Central Asia

2011-07-23T12:52:00.000+01:00

Xinjiang/Uyghuristan is approximately 7 times the size of Britain and almost 4 times the size of California. It has one sixth of China's land area but, with over 20 million people, barely a sixtieth of China's population. As usual, when I'm writing my final blog post, I feel that there is so much more I could learn about this region of the world, but the time has come to say goodbye!

A summary of the topics

My learning experience about Xinjiang/Uyghuristan has given me an opportunity to learn about the history of the region and the politics of Xinjiang versus East Turkestan. I've also learned a lot about the geography of the region and the diversity of its landscape. Not just deserts and mountains, but the Turfan Depression, the Dzungarian steppe and the fertile Ili Valley. I learned how to cook Dà pán jī and how to make my own noodles. I learned about Khoja Iparhan, the Fragrant concubine and how the Occident represented adventure and exoticism to the Chinese, similar to the way that the Orient was perceived by 19th century Europeans. I learned about the magical qualities of Jade, how important this stone has been in the development of Chinese history and China's relationship with the people on its Western borders. I learned about the Uyghur language and where it sits in the Turkic language family. The Indo-European mummies of Tarim gave me an opportunity to explore the origins of race and the specific nature of racism in China.

Other areas of interest

Again, there are many other things I've learned during the past month or so, but not had time to write a blog post about. I'll try to summarise these below so, if you're interested in finding out more, I'd encourage you to do some research into topics that I have only had a chance to scratch the surface of. These include:

Uyghur demonstration in Helsinki, July 2011

- the history of Islam in China, including the Chinese muslims, the Hui people.
- K2, the second highest mountain in the world, which is situated on Xinjiang/Uyghuristan's southern border.
- Nuclear testing in the Taklamakan desert
- the Tocharians, their language and culture.
- the Parthians and the origin of the phrase 'a Parthian (or parting) shot'
- the story of the Chinese princess who gave away the secret of silk
- the Legend of Prester John
- Wuer Kaixi, a Uyghur who was one of the student leaders during the Tiananmen rebellion
- the role of Eunuchs in the Chinese Imperial court
- the symbolism of oleaster
- the Taiping rebellion (hopefully I'll be able to come back to this one!)
- the story of Yakub Beg and his independent Kashgaria in the 1860's
- George Hunter and the China Inland Mission
- the Xinjiang Military Region Production and Construction Corps "August First" Field Army Swearing to Defend the Thought of Mao Zedong to the Death - probably the longest name ever for a military regiment (I wonder if they used an acronym?)
- the claim that there were (or even are) gulags in Xinjiang/Uyghuristan

The Jiayuguan Gate by Richard Towell

- the Jiayuguan Gate in the Great Wall of China, often the last sight of China for exiles heading West.
- the Manchus of the Ili Valley
- the development of the Han Chinese city of Shihezi, just north of the capital Urumqi.
- the Uyghur diaspora and the challenges faced by the East Turkestan 'government in exile'
- the cause of goitre, attributed to the lime and magnesia salts of the southern Taklamakan
- the lake monster of Kanas
- the story of Tutuqash and the Mangqys

As you can imagine, I could have gone on blogging about Xinjiang/Uyghuristan for some time to come!

The sound of Central Asia

One topic I do want to draw your attention to is the rich musical traditions of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan and Central Asia, in general. When I was preparing to go to Uzbekistan, I bought a CD of classical Uzbek and Tajik music, which I played over and over again, as I was packing my bags and getting ready for my 'big adverture' on the other side of the world! Whilst the musical traditions of Central Asia have a lot in common with music throughout the Islamic world, I couldn't help noticing the influence of, what I perceived to be, Chinese music, on the music of Uzbekistan. I think it was the sound of wind instruments, like the surnay (known as in shawm English, an ancestor of the oboe) that made me think Central Asian music sounded slightly Chinese.

Two shawms or surnay by tomfbh

The chanting that is so common in the Central Asian classical tradition sounds very much like chanting throughout the Arab world - but the solo singing, especially that of female artists, has a pitch that wouldn't sound out of place in a Chinese Opera. As with everything else in Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, I think the music is an end result of centuries of cultural interaction. Whether or not the wind instruments came from China, or the drums came from India or Arabia, Central Asian music has a sound that is pretty unique - it can sound both Western and Eastern, Islamic and Oriental.

The most popular form of traditional music in Xinjiang/Uyghuristan is a style called Muqam, a set of 12 musical suites, which is usually grouped into three parts; the muqaddime or introduction, the dastan or narrative songs, usually with a set text and the meshrep which is a faster beat and gets people dancing at weddings! It's a shame I've not had time to delve deeper into the music of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan but, if you're interested in finding out more, the website of the London Uyghur Ensemble has more information about Uyghur music than I could ever give you. As well as links to recordings of various instruments, their website also has great research documents by Rachel Harris, who is a Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at London's School of Oriental and African studies.

I'm going to leave you with a video from YouTube, which features a performance by the London Uyghur Ensemble. It's a recording of the Penjigah Muqam, which is popular in the Ili Valley. The picture quality isn't great, but the most important thing is to sit back, listen and enjoy!

On Learning about the World next month, Y . . .

Image credits:

The photo of the Uyghur demonstrators in Helsinki was posted by Amnesty International Finland - you can find out more about this demonstration on their flickr stream and see a news report on the situation in Xinjiang/Uyghuristan at their website

The photo of the Jiayuguan Gate (aka Jiayu Pass) was shared with the world by flickruser Richard Towell - you can see more information about Richard at his profile page on Flickr

The image of the surnay/shawms was posted on flickr by tomfbh - you can see more of Tom's photos at his flickr photostream.

Xinjiang/Uyghuristan - Separate Tables and the History of Race

2011-07-07T19:45:00.005+01:00

As part of my research on Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, I've read two books that were incredibly useful. The first of these, Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang by Christian Tyler was a great overview of the history of this region, right up until 2003, when the book was published. Of course, the period since 2003 has been incredibly important for Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, but a lot happened in the region in the 80's and 90's, which we don't often hear about it. The second book I read was Racism: A very short Introduction by Ali Rattansi, part of the Oxford University Press (OUP) series I've mentioned in previous blog posts.

Skeletons in the Desert

In Christian Tyler's words 'The climate of Xinjiang may be hostile to the living, but it is unusually kind to the dead'. The early 20th-century craze for archaeology brought a number of (generally European) explorers and archaeologists to the Taklamakan desert and the Tarim basin, where they found mummified bodies dating back as far as 1900 BCE. In modern Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, the topic of race is a controversial one. Most people outside China might see the Uyghurs as the native inhabitants of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, whereas the Chinese claim to have occupied this region, even before the Uyghurs came along.

Genetic analysis of the Tarim mummies suggests that they are both wrong. In fact, it's believed that the original inhabitants of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan were an Indo-European tribe called the Tocharians. Red-haired skeletons wearing tartan seems somewhat out of place in Western China and I'm sure the evidence must be somewhat discomforting for modern inhabitants of the region, both the Uyghurs and the Chinese!

What is race?

Young girl at Chinese New Year by Yewenyi

When we think of race in the West, often the first thing that comes to mind is Black African versus White European. In an effort to understand the concept of race, I wanted to read about it in a wider context, so I've chosen Xinjiang/Uyghuristan as my reference point to relate everything back to. Of course, racial differences go beyond white/black and, in the case of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, there is a very obvious clash of cultures that is, more often than not, given a racial context which pits the Turkic Uyghurs against the Han Chinese.

One of the most important things I learned from Racism: A very short Introduction is that there is no such thing as race. There are different colours of skin, different shapes of the eye or mouth, different genetic features that determine everything from what height we are, to whether our hair is frizzy or straight - but none of this constitutes complete identification with a racial category and, genetically at least, there is very little difference between someone who is perceived to be Chinese, than someone who is perceived to be Black African or White European. When we talk about different races, often we're really talking about different cultures.

So where did race come from?

The development of science from the 17th-century onwards, led to an obsession in the Victorian Age (19th century) with classification and 'putting things into boxes/categories'. As Europeans started colonising the rest of the world and wiping out whole indigenous populations, (eg as the Spanish did in Central America, or the British in places like Tasmania), there was a real need to justify the expansion of European power. Science, as much as religion, provided European conquerors with the moral argument they needed to colonise the rest of the world.

It was convenient to state that the people Europeans encountered in the New World were not really human at all, but somehow racially inferior. Likewise, the people of sub-Saharan Africa, with whom Europeans had long-standing contact, were categorised as sub-human, a convenient justification, backed up by the new sciences, for the wholesale export of West African tribesmen and women to the cotton plantations of the Caribbean and the United States.

So what about racism?

Although I believe that there is no such thing as race, unfortunately, racism is a concept that is all too real for most societies in the early 21st century. The term was first coined relatively recently (in the 1930's), to describe the Nazis' anti-Semitic policy of Judenrein, an early 20th-century form of ethnic cleansing. Whilst in Ancient History, the colour of someones skin seems to have had little relevance, as to whether or not they would become a Roman Emperor (eg Septemus Severus) or an Egyptian Pharaoh (eg. the Pharaohs of Kush), xenophobia, ie. the hatred of strangers or foreigners, seems to have been around for a long time.

Anti-Nazi League badge by Leo Reynolds

Although the Jews don't constitute a separate race, they are a minority group that has suffered incredible hatred and discrimination, particularly in Western Europe, since the time of Chaucer and the Spanish Reconquista (see my previous blogpost about the Sephardi philosopher, Baruch de Spinoza). Likewise, being Irish, I always feel a bit strange ticking a separate box in equality monitoring forms, as I certainly don't feel racially different to other people who are white and living in Britain! Irish people have also suffered incredible 'racism', being depicted as monkeys in 19th-century British and American propaganda and with British ethnologists, such as John Beddoe, claiming that Irish skulls were africanoid (and he didn't mean it as a compliment!)

Can only white people be racist?

Being born into a very 'white' society, I didn't have any friends growing up who identified as black or Asian, or anything other than Irish! Luckily, being born into an culturally homogeneous community was no barrier to understanding other cultures, I think it depends on how you, as an individual, approach different cultures, and the idea that someone from a totally white background (or totally anything background) will somehow be racist, by default, is complete nonsense. When I started travelling around the world, I was lucky enough to have the chance to become friends with people who were from different cultural backgrounds than me.

It wasn't until much later that I realised that it's not only white people who can be racist. I think my first experiences of this were in Uzbekistan, where the local people had completely ostracised a young man who was of mixed Uzbek-African heritage, and in Thailand, where I was really shocked by the racism of my Thai students towards others in their society from Cambodian, Burmese or Lao backgrounds.

Are the Chinese racist?

In answer to the question, Are the Chinese racist? or Are the Uzbeks racist? or Are the Thais racist? then the simplest answer is yes. Yes, in the sense that, culturally, the Chinese (Uzbeks/Thais) have a very strong idea of what it means, and doesn't mean, to be Chinese (Uzbek/Thai). Of course, it's a lot more complex than that and the question itself assumes that there is such a thing as a Chinese (Uzbek/Thai) race in the first place.

Whilst each one of us can approach the question of race from a very personal perspective, there are definitely collective attitudes in a lot of countries that could be considered to be inherently racist. Working with Slovak colleagues in my first teaching job in Bratislava, I was impressed by the fact that they genuinely welcomed me, an openly gay man, as well as my Jewish and Black American colleagues. However, when the conversation turned to Roma communities in Slovakia, my erstwhile tolerant colleagues suddenly seemed a lot less so and I was surprised that a group of people who were so intelligent and reasonable, could have attitudes towards the Roma that appeared to be incredibly narrow-minded and stupid. I guess we're all culturally brain-washed in one way or another and this is the challenge that faces many people in the modern world.

Separate Tables

Chinese Feast by Wootang01

The evidence from Xinjiang/Uyghuristan is pretty damning and Tyler uses the concept of 'separate tables' to describe the cultural divide between the Han Chinese and the Uyghurs. Until 1979, Chinese law forbade intermarriage between Han Chinese and Uyghurs. Although many individuals on both sides have made efforts to bridge the cultural divide, forming friendships and doing business together, intermarriage between Han Chinese and Uyghurs is still something of a taboo. Tyler catalogues some of the terrible incidents of repression of the Uyghurs by Chinese authorities in recent years, everything from job discrimination to language restrictions to imposed birth control. Uyghurs, on their part, use terms like 'the fourteenth nationality' as a slur against those Uyghurs who've learned Chinese and begun to assimilate with Han culture.

I can't hope to do any justice to a discussion on race in a short blog post like this, but it's an area I would like to come back to again, through another cultural or national lens. As to whether or not the original inhabitants of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan were Uyghur, Chinese or Indo-European - it hardly seems relevant to two cultures, Chinese and Turkic, that have had centuries of contact, love, hate and (mis)understanding.

Image credits:

The photo of the young Chinese girl is by flickruser yewenyi aka Brian Yap who is an Engineer from Marrickville in New South Wales, Australia. You can see more of Brian's work on his website.

The image of the Anti-Nazi League badge is by flickruser Leo Reynolds who is from Norwich in England. You can learn more about Leo at his website.

The photo of the Chinese-style feast is by flickruser Wootang01 aka David Woo, who is a teacher, originally from New Jersey, but now living in Hong Kong - he also has a website which deals with his experiences teaching and living in Hong Kong.

Thanks to Brian, Leo and David for sharing these images with us using the Creative Commons License.

Xinjiang/Uyghuristan - siz Uyghurcha bilamsiz?

2011-07-01T14:05:00.000+01:00

Uyghur is a Turkic language, one of the many spoken in a crossbow starting in Western China and finishing in European Turkey. An estimated 180 million people are native speakers of a Turkic language. Not surprisingly, Turkish is the most widely spoken Turkic language, with around 83 million native speakers. Uyghur has between 8 and 10 million speakers, mostly in Western China, but also in other parts of Central Asia and parts of the world where the Uyghur diaspora has settled.

The Uzbek connection

It really surprised me to learn that, according to modern Linguists, Uyghur is more closely related to Uzbek than it is to Kazakh and Kyrgyz. When I lived in Uzbekistan, I had a choice of three languages to learn (Uzbek, Tajik or Russian) and I chose Russian, the safest and easiest option. I did pick up the odd word of Uzbek and certainly got used to hearing the language spoken, in official meetings, at the University in Samarkand and on TV (although not usually at my friends' homes, where people spoke Tajik). I also read a lot about Stalin's linguists and how they defined the Turkic languages of Central Asia in a way that gave a separate linguistic identity to the ethnic peoples of their newly-created Socialist republics. I was left with the impression that Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Karakalpak and others were really a common language, superficially differentiated by Stalinist linguists. I did feel that Uzbek sounded a bit different that the others, but put that down to the fact that my ear was more attuned to the intricacies of Uzbek phonetics.

Looking at the classifications of other 'western' linguists, I find Uzbek is included in a branch of Turkic languages called Chagatai or Southeastern Common Turkic. Granted, Uzbek is in another separate branch within this grouping, but it still surprises me that Uzbek, despite the geographical distance from Western China, would be closer to Uyghur than Kazakh or Kyrgyz, which are right beside Uyghuristan in the geographical continuum.

How languages are classified

Perhaps trying to decide whether Uyghur is closer to Uzbek than it is to Kazakh is splitting hairs somewhat and there are lots of other factors that come into play (historical, economic, political etc) when looking at how languages have influenced each other. It would seem as though the Turkic group is very well-defined and the methods of classifying languages, eg. by vocabulary comparison, provide linguists with consistent and satisfying results.

A very obvious principle of historical linguistics is that the basic words for human existence, such as 'head', 'man', 'family', 'sun' should be similar in languages that share a common ancestor - whereas words for new technological developments, ie. things which might not have existed in the original culture but were introduced by other cultures, through trade or invasion, will generally result in a word that is borrowed from another language family.

Bilingual sign by Toasterhead

English is full of words that have been borrowed from French and Latin and you can imagine the English sitting on the floor eating pig with their fingers before the Norman invasion and sitting on chairs consuming pork with cutlery, after the Normans invaded! In modern times, languages like Icelandic, German, Irish and Welsh have gone to great lengths to find more 'indigenous' ways of describing modern technological developments such as computers, television and radio.

An analysis of Turkic vocabulary

As an experiment, I want to compare a range of words across some of the Turkic languages, to see how similar they really are. I have included Chinese, Tajik and Mongolian to see what influence, if any, non-Turkic neighbours have had on Uyghur. I've used Google Translate for Turkish and Chinese and there's a great website called www.uighurdictionary.com which provided me with the translations to Uyghur that I needed.

English	Turkish	Uzbek	Uyghur	Tajik	Mongolian	Chinese
Man	adam/erkek	adam	er/insan	odam/inson	erkin	Nánzǐ
Mother	Anne	acha	ana	modar	ech	Mǔqīn
Sun	güneş	kun	quayash/aptap	oftob	nar	Yángguāng
Water	su	suv	su	ob	oos	Shuǐ
Finger	parmak	barmoq	barmaq	angusht	khooroo	Shǒuzhǐ
Dog	köpek	it	it	sag	nokhoi	Gǒu
Camel	deve	tuja	töge	shootoor	teme	Luòtuo
Rice	pirinç	plov	gürüch	birinch	tutarga	Shuǐdào
Arrow	ok	uq	oq/tir	tir	soom	Jiàntóu
Train	tren	poyezd	poyuz	poyezd	galt tereg	Huǒchē
Television	televizyon	televizor	téléwiziye	televizor	televiziin gazar	Diànshì
Computer	bilgisayar	kompyuter	kompyutér	kompyuter	kompyuter	Jìsuànjī
electricity	elektrik	svet	éléktir/tok	barkh	tsakheelgan	Diànlì
Airport	havaalanı	aeroport	ayriport	furudgokh	niisekh ongotsni buudal	Jīchǎng
election	seçim	saylov	saylam	intikhob	songool'	Xuǎnjǔ

It's obvious from this comparison that there are fundamental links between Uyghur and the other Turkic languages. There are a few similarities with TajikUyghur, the Chinese influence isn't very apparent from this list, except perhaps with the 'w' sound in téléwiziye, which seems more like Chinese than Russian.

Interestingly, modern Turkish tends to look for more Turkic-sounding words for modern inventions, like the Turkish words for airport and computer. The influence of Mongolian seems to have been negligible, although one of the most interesting comparisons was the word for 'water', which seems to be similar in the Turkic languages, Mongolian and even Chinese.

If you want to hear what Uyghur sounds like, I'm pasting in a video from YouTube. The best thing I could find is a video by Christian missionaries, which is a telling insight into the extent of Western interest in modern Uyghur language.

Image credits and references:

I have a few reference books on Linguistics, that I use when I'm researching for this blog. One of them is Kenneth Katzner's The Languages of the World, which is my 'bible' of language classification.

The sign written in Uzbek, warning drivers to beware of oncoming trains, is from flickuser olerousing who is from Oslo in Norway. You can find out more about Ole on his blog http://olerousing.blogspot.com/

The sign showing a bilingual sign in Uyghur and Chinese is by flickruser toasterhead who is originally from Long Island but now lives in Arlington, Virginia. You can see more on his blog: http://toasterheadsblogosphere.blogspot.com/

Xinjiang/Uyghuristan - the magical qualities of Jade

2011-06-19T15:00:00.209+01:00

The town of Hotan (Chinese Hetian) lies in the south of the Taklamakan desert and was a well-known stop on the southern route of the Silk Road. It was also famous for the jade deposits of the areas two main rivers, the Karakash (Black Jade) and Yurungkash (White Jade). Ancient Chinese societies placed an incredibly high value on jade and developed a passion for this precious stone that is comparable to our modern obsession with diamonds and gold. Jade pebbles and fashioned pieces became the currency of the Silk Road and, more importantly for the history of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, was a real driver for trade between China and the people on its western borders.

So what is Jade?

Jade vase (19th century)

Jade is a stone which can be found in rivers, in the form of pebbles or rocks. It's an incredibly hard stone and difficult to fashion which, no doubt, played a part in increasing its value, as the level of workmanship required to turn jade into jewellery is quite high. There are two main types of jade: nephrite jade is the more common kind and the type found in the Karakash and Yurungkash rivers. Jadeite is less common and, as I understand it, can be found in volcanic areas, as it's somehow formed from volcanic rock.

We mostly associate jade with the colour green, but it can come in a variety of colours and there is a milky white jade from China which is incredibly precious and rare. Nephrite and Jadeite is found all over the world - Mexico, Guatemala, Canada, Switzerland, Burma and New Zealand have all been major sources of the world's jade deposits.

The Importance of Jade to the Chinese

Jade Burial suit by dericafox

Jade has been a constant in Chinese history, as a symbol of great wealth. The radical Yu in Chinese word for jade ying yu, has come to mean any precious stone. Jade was believed to have magical properties and was used to create intriguing burial suits, like the ones found in Mancheng, which are made up of rectangular pieces of jade, held together with silk and designed to cover the entire body. The Ancient Chinese believed that jade could preserve the human body in death and stop if from decaying.

Chinese folklore retains stories of the Jade Emperor, who was the ruler of heaven, earth and hell and was one of the most important gods in traditional Chinese beliefs. Because of its (almost) unbreakable nature, jade was first used to create weapons and later, when the wars were lost or won, it was fashioned into ornamental jewellery which would be worn by the victors (or, more likely, their wives and concubines!)

Understanding the precious Nature of Stones

I must admit, when you sit down and think about it - whether it's jade or diamonds or rubies - you have to wonder why we attach so much importance to bits of rock and stone? Surely the Stone Age is over and we have the modern wonders of plastic, aluminium and steel? I guess the value of precious stones is as status symbols and works of art? The materials they're made from are of limited functional use. After all, even the world's greatest paintings, Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Leonardo Da Vinci's Joconde/Mona Lisa are nothing more than oil and paper! Diamonds and jade aren't edible (always an important factor in the value I personally attach to the world around me!). They can't give you shelter or keep you warm at night! They don't necessarily bring the bearer love or happiness, yet somehow, in this crazy world of ours, we have managed to transform these bits of rock and stone into valuable commodities that people will die for!

Jade around the World

Jadeite was also believed, by the Mayan civilisations of Central America, to have magical qualities. The Motagua River in Guatemala is the only known source of jadeite in the Americas and the rarity of jade elevated it to the level of status symbol in Mayan society. The Maya placed beads of jade in the mouths of their dead, as they believed the stone would hold the spirit of the person, once they had died. Different colours of jade were important and the exact role that this stone played in Mayan religious ceremonies is something of a mystery to modern researchers, giving Guatemalan jade an added magical quality that appeals to the curious modern buyer!

Hei matau by diveofficer

The south island of New Zealand is called Te Wai Pounamu by the Maori people, which means something like 'the land of greenstone (jade) water', greenstone being the local English-language name for jade. Jade is only found in the south island and was also highly valued by the Maori, being given as gifts or passed down as part of your inheritance. They are considered to be taonga or 'cultural treasure' and are often fashioned into neck pendants, like the Hei matau which is a beautiful carving in the shape of a fish hook.

Jade Goody, Jagger et al

Jade has also become popular as a first name - more so for women in Europe and the West, but also for men in other cultures. Probably the most famous Jade in England was Jade Goody, the Big Brother contestant who was loved and hated in equal measure by the British public. She had a fascinating life that ended at the very young age of 27. She died of cervical cancer in 2009.

Another famous Jade is Jade Jagger, the daughter of Mick and Bianca Jagger. Interestingly, Jade Jagger now designs jewellery, which seems quite apt for someone of her name! Younger readers will know all about Jaden Smith, Will Smith's son, who is a famous musician and actor, friend of Justin Bieber and impossibly famous for someone who was born in 1998 (darn I'm feeling old right now!)

The meaning of the word Jade

It might surprise most Jades and Jadens to know that their name comes from the Spanish word for jade, piedra de ijada, which means 'loin stone' - jade being the loin bit. Europeans believed that jade cured illnesses related to loins and kidneys, but I can't help noticing the linguistic similarity to China and East Asia, where Jade Gate and Jade Stalk are euphenisms in erotic literature for parts of the female and male body! There's no doubt about it - Jade is definitely sexy!

All that glisters is not Jade

Jade Dragon from the British Museum (London)

A problem for modern buyers is to distinguish authentic jade/greenstones from the many jade substitutes that are on the market. The quality of jade is not regulated in the same way that diamonds are and even the most expensive jewellers sell 'fake jade', which is often a type of glass, for similar prices to the real thing. Chinese jade is also incredibly difficult to authenticate, even for experienced antiquarians. The Chinese tradition of imitating art, as a form of respect for ancestral culture, means that jade ornaments from the 18th or 19th century will often look exactly the same as those of the 12th or 13th century. So if this blogpost has inspired you to rush out and buy some of these precious stones, get an expert to look at the stones before you invest your hard-earned cash. To paraphrase William Shakespeare, all that glisters is not (necessarily) jade!

Image credits:

The image of the Jade vase is from one of the Black Country museums in England and you can see this exhibit by visiting the museum or checking out its website. I found this image on their flickr profile.

The photo of the Jade Burial suit is by flickuser dericafox who is an astronomer from Pennsylvania State University. You can see more of dericafox's photos at http://www.flickr.com/people/dericafox/

The image of the two Hei matau was taken by flickuser diveofficer - they show two contrasting pendents, one old and one new and I like the way the colours balance against each other. You can see more of diveofficer's photos at his photostream on flickr.com

The image of the Jade Dragon is by native New-Yorker craft*ology who is a librarian and jewellery designer. You can see more of her jewellery at her website.

Thanks to all of the above for sharing your images on flickr using the Creative Commons License.