Liberia - Ten random facts

As usual, I learned more interesting things about Liberia than I have had time to blog about – so I’m going to leave you with some interesting facts about this small West African country, to give you a taste of my wider learning experience.

1. In 1968, Liberia overtook the UK as the country with the highest number of registered ships in the world. This might seem a little bit strange until you find out more about the murky business of ‘flags of convenience’. First used by US companies, who starting registering their ships in Panama in the 1920’s, in an effort to keep costs down, there are now quite a few countries around the world that allow foreign companies to register ships in their country and fly their national flag. Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands are the top three countries of this type – other countries that are seen to operate ‘flags of convenience’ are the Bahamas, Barbados, Cyprus, Honduras, Mongolia (despite the fact that it’s a landlocked country), North Korea and Sri Lanka



Downtown Monrovia by David Sasaki

2. Liberia is sub-divided into fifteen counties and each county has its own flag. The newest county is Gbarpolu, created in 2001, it has a diamond on its flag, no doubt due to Gbarpolu’s proximity to Sierra Leone

3. Before its foundation in the early 19th century, the area which is now Liberia was known as the ‘Pepper coast’ and also as the ‘Grain coast’, in reference to the melegueta pepper which grows there. As a spice, melegueta pepper was also known as ‘grains of paradise’

4. Liberia adopted the British West African pound as its national currency, in 1907. The British West African pound was originally used by Liberia’s English-speaking neighbours in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Ghana. Liberia switched to the US dollar in 1943 and this was the country’s main currency until 1982. Liberians now use their own currency and one US dollar currently buys around 80 Liberian dollars

The Mamba Point motorcycle shot by David Sasaki

5. The US company, Firestone, crops up again and again in Liberia’s history. A source of employment for local people, Firestone could also potentially be seen as a source of exploitation of local resources and labour and may have been somehow involved in the Liberian slavery/forced labour scandal, investigated by the League of Nations in the 1930’s. At one point, Firestone owned 4,000 km2 of Liberia, which they had hoped to turn into the world’s largest rubber plantation.

6. Although I read a lot about the Liberian ex-pat community in Staten Island, I learned that there are also substantial Liberian diasporas in Minneapolis and Providence, Rhode Island.

7. Charles Taylor’s son was nicknamed ‘Chuckie’ Taylor and lived in Florida until he was seventeen. He developed a fearsome reputation as a commander in his father’s 'anti-terrorist unit' and is currently serving a jail sentence in the US, for his role in human rights violations

Liberian fisherman by David Sasaki

8. The border area between Liberia and Sierra Leone is a notorious ‘hotspot’ for Lassa fever. One of the world’s deadliest diseases, it kills around 5,000 people every year and, like Ebola, it’s a haemorrhagic fever, which basically means that victims bleed to death

9. The Liberian constitution still discriminates on the basis of race, in that, only ‘black’ African inhabitants can claim Liberian citizenship – people from other races, including the 4,000 or so people of Lebanese descent, cannot claim Liberian citizenship or exercise the right to vote, even if they were born in Liberia or come from generations of Liberian-born immigrants 

10. Sanniquellie, in Nimba county, is often referred to as ‘the birthplace of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)’. In 1959, the political leaders of Liberia, Guinea and Ghana met to discuss the different paths to African unity. The talks later moved to Addis Ababa, where the organisation was officially founded in 1963

Image credits:

For this blog post, I wanted to highlight the photography of Flickr member oso, a.k.a. David Sasaki.  Originally from Seattle, David is now based in San Diego.  You can see more of his work on his photo stream.  Thanks David for sharing these images with us using the Creative Commons license. 

Barbados - Laying out your clothes to dry

As part of my research for this blog, I read two novels by Bajan writers. The first, In the Castle of my Skin (1953) by George Lamming is a Bajan classic and is, no doubt, a well-established favourite on post-colonial studies reading lists the world over. The second, Song of Night (1998) by Glenville Lovell is a more modern novel, which is set in an independent Barbados, providing an interesting balance to Lamming's world.

Characters in a changing world

In the Castle of my Skin is a really important book and a record of Barbados during a period of great change for the country.  I'm sure much of the story is autobiographical and reflects Lamming's own experiences, as a young man growing up on 'the Rock'.  It's quite a heavy read, but the language is wonderfully poetic and the 'events' of the book have an almost surreal or magical quality to them.  It deals with a time of great change and political upheaval for Barbados, as the white ruling class struggled to maintain their position in an increasingly politicised society.  The book contains mixed feelings about the demise of the Empire and British control of the island.  One really powerful scene describes how a mob are about to attack and kill the white landowner, but they don't have the support of ordinary people and are held back from violence by their leader, Mr Slime.

In Song of Night, Barbados has already been through the big political changes and is facing a different kind of change, as the island's economy shifts from one based on sugar production to one based on tourism.  The changing world of Lovell's book is every bit as disconcerting as that of Lamming's and the main characters, Cyan (or Night) and Breeze, find themselves corrupted by the easy money that can be earned from (mostly US and Canadian) tourists who come to Barbados looking for exotic and sensual pleasures. 

Sense of displacement

Book covers

In both novels, the main characters also experience change in their personal circumstances and a sense of displacement or removal from the society they were born into.  In Lamming's novel, the narrator is offered an opportunity to move upwards, in terms of social class, by going to Trinidad to become an English teacher.  Even though he tries to maintain his relationship with his childhood friends and life in the village, the villagers reject him, as they recognise that he needs to move out of their world and that this is the best thing for him to do.

In Lovell's novel, it's almost the complete opposite - when Cyan's father is convicted of murder and hanged, she finds herself ostracised by the people around her and excluded from the village society that is around her.  Being as stubborn as she is, she refuses to move from the village and backs into a corner, reacting violently to the slightest provocation.  She also loses her sense of morality and does things she would never have dreamed of when her father was alive. 

The role of women in the novels



Woman in Barbados by Shardalow

Perhaps it's not surprising that the older novel, In the Castle of my Skin has a male narrator, whereas Song of Night is narrated, almost exclusively, from a female perspective.  When I was researching  Invasion of the Body Snatchers for my blog posts about Wisconsin, I noticed a similar pattern in regards to the movies that were based on the book, ie. the narrator changed from the male protagonist of the 1950's (Kevin McCarthy) to the female protagonist (Nicole Kidman) of the 2007 film version.  I wonder if this is a general trend across world literature?

Of course, there are women in Lamming's novel - the narrator's mother is an incredibly powerful character, who scares and confuses him, as she prepares his final Bajan meal before he leaves for Trinidad.  The power of white female sexuality is also felt in the novel, when the young English woman who is staying at the Landlord's house accuses some of the local boys of molesting her, to cover up the fact that she been out after dark meeting a sailor. 

Song of Night explores the world of Bajan women and Cyan (or Night) is one of the strongest female characters I've ever come across.  In Lovell's novel, the women recognise that they are in a man's world and do everything they can to assert their place in it.  Cyan takes control of her own destiny and just as quickly loses control of her life, as she refuses to listen to the advice of the women around her.  She has an incredibly strained relationship with her mother and there is a lot of tension with the other women in her life as well. 

I really loved the way that Lamming summed up the roles of men and women in Bajan society:

'The men at cricket. The children at hide and seek. The women laying out their starched clothes to dry.' 

Bajan boys on the beach by Shardalow

Darkness and Rain

Cyan is also known as 'Night' and darkness/the night is an important theme in Lovell's novel.  Cyan feels most comfortable at night and the novel opens with the scene of fireflies descending on her garden and filling her with comfort and joy.  In the Castle of my Skin opens with a rain storm on the narrator's ninth birthday.  Rain and darkness are persistent themes throughout both novels and it's an interesting contrast to the image of Barbados that we might see in tourist brochures, ie. full of light and sunshine.  Like many societies that look relaxed and happy on the surface, I guess Barbados also has a dark side?

A denial of race?

I found a great contrast in the role that race plays in both novels.  Lamming's Barbados is a society that is strictly organised along lines of race.  At the top of the social pile is the White plantation class, next down the growing black middle-class, overseers and administrators - at the bottom is the majority, who Lamming describes as 'my people'; patronised by the white plantation owners, who think that they live in some kind of idyllic native paradise; despised by the growing black middle-class as backward and powerless.  In Lamming's novel, the teachers deny that slavery was ever practised in Barbados, which seems like a terrible denial of the nation's past.

The role of race in Lovell's novel is a lot more complicated.  Cyan becomes friends with a black woman called Koko, who came to live on Barbados from the US and, in her own way, also idealises Barbados as a place where she can be fully respected, despite the colour of her skin.  Koko describes the racism she experienced in the US and tries to inspire Cyan with faith in Barbados as a more egalitarian society.  But Cyan doesn't feel it.  The issue isn't so much about race for her, as the general prejudice the villagers have towards her because of actions of her father.  For Cyan, the colour of her skin is complicated by the fact that, just as it attracts prejudice and snide remarks from the other, lighter-skinned islanders, the darkness of her skin equally attracts the attention of the white touristmen - her skin colour becomes something exotic and worth paying for.  The racial problems of the US are not something she can really relate to.

In Lamming's novel as well, one of the narrators childhood friends, Trumper, goes to work in the US and comes back radicalised and inspired by a sense of Black Pride, that people on the island find hard to understand, as though he'd come back speaking a foreign language. 

Trinidad and St Lucia

It's interesting to note the references to other neighbouring islands in both novels.  When the narrator of In the Castle of my Skin is getting ready to move to Trinidad, he gets lots of advice from neighbours and people who've been there, telling him how terrible life in Trinidad is.  Although they have a similar culture to Barbados, the Bajan characters look down their nose at life in Trinidad and see it as a corrupt version of their own culture.  As the narrator's mother puts it:

Trinidad is a nice place - but fire, fire down there

Bajan Siesta by Shardalow

St Lucia doesn't fare much better, in Song of Night.  Cyan's mother was born in the island and her mother's foreign origin is another reason why Cyan and her sister have little support from their neighbours and society, after her father is hanged.  Cyan takes no interest in her mother's culture and seems to agree with the other Bajan characters that a lot of her mother's faults stem from the fact that she was born elsewhere.  Again, St Lucia is seen as a corrupt version of Barbados.  This reminds me of any number of countries I've lived in, where neighbouring countries are often viewed with distrust and there is a general denial of the cultural commonalities that don't necessarily end at the political border!   

The skill of suspense

I enjoyed reading both novels although, perhaps due to age, In the Castle of my Skin is a much more involved read, suited to academic study.  If you want an easy way into to Bajan literature, I'd highly recommend Lovell's Song of Night - it's a beautiful story, incredibly well-written and Lovell is a master of suspense - we know from the outset that Cyan has done something wrong, but her crime isn't revealed until the very end of the novel.  I don't think the novel is widely available in the UK, but I managed to have a copy shipped over from the US and there are several US sellers on Amazon that have the novel in stock. 
Image credits:

The image of the book covers was taken by me - the cover of Song of Night is from a painting called Paradise of Anubis by Bajan artist David Gall.  David now lectures at the University of North Carolina. 

For this blog post I wanted to highlight images of Barbados that were taken by flickr member Shardalow - you can see more of Shardalow's images on their flickrstream.  Thanks for sharing these with us using the Creative Commons license.

Barbados - Cromwell, Red Legs and the ethnic cleansing of Ireland

 

Quite by chance, as I was browsing through a bookshop in Belfast a few years ago, I came across a copy of Sean O’Callaghan’s To Hell or Barbados: The ethnic cleansing of Ireland.  It’s a fascinating book that deals with the little known ‘white slavery’ in the Caribbean islands, when many Irish, Scottish and, indeed, poor English were sent off to islands like Barbados to work as indentured servants on the labour-intensive sugarcane plantations.

To Hell or to Connaught

The title of O’Callaghan’s book needs no explanation to anyone, like myself, who was educated in the Republic of Ireland – ‘to Hell or to Connaught’ is a phrase famously attributed to Oliver Cromwell, when he invaded Ireland and tried to force the native Irish population to move to Connaught, Ireland’s western-most and poorest province. 

The idea was to populate Ireland with Protestant Dutch and English settlers, much as Elizabeth had authorised the plantation of Ulster with Protestant settlers in the late 16^th century. Needless to say, after the chaos of Cromwell’s conquest, Ireland proved to be an unattractive destination for potential settlers, who preferred to risk their lives with the savage 'Red Indians' of New England, than the unruly native Irish in Leinster and Munster. 

Ethnic cleansing in the 17^th century?

Ethnic cleansing is a term that is bandied about a lot these days, stemming from the etničko čišćenje of the 1990's, that characterised the breakup of Yugoslavia.  I think it’s difficult to apply a term like this to a 17^th century context, as ethnic cleansing somehow infers a concept that is particularly rooted in the late 20^th century.  Having said that, it’s clear that Cromwell would have preferred to remove all native Irish (and Catholics) from Ireland and it’s scary to think that, in a 20^th century context and with modern technology at his disposal, he could have committed genocide in Ireland or ‘ethnically cleansed’ the country in the way that O’Callaghan seems to suggest. 

It didn’t work, of course – the reality was that the people most predisposed to live and work in Ireland were the native Irish and Cromwell’s army found that the only way they could work the land in the 'ethnically cleansed' provinces, was by employing native Irish labour.

Indentured service in the Caribbean

Beach at Bathsheeba by IrishMBO

Another way of getting rid of lots of native Irish men, women and children was by sending them as indentured servants to Barbados.  Far from being the slightly upmarket tourist destination that Barbados is today, a trip to Barbados in the 17^th century was nothing less than a death sentence.  O’Callaghan does an interesting comparison of the conditions of indentured servants versus the conditions of the slaves imported from Africa. 

He points out that, as indentured service was nominally for a fixed period of time, usually 7 years, the plantation owners had little interest in the long-term well-being or health of their indentured servants.  Slaves, on the other hand, were a long-term investment and it was in the plantation owners’ best interest to get the most out an adult slave during their working life.

Barbados Parliament by IrishMBO

For that reason O’Callaghan claims that the life of an indentured servant was, in some ways, worse than that of a slave.  He claims that they had worse living conditions than the African slaves and almost as little control over their destinies.  Many of the Irish people who were sent to Barbados couldn’t speak English and had little idea what was written in the contracts they were signing.  Worse than all of this, O’Callaghan portrays the grotesque living conditions of indentured servants – he describes how the women were often raped whilst working in the fields and how indentured servants could be beaten to death or hanged, if they tried to escape, with few legal repercussions for their ‘employers’

Anti-Irish racism

Some of the language used by Cromwell and his troops is shocking in how they described Irish people as somehow 'sub-human'.  It’s no surprise that there was little sympathy in Cromwell’s England for a race of people considered to be worse than animals.  The extreme nature of Cromwell’s Protestant revolution also meant that anyone professing the Catholic faith was considered to be a natural enemy of England.

The Irish in Jamaica

Ironically it was Cromwell’s hatred of Catholics that led to freedom for some of the Irish sent to Barbados.  His ‘Western Design’ was an attempt to take all Catholic Spain’s Caribbean possessions and bring them into the English commonwealth.  Two of Cromwell’s henchmen, Penn and Venables, led a disastrous campaign to capture the island of Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).  They led a rabble of thieves, criminals and newly-freed indentured servants which suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Spanish. 

Not wanting to retreat from their campaign empty-handed (and therefore invoking Cromwell’s wrath), they decided to invade another Spanish island instead, even though it the island was strategically unimportant and with little natural wealth.  The campaign to capture Jamaica was successful and the island remained in British hands until the 20^th century.

Jamaica provided a great opportunity for those Irishmen and women who had survived their servitude in Barbados, to start again with an offer of land and work.  There weren’t many others who were willing to colonise Jamaica and the Irish population ultimately integrated with the black slave population, which might explain why Jamaican English has a distinctly Irish lilt!

The 'Red Legs' of Barbados

It would seem as though most of the Irish who remained in Barbados completely lost their language and identity.  Many were brought to Barbados as children, with little to anchor them in their ancestral culture.  O’Callaghan describes a definite policy of (what he describes as) ‘miscegenation’, when plantation owners would use Irish women and West African men to produce a new race of mixed-race slaves, that would be the property of the plantation owners and could be employed in the fields or sent to the whorehouses of Bridgetown.  It makes pretty grim reading and it’s a shame that there is so little recorded history of what happened to Irish women and the children they gave birth to in Barbados.

Dad swimming by IrishMBO

One remnant of 17^th and 18^th century ‘white slaves’ in Barbados is the small population of ‘red legs’ who still live on the island.  They seem to occupy the lowest level on Barbados’ social scale and it’s unusual to come across a country where a ‘white’ population is in a lower social strata than a black population.  I find the survival of the ‘red legs’ fascinating, although they are more likely descended from Scottish settlers, who were sent to Barbados in the 18^th century, than the Irish servants who were sent at the time of Cromwell. 
The ‘red legs’ of Barbados are notoriously reclusive and O’Callaghan’s attempt to communicate with these descendants of Irish and Scottish servants was relatively unsuccessful.  I wonder what responsibility, if any, Ireland and Scotland have towards these people.  Perhaps the governments of Ireland, Scotland and Barbados could work together to ensure greater opportunities and prosperity for a population that seems incredibly isolated and vulnerable?

Image credits:

The image of the book cover was taken by me.

All other images have been shared with us by flickr member IrishMBO, aka Mary Beth Kurspahic, who is a retired school teacher from the US.  Mary has lovely collection of Barbados photos, which you can see on her photostream.  You can also find out more about Mary at her website. Thanks to Mary for sharing these images with us, using the Creative Commons license. 

Xinjiang - Separate Tables and the History of Race

As part of my research on Xinjiang, 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, 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, the topic of race is a controversial one.  Most people outside China might see the Uyghurs as the native inhabitants of Xinjiang, 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 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 as my reference point to relate everything back to.  Of course, racial differences go beyond white/black and, in the case of Xinjiang, 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 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 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.

Queensland - Remembering Babylon

The thing I love most about this virtual journey around the world is that I'm reading books I would probably never have read otherwise.  In reading Remembering Babylon by one of Queensland's most famous writers, David Malouf, I would like to think that it's a book that would have eventually found its way to me.  It's exactly the kind of book I love to read and I really savoured every moment of it.

I guess I'm not the first person to draw parallels between Queensland and an exotic (or savage?) garden and Malouf's title is incredibly significant, as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon become a metaphor for the enchanting, and often frightening world, that the European characters stumble in to.  There is a pervasive sense of fear in the book - set in a pioneering European community in 19th century Queensland, you really get a sense of the uncertainty in the lives of the settlers.  Most of them have given up everything to 'make it' in Australia and there is a fear that the unknown will overwhelm their community, that the seed of colonisation is sown in an incredibly fragile earth. 

The novel centres around Gemmy, an aboriginal tribesman who stumbles out of the wilderness and comes across a group of three children belonging to the McIvor family, orginally from Scotland.  Except Gemmy is not really an Aborigine.  It turns out that he is an Englishman who was shipwrecked as a boy and rescued by an Aboriginal tribe that adopt him as their own.  Gemmy's presence in the new community causes all kinds of conflict and unease.  His complex identity also raises important questions about race and culture - it becomes apparent as the novel progresses that Gemmy's white skin is pretty much irrelevant to the majority of the community and they prefer to think of him as an Aborigine.

Gemmy's savage appearance and behaviour embarrasses the settlers.  At a time when 'being civilised' is of utmost importance to the psychological survival of the community, Gemmy clowns around, speaks a half-forgotten English and seemingly parodies the settlers and white culture.  The men are afraid of him because of all the things he might have experienced when he was living with the Aborigines.  Although nothing is explicitly stated, it's implied that he has witnessed and participated in all kinds of sexual deviance - homosexuality amongst other things - they are also afraid of the things he has eaten and even suspect him of cannibalism. 

Mr McIvor is a very reluctant defender of Gemmy's presence, but defend him he does and comes across as being one of the more sympathetic characters in the book, refusing to bend to the will of his neighbours and refusing to lose all sense of reality, when the other men hysterically accuse Gemmy of convening with the natives and practising some kind of black magic, using a (non-existent) stone.  When the men come for Gemmy, they come in the night.  As though their deeds won't be recognised in the dark.  Mr McIvor rescues Gemmy from the aggression of his neighbours, but the incident hints at a much darker aspect.  By attacking Gemmy, the neighbours are, in fact, attacking the McIvors.  They are undermining the safety of the community and, without realising the seriousness of their actions, they are bringing the situation to the point of anarchy.

The role of the women in the novel is quite different to that of the men and it gave me an interesting perspective in how women managed to hold things together in the early days of the new colony.  Mrs McIvor is a romantic woman.  Coming from the Scottish mining town of Airdrie, she saw all of her brothers go into the mines, coming up pale creatures, spiritually crushed, the whole mining community crammed into a damp corner of Lanarkshire, she dreams of sunshine and wide, open spaces.  She falls in love with Mr McIvor because of the warmth of his skin and his resoluteness in the face of the harsh environment of the frontier in Queensland.

She inspires her daughters with this romanticism, especially the oldest daughter Janet who dreams of Scotland, her mother's world 'more alive and interesting, more crowded with things, with people too, than the one she was in.'  There is a balance of the sexes in that the McIvors take in an orphaned nephew from Scotland, Lachlan, and the story also belongs to Lachlan and Janet.  One of the images that most appealed to me was the image of Janet's mother, Mrs McIvor, washing a dress with a pattern of larkspur on it, thinking how she might never see larkspur again.  The European plant on her dress clashes with the natural world she finds herself in.

Malouf is known for his interest in language and the problems of communication, especially between men, and language is central to the story.  Babylon is not just an exotic garden, it is also Babel, the land of mixing languages and cultures.  Scottish, Irish, English and Aborigine.  The Hanging Garden of Babylon was built by Nebuchadnezzar II for his homesick Persian Queen, Amyitis.  In many ways, the Europeans try to tame the Australian landscape, to feed the homesickness they feel inside. 

At the end of the novel Janet, or Sister Monica, as she becomes, offers an apple to Lachlan, opening up an intimacy that helps them reminisce about their childhoods.  Babylon is also a kind of Garden of Eden, a loss of innocence with the coming of European civilisation.  Janet and Lachlan find themselves in a world that is beyond their creation or control.

I would definitely recommend reading this novel.  It's so full of poetry and it would seem as though every single word is in the right place.  It's easy to read, but deals with incredibly complex issues. 

Image credits:

The image of the book cover is from http://www.openlibrary.org/

The image of the bee and the larkspur is courtesy of flickuser Bruce McKay who is a school principle working in a First Nation community on the Yukon/British Columbia border in Canada.  Thanks Bruce for sharing this wonderful image with us. 

The Netherlands - Is Santa racist?

Today is St Nicholas' Day - not widely celebrated in Ireland and the UK (or even known about), but a big holiday for a lot of our European neighbours.  As it's St Nicholas Day and Christmas is almost upon us, I want to share my thoughts about Santa's Dutch origins and the controversy over Santa's helper Zwarte Piet and whether or not this tradition is racist.

I stumbled upon all of this, as I've been keeping an eye on the Dutch newspapers and picked up on an interesting headline in the Algemeen Dagblad about how the Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander has just been awarded the Zwarte Piet (or black Peter) award for spending his holidays this year in Mozambique, and not in a former Dutch colony, as tradition might dictate.  Have I been reading the newspapers in Dutch?  Well, kind of . . . . I paste the text into Google Translate, but the English version is sometimes so garbled, I find myself reading the Dutch and comparing the words by direction translation.  I must admit, the whole nature of this scandal is completely beyond my understanding - I'm sure it means something to Dutch people?

Anyway, I started researching the whole Sinterklaas (St Nicholas' Eve) tradition, about gift giving and honouring St Nicholas of Myrna (modern-day Turkey) who is the patron saint of both children and sailors (an important one for a sea-faring nation).  The whole thing is absolutely fascinating and St Nicholas was famous for saving the lives of 3 Moors (North Africans) who were sentenced to death and also 3 young girls, whose father was too poor to pay for their dowry (hence, they would have to be sold as prostitutes) - the main point being that he gave things to the innocent and protected them from harm.  I hadn't realised that our Santa Claus, was a corruption of the Dutch Sinterklaas - I guess, in our tradition, Santa is from Lapland and there is no real connection with the Netherlands.  By the way, in the Dutch tradition, bad children are put in a big bag and taken back to Santa's home, which is in . . . Spain!!  C'mon guys, is that really a punishment?

The modern-day Santa Claus carries a book with the names of all the children who've been 'naughty or nice' and leaves sweets and presents around a shoe (in the Dutch tradition, a stocking in ours) that is left out for that reason.  In the Netherlands, sometime around the colonial period, Santa's helper, Zwarte Piet, appeared (or perhaps re-appeared?) on the scene.  Whether from the myth of the Moorish slaves that St Nicholas saved or, less offensively, because Zwarte Piet spends a lot of time climbing down chimneys, he most definitely has a black face - some say that he is a devil, who has been enslaved to help Santa distribute the presents (and punishments) to Dutch children, with all the echoes back to Odin and the Norse mythology, that Zwarte Piet could also represent.  There is also an interesting theory that Zwarte Piet is Spanish and his enslavement was a parody harking back to the days when the Netherlands was ruled by Spain - I guess a way of poking fun at their Spanish masters.  Also explains why sending children to Spain would have been considered a punishment, as that would have meant being sold into slavery.

Not surprisingly, with the Netherlands record of tolerance and history of colonisation, Zwarte Piet has become somewhat of a controversial figure in recent years.  As he is, effectively, Santa's slave, this depiction of racial slavery is quite upsetting to a lot of people.  Traditionalists would probably say it's a whole hoo-ha over nothing, as a foreigner I can only begin to wonder what it's all about. 

Whatever people think about Zwarte Piet, Christmas and Christmas traditions seem to be incredibly resilient to change.  Disapproving Calvinists sought to replace the traditional belief in Sinterklaas with more appropriate (read Christian) traditions, such as prayer and celebrating the birth of Christ.  I think most people realise these days that the whole Christmas tradition has a lot of suspiciously pagan rituals attached (Santa Claus, decorating and idolising trees, getting incredibly drunk!).  It's a centuries old festival, that was later appropriated by the Church in a, partly successful, effort to christianise it. 

I say, let's just enjoy it - it should be a season of goodwill to all, regardless of race or religious belief. 

Image credits:

The flag is from Wikimedia Commons and is copyright free. 

The image of Zwarte Piet is from flickr user Oscar Diele, who is an online entrepreneur from Amsterdam. Thanks to Oscar for sharing this image with us through the Creative Commons License.