Must See | Laughingnomad

Red Square Moscow

Posted on September 17, 2004 by Laughingnomad

Local police don’t allow anyone in Red Square until 10 in the morning so when Bob got there the Square was jaw-dropping empty…the Kremlin and Lenin’s Tomb on one side, Gum’s Department Store the other.

Gums, at one time a symbol of Soviet shopping with long queues and shelves empty of all but a few drab goods, now houses over 1000 shops like Timberland and Sony) staring at the Kremlin on the other side. At either end is a church…the glorious colors and shapes of St. Basil’s Cathedral created between 1555 and 1561 to celebrate Ivan the Terrible’s capture of the Tatar stronghold at one and the tiny Kazan Cathedral where we bought a tape of Orthodox music for 20 roubles (about 70 cents) at the other. What stories these old worn cobbles of Red Square whisper to us!

The scene is impressive and enduring. No capital since Ancient Rome was more calculated to project pure power than this square mile of buildings.

Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)

Posted on August 27, 2004 by Laughingnomad

Ancestral Poland.gif

Photos

The Germans changed the name to Auschwitz but the Polish still call it Oswiecim. We hire an English speaking guide to drive us to Auschwitz and Birkenau for the day and are predictably blown away by the scene. Bob remarks that the Poles have maintained the camp in an appropriate-simple yet austere-manner…a glimpse of history and reality without an artificial sentimentality…the scene itself supplies ample information. I find out that the Polish resistance that tried to get information to the outside world were the first to be killed. I find myself scanning the pictures and names on the walls for Mroczynski…my mother’s surname.

The Death Block, a prison within the prison, was where the SS shot thousands of prisoners, mostly Poles at the Wall of Death. The Cellars, the Crematorium and Gas Chambers, the Assembly Square where prisoners were made to wait in the freezing cold while they were counted out…reality setting in by layers….minute by minute…still not into my head. Later more and more camps, Auschwitz II, III, IV were built when the decision was made to exterminate the Jews. Birkenau is the largest…10 to 15 times the size of Auschwitz.

Bob reads the memoirs of Dr. Mengele’s assistant who carried out countless experiments, many of which were cutting edge at the time, but others left many dead and maimed…especially the children-twins and dwarfs.

The curator of the Jewish Museum in Krakow warns that memory is a difficult thing…and many books of recollection are subject to hyperbole…but among the best of the Holocaust writing is surviver Halina Birenbaum’s “Hope Is The Last To Die.” She is a writer, poet and translator, born in Warsaw in 1929 who spent the occupation in the Warsaw Ghetto, and in the concentration camps at Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Neustad-Glewe from where she was freed in 1945. She emigrated to Israel in 1947 and now lives in Hertzliya with her husband and two sons. Her works are sad but devoid of hated. What emerges from them, according to the book jacket, “are peace, kindness and belief in man.” And if she can achieve this….

7/12/06:
Government officials said Wednesday that Poland and “historical truth” both had won a victory after the UN agreed to rename one of its world heritage sites “The Former Nazi German Concentration Camp at Auschwitz.” About 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, were put to death at the facility outside Oswiecim, Poland, in World War II. The German and Israeli governments also agreed to the name-change. Poland requested the change on grounds that the previous name, “Auschwitz Concentration Camp,” left a “misconception” that it was Polish-run.

The fortified walls, barbed wire, platforms, barracks, gallows, gas chambers and cremation ovens show the conditions within which the Nazi genocide took place in the former concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest in the Third Reich. According to historical investigations, 1.5 million people, among them a great number of Jews, were systematically starved, tortured and murdered in this camp, the symbol of humanity’s cruelty to its fellow human beings in the 20th century. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Siem Reap

Posted on October 25, 2002 by Laughingnomad

My original plan was to take a boat up the Mekong River in Cambodia to the Lao border and then on up through Laos but I kept hearing reports about the opening and closing of the border and you have to pay off the guards to let you through and someone reported they had to pay $200 and if they don’t let you through for some reason that day and then you are faced with coming all the way down the Mekong back to Phnom Penh and starting over in another direction so I said the heck with it and decided to do the “tourist route” to Siem Reap instead.

Siem Reap
While Bob took a bus to the Thai border and then on to Bangkok, I took a fast boat down the Tonle Sap (Great Lake) to Siem Reap, a sleepy village famous for it’s many wats (temples and monasteries) especially the biggest-Angkor Wat-but fast becoming a major tourist destination. Most of the people sat on the roof of the boat for the four hour trip through marshes and past entire villages on stilts.

I spent an entire day on a motorcycle taxi going from one temple to another that was built between the 9th and 14th centures in the middle of the jungle when the Khmer civilisation was at the height of its creativity.

Angkor is one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia. Stretching over some 400 sq. km, including forested area, Angkor Archaeological Park contains the magnificent remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century. These include the famous Temple of Angkor Wat and, at Angkor Thom, the Bayon Temple with its countless sculptural decorations. UNESCO has set up a wide-ranging programme to safeguard this symbolic site and its surroundings.

You could easily spend a week or more here seeing all the monuments. Most temples are actually little more than ruins…blocks of carved volcanic and sandstone rock lying in piles at the foot of the remaining structures. Much of Angkor’s finest statuary is stored inside conservation warehouses because of the danger of theft. In some monuments such as Ta Prohm, where a French movie company was filming the few days I was there, the jungle has stealthily waged an all-out invasion with bare tree roots spilling out and over the walls.

I had a Cambodian roast chicken and vermicelli salad late lunch at Les Artisans D’Angkor, a small artisan shop and cafe amazingly situated directly opposite Angkor. I thought of my friend Jana who visited here in the 60’s and wondered how the town had changed since then. My day ended taking pictures of the sun setting pink on the face of the dark stone of Angkor Wat.

I had had my fill of war museums in Vietnam and Phnom Penh so I avoided the War Museum in Siem Reap with an exhibition of Soviet and Chinese Mi-8 helicoptors, Mig 19 destroyers, T 54 Tanks and US 105mm artillery. You could also see an artificial minefield here, the brochure says. My motorcyle driver did pull onto the grounds of a Buddhist temple on the way back from Angkor that displayed a glassed-in pagoda filled with bones and skulls that could be viewed from all four sides.

Back in my hotel I spent some time organizing photos on my computer…we have some really wonderful ones of people…especially women and children. I gave a two hour English lesson to one of the Khmer girls that worked in the kitchen of the guesthouse where I was staying.

Finally, after five days, it came time to leave Siem Reap so I regretfully said goodbye to Arnfinn and his Khmer staff and left the simple and elegant Earthwalker Guesthouse that was built and managed by a young Norwegian cooperative and made my way down a dirt road out to the highway with my pack on my back to flag down a motorcycle taxi for the 10 minute ride to the airport. The young guys working in the airport laughed at my hair when I walked in. “Motorcycle Hair” I said laughing! The $100 Lao Aviation flight that took me to Vientiane Laos had no safety card, no airline magazine, no safety demonstration by the hostess and no floatation device under the seat…and I doubt if there were oxygen masks…but we did get a sad little hamburger patty and bun with a packet of catsup.

Facing Cambodia’s Past at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Posted on October 24, 2002 by Laughingnomad

We got our second wind and almost reluctantly mounted a motorcycle taxi to do what we (or at least I) came here to do and that is to see, after more than 30 years of war and terror, what has finally happened to this country that has survived carpet bombing under Nixon’s secret orders to go after Viet Cong in the 70’s.

Remember Nixon told us we were not bombing Cambodia. We weren’t-officially-our pilots and “advisors” dressed in T shirts and shorts, along with Cambodian pilots, were. Cambodia has somehow survived four years of Pol Pot’s murderous regime and his attempt to completely erase Cambodia’s past by outlawing money and dismantling the entire education system and then another 20 years of political instability and armed insurgencies and coups by various political aspirants, including former president Sihanouk and his own son.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, opened in 1980, is a former high school that became the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 secret prison. After the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries under Pol Pot and inspired by Chairman Mao took over the city in April 1975, they immediately forced the entire population into the countryside as part of its radical social program to turn the country into an agrarian society.

Young children were trained as guards that became exceptionally cruel to the engineers, technicians, intellectuals, professors, teachers, students and ministers and diplomats that ended up in mass graves in the extermination camps of Choeng Ek. As the revolution reached greater heights of insanity the torturers and executioners who worked here killed their predecessors and were in turned killed by those who replaced them. When asked if the guards knew they would end up being killed the tour guide said they probably did not owing to the paranoia and secrecy of the regime. S-21 and all its many branches was headed by a former mathematics teacher by the name of Kang Kek Ieu or Comrade Duk.

When asked, our guide said that the movie “The Killing Fields” was only about 40% true…suggesting that the horror was about 60% greater than the film allowed. The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazis, were meticulous in keeping records and the walls of the school-turned-prison and now museum is covered with the photographs of the men, women and children who were later killed or sent to the countryside to work in the rice fields. Incidentally, several foreigners from Australia, France and the US were also held here and tortured before being murdered.

The situation was made especially complex by the fact that China supported not only Pol Pot but also Sihanouk who is still living in Beijing after all these years. Thailand supported the Khmer Rouge and harbored Pol Pot in a fenced compound throughout the 80’s, the Soviet Union supported Vietnam-a historical enemy of Cambodia’s-and the US and the UN supported anyone that was anti-Vietnamese, including the Khmer Rouge, because after all the Vietnamese were communist. Never mind that the Khmer Rouge was communist too…so the Western world stood by silently while Vietnam intervened in 1979 to help insurgency groups try to kick out the Khmer Rouge.

But the Vietnamese stayed. Finally in 1989, when, suffering with it’s own disastrous economic experiment, it withdrew it’s troops. However, with most of the Vietnamese gone, the opposition coalition, still dominated by the Khmer Rouge, launched a series of offensives against the government forces and in the first 8 months of 1990 another 2000 Cambodians lost their lives. Well, it’s all as clear as mud to me too but you get the idea. (The expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and events through the mid 70’s are documented by William Shawcross in “Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon & the Destruction of Cambodia.”)

The UN
Then a plan was devised whereby the UN was to supervise the administration of the country and ensure fair elections in 1993, which it did, before it packed up and went home leaving behind a mess because so many of the powers involved in brokering the deal had their own agendas. It was a travesty that the Khmer Rouge was allowed to play a part in the process and must have seemed like a cruel joke to the Cambodians who had lost family members under its rule. To make it worse, when the UN left it took weapons away from rural militias who provided the backbone of the government defence force against the Khmer Rouge.

According to analysts, by 1994, when it was finally outlawed by the government, the Khmer Rouge was probably a greater threat to the stability of Cambodia than at any time since 1979. But in 1994 the Khmer Rouge resorted to a new tactic of targeting tourists; three people were taken from a taxi on the road to Sihanoukvile and shot and a few months later another three foreign backpackers were taken from a train bound for Sihanoukville and executed. This is the road that Bob is going to take back across the Thai border when we leave Cambodia so he could have a tooth extracted in Bangkok!

Then the government, in a bid to end the war, offered amnesty to Khmer Rouge units who were willing to come over to the government side. But the break-through came in August 1996 when Ieng Sary, Brother No. 3 in the Rouge hierarchy, was denouncd by Pol Pot for corruption. Sary then led a mass defection of fighters that severed the Rouge from the source of it’s resources…the Pailin area rich in gems and timber. Then the paranoid Pol Pot ordered the execution of Son Sen, former defence minister of the regime and many of his family members. This provoked a putsch within the Khmer Rouge leadership to put the responsibility of the mass murders on one person as the hardline general Ta Mok seized control of the movement and put Pol Pot on ‘trial’.

Pagan’s 2000 Stupas

Posted on August 22, 2002 by Laughingnomad

See Burma Video

August 22 2002 (Pagan was previously called Bagan)
I really would have preferred the rickety and slow train north so we could see the countryside but to reserve the most time possible for the northern area we took an hour and a half flight to Pagan (renamed Bagan).

At the airport we had to go through immigration and customs check again and we hadn’t even left the country. Next was the Archeological Zone desk where we had to pay a $10 fee to be able to see the pagodas and stupas. By the way, on this desk was a pile of knock-off George Orwell books called Burmese Days (1934), a depressing read on upcountry Burma during the British occupation. Orwell served with the British colonial police in Burma and his novel written in his 20’s shows a good understanding of expat life at the time.

The Archeological Zone, or Old Bagan is a wondrous sight…unique in the entire world and I was amazed that I had never heard of it. Across 40 square kilometers of country, stretching back from the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River, stand thousands of stupas and temples that were built by successive rulers to gain spiritual merit over the course of the 11th and 13th centuries. In every direction there are ruins of all sizes across the tree studded countryside. Some are huge and glorious like the Ananda Pahto that soars gold-covered into the sky; there are small humble stupas that stand alone. We climbed the steps to the top of one pagoda to join some French and Spanish tourists for the breath-taking panoramic view of the river and pagodas and stupas as far as the eye can see.

By the way, in seven months of traveling we have come across less than half a dozen Americans-most travelers these days everywhere are French, Spanish Italian and Israeli. Or else we are just not going to the same places they go.

The village that grew up in the middle of the Archeological Zone during the 70’s was moved to the middle of a peanut field a few kilometers away (now New Bagan) just before the May 1990 elections much to the dismay of Old Bagan residents who were given about a week’s notice by the government.

Sleepover In Soweto

Posted on July 12, 2002 by Laughingnomad

A Sleepover in Soweto-Africa’s largest township
On our way to India we stopped in Johannesburg for two days to stay with Lolo Mabitsela in her Bed and Breakfast in Soweto-a township about 30 minutes outside the city where most of the violence occurred in the years leading up to the end of apartheid. Lolo’s nephew who runs Jimi’s Face To Face Tours, picked us up at the Johannesburg airport in his van.

Soweto has always had a small and thriving middle class and after all the press about the violence before the end of apartheid they are anxious to get the message out.

About one million people live in the township that was designated for blacks and established in the early 1900’s. The community is still poor and more than half of its adults are unemployed. Roughly twenty percent live in one room tin and cardboard shacks. Lolo, a retired high school principal and school inspector, lives in middle class Diepkloof Extension, however, in a new two story brick faced multi bedroom/bathroom home that would sell for half a million dollars in California. A member of Parliament lives across the street.

Lolo raised several of her niece’s children and her one natural child is an attorney and works for the Justice Department. But she said that blacks didn’t have electricity and she never saw TV in a township until about 1982. She worked 35 years as a teacher and for that she only receives a $300 a month pension. This is because blacks didn’t pay into the pension fund because they were not going to be given pensions.

Lolo cooked us a feast of dumplings, oxtail stew, fried chicken, carrots, beets, salad and fruit. The cuisine includes other traditional treats such as mealie-pap, samp, spinach and ‘mabele’ porridge.

The next day she drove us to the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere where we walked through the pitiful emergency area with people inside and outside lying on gurneys. Most of the doctors are young white doctors from other countries eager for the experience they will gain here-especially with weekend knife and gunshot wounds.

The next morning she drove us to the beautiful Museum Africa housed in what used to be a fruit and vegetable market. One section dealt with the four and a half year trial of 156 people opposed to apartheid that were arrested in 1956. All, many of whom were white allies of the freedom fighters were eventually acquitted. Most of the defense were white and the trial was held in a Jewish Synagogue.

Another interesting section depicted the places and activities of Mahatma Gandhi who lived for a time in Johannesburg. His philosophy of “Satyagraha” or passive resistance was shaped by his 10 year resistance to black discrimination in South Africa.

Finally we drove out to Liliesleaf Farm where Mandela and about 10 other political activists were arrested during a resistance planning meeting. Apparently they had been given away by someone on the inside. The beautiful 29 acre farm and buildings now in an upscale Johannesburg suburb-far from Soweto-had been purchased with Communist Party funds for the use of the freedom fighters. It has been a guest house but recently was sold and will become a museum next year.

Back in Soweto we drove by Mandela and Winnie’s old house that has since been bombed, by Winnie’s new big beautiful home and Archbishop Tutu’s home (yes, he still lives in Soweto! Two Nobel Prize winners on the same street!

For dinner we stopped at a tavern owned by one of Lolo’s former students and had a wonderful supper of African delicacies-mielie pap (corn porridge picked up with the fingers and dipped into a gravy), lamb ribs in gravy, chicken, beet salad, lettuce salad, green mango chutney, cole slaw and I can’t remember what else.

I asked Lolo what happened between Mandela and Winnie. She said it was personal and had to do with the bedroom. But it is only speculation as to who was sabataging the relationship and for what reason. Mandela has since married the pretty widow of the President of Mozambique.

As a single divorced mom Lolo didn’t say how she was able to afford her home. The most curious thing though, was that there was not a single African-motif item in the entire house. A walk inside and you could have been in a quaint B&B in a western country…the new black rich…

Reflections on Africa
We loved Africa and feel sad to be leaving. But the one single strong impression is how little Africans everywhere we traveled, black and white, knew about the outside world and how few, even those who could afford to, had ever traveled out of their own countries. The news media is pathetic and our references to current people and events went clear over the heads of the people we talked to whether it was the sophisticated gay Afrikaner managers in the Waterkant office across the street or Lolo in Soweto.

Jimi, our driver who was born and raised in Soweto and who picked us up at the airport said that he didn’t know what poverty was until he made a trip to the Congo one year… “that was poverty,” he exclaimed! Ironic.

Jimmy’s Face to Face Tours arranges overnight stays with families in Soweto, including Lolo’s Guesthouse, for $52 a night per person, including breakfast and transportation to and from the township, at 8.15 rand to the dollar. Information: (27-11) 331-6109 or (27-11) 331-6132, http://www.face2face.co.za.

Lolo’s Guesthouse: Diepkloof Extension. lolosbb@mweb. co.za. Lolo Mabitsela charges about $50 a night for two, which includes dinner and breakfast. She can accommodate up to four and can be reached at 011 (27-11) 985-9183 or at 011 (27-82) 332-2460.

The Soweto page of Johannesburg’s Web site, http://www.joburg.org.za/soweto, has the most useful visitor information for the township. Gauteng Tourism Authority has regional info at http://www.guateng.net. You can also contact the Soweto Tourism Association’s Dumisani Ntshangase, 011-27-73-310-5886, or Zodwa Nyembe, 011-27-72-437-3944.

Nairobi to Cape Town Overland

Posted on May 6, 2002 by Laughingnomad

May 5, 2002
We left for the 4000 mile seven week trip in a Mercedes Benz truck overland from Nairobi to Capetown. As Bob suspected there would be, there are 17 kids all under the age of 30 on this truck-very cheeky Aussies and Kiwis and half a dozen ball-busting Britains. Overland trucks are the cheapest way to travel Africa so the trucks are always full of kids-guess we will be content with being the token elders.

The master of African roads is the truck driver-cars cannot manage the ruts and potholes. The truck can go almost anywhere with its powerful engine and wide tires. James understands the power under his control. We are dumbfounded by his ability to wedge the truck into the smallest path, narrowest driveway, around the sharpest corner! Drivers are extraverted and have tremendous confidence-an almost regal bearing. I read this on my blog to James and he whooped and hollered and jumped up and down…Yes! Yes! That’s me! That’s me! First instruction from Rod: it’s a TRUCK and not a bus! Every time someone calls it a bus we are supposed to buy Rod a drink-I’m the biggest offender. I just laugh.

We are all divided into four groups that rotate daily-cooks helper, dish washing, security and “dog’s-body.” Security has to stay with the truck when are parked in the towns. Dogs-bodies are the go-fers. They fill up the water jugs at the camps and set up the folding seats. They set up the folding table for food preparation and put up George’s tent. (George is the Kenyan cook.) They also periodically sweep out all the dust and mud out from under the seats and the aisle of the truck. Dish washers make up three tubs of water-one soapy, one with disinfectant and one rinse. They set up two plastic pans for hand washing-one with soap and one with disinfectant for rinse. They dry the dishes by swinging them in the air.

George makes a fire on the ground with the charcoal he has purchased along the road and sets a big grate over the top.

The charcoals much softer than ours…coals are red and coffee-water hot in just a couple minutes. Cooks helpers peel veges and generally do whatever George wants them to do while they try and keep out of his way. George has pretty fixed and definite ideas about how he wants things to go.

For breakfast we have had eggs all different ways, French Toast, pancakes, dry cereal made with reconstituted dried milk, toast, wieners, bacon, canned spaghetti, beans. Lunch is grated carrots, sliced tomatoes, grated cheese, green or red peppers, sliced meat and bread for sandwiches. I ask Claire if this is always going to be lunch and she says yes, but to shut up and don’t complain because it’s the only fresh veges we get! So I don’t say a word! George usually puts out the leftovers from the night before too. Pineapple or bananas or dessert.

Dinner usually is served with creamed soup first and then African stew with mashed potatoes or rice, steak and baked potatoes, chicken and rice with good spices, spaghetti with interesting sauces…and many more good things like that. We sit on little camp stools to eat. A couple times George has fixed the African staple, maize, for us-a kind of fine white corn meal. You dip your fingers into it and form a little ball with which you then dip into a spicy meat stew and eat. When it is dark and getting colder and we want to sit awhile around the campfire we put a few coals on the ground underneath each folding canvas seat…works nicely.

The truck has padlocked compartments all the way around with doors that fold down. George has the keys on a shoelace that he wears around his neck. I get tired trying 14 keys to find the one that unlocks the compartment where our baggage is so I paint the key with someone’s nail polish. George just laughs.

The truck periodically pulls over for “toilet stops.” We scatter…boys on one side of the truck and girls on the other. On one stop I was one of the last to get off and after walking down a small bank I looked to the left and saw 6-7 shiny white butts all in a row. I yelled to the girls that I wished I had my camera-you can imagine the hullabaloo! Our hands get sprayed with disinfectant before we get back on the truck.

There are two heavy plastic drops on each side in place of windows that are rolled up during the day so we get lots of fresh air and can see out. It also gives us accessibility to people standing around the truck when we are parked at border crossings and supply stops for those who choose to stay on the truck. If everyone gets out we put the drops down because local kids are known to jump up and grab things off the seats. If we are in a camp the drops come down to keep the monkeys and baboons out of the truck.

The other riders on the truck ranging from early twenties to early thirties are bright and sassy. Besides Bob and I there are two other couples, Damian and Melissa from Melbourne Australia and Tim and Belinda from New Zealand-the rest are single-Heather and Fiona are sisters from New Zealand, Nikki from New Zealand but had been working as a nanny in London, Michelle, Claire, Sarah and Lorelle traveling together from England. Adrian is from Australia with a Canadian passport who lives and works in London and Pete is a New Zealander. In Victoria we will pick up Michael from Johannesburg South Africa and lose everyone else except Nikki, Fiona, Heather, Sarah, Michelle, Adrian and us. Heather, who was working as a nanny in London had a friend who knew Mick Jagger”s nanny (hope this is right, Heather!)

Most are already well-traveled-the four girls from England spent a year traveling together after “uni” (university) and Michelle and Nikki have done overland trips before-Nikki amazingly did a 6 month overland trip in the year 2000 on the old “hippie trail” from England to Kathmandu via Iran, Pakistan and the Karakoram highway. Both Michelle and Nikki are gunning for a job in the overland business and will remain in Africa at the end of the trip.

It’s fun listening to the British, Aussie and Kiwi accents but they insist Bob and I are the ones with the accent! I am starved for conversation and want to discuss the linguistic, cultural and political differences among the English speakers but I sense they don’t like it…that maybe they assume I am being critical of them…the arrogant American…little do they know how critical I am of my own popular culture and the foreign policies of my government.

There is a library (big box of tattered paperbacks) ranging from slut novels to the Autobiography of Nelson Mandela on the truck for long travel days. There is a cassette deck with speakers at the front and the back. The smokers have to sit in the back-always Michelle in her funky little hat under which you can barely see her sparkly eyes and Rod the tour leader. At the very front of the truck there are two steps up to a section of four seats on each side where the Brits usually sit facing each other so they can chatter. The rest of the seats face forward. There is a cooler for drinks.

We have lucked out with a really nice group that is very compatible and everyone enjoys each other. Tim from New Zealand says he couldn’t imagine his mom doing an overland trip-makes me feel good. Rod has confiscated the Michael Jackson tape but the rest of the music blaring all day on the truck stereo is ungodly as you might imagine. We would prefer to remain steeped in images of Africa…the sounds of the local dialects in soft voices…he sound of children’s laughter…the look of the bright wide smiles…the sounds of the daily village activity and of the animals in the parks, the sight of the incredible red clay soil reflected in the morning and evening light, the mind blowing brightness of the stars at night…the breathtaking red sun while it is setting down on the Zambezi…we have left home partly in an effort to get away from the abrasiveness of western popular culture…but James says the other riders are young-this is their time to enjoy…

Bob and I don’t sit together…24 hours a day since February is more than enough togetherness. The truck is not full and many of us get two seats to ourselves. In July and August we are told the truck will be filled to capacity-36 people! I can’t even imagine it! It is good to be traveling now.

Michelangelo’s David

Posted on April 6, 2002 by Laughingnomad

Bob is going on a walking tour where he will learn how the Renaissance Medici family ruled and held onto their city as an independent state for three centuries in face of pressure from the Papacy and how they commissioned some of the greatest art in the western world. He will learn about the political intrigues of the time and what precipitated Machiavelli’s “The Prince.”

Built on the site of an Etruscan settlement, Florence, the symbol of the Renaissance, rose to economic and cultural pre-eminence under the Medici in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its 600 years of extraordinary artistic activity can be seen above all in the 13th-century cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore), the Church of Santa Croce, the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, the work of great masters such as Giotto, Brunelleschi, Botticelli and Michelangelo. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In Florence in 1965, I have an indelible memory of walking along looking at Michelangelo’s unfinished works in the Galleria dell’ Accademia (Europe’s first school of drawing) lining both sides of a long hallway. Finally, at the end of the hallway I looked up and saw the most beautiful body I had ever seen standing on a four foot pedestal under a lighted dome…David…and reaching out and touching what I could have sworn was flesh…

Bob will have his own experience albeit probably quite a different one! Actually Michelangelo’s unfinished work was just as thrilling…like watching contorted bodies writhing-climbing-free of their prisons. Carved from a gigantic block of marble, David was finished in 1504 when Michelangelo was just 29…his work an inspired miracle!

The Atlas Mountains

Posted on March 21, 2002 by Laughingnomad

We took an excursion trip south and east past incredible green terraced fields and old Berber kasbahs (ancient Moroccan self-contained communities made out of the rust colored mud of the countryside)-seemingly idyllic-to the Atlas Mountains.

Our group consisted of Bob and I, a young couple from New Zealand in their thirties-one a computer/internet analyst and his partner a pharmacist, another couple about our age from Boston. He had been the president of a University in Iran before the Shah was deposed and she obviously was also well educated. He was able to escape and she soon after. He now teaches theoretical physics at a University in Boston. The fourth couple was young-he a music major at a California school. The last two were a couple of great guys from Italy that we called �The Italians! who gave us some menu items we could order when we got to Italy.

On the way to the Sahara we passed over the Atlas Mountains (about 12,000 feet) and through the towns of Tinerhir and Boumalne. The first night we slept in a small Berber Hotel that was in the process of being renovated at the head of the Dades Gorge. The room was cold with a concrete floor but offered
several very thick heavy blankets-like the blankets used on the camels. The evening included a walk up an incredibly beautiful gorge and a dinner of Chicken Tangine. Oddly there were only two small pieces of chicken for every four people but otherwise it was very good. In the morning we had a breakfast of rolls, coffee, butter and jam before continuing on to Erfoud and then to Merzouga. We stopped in Kassah for lunch. (The cafes with the best toilettes get the most tourist business!) We all had beef kabobs and moroccan salad (tomatoes, cucumber, olives, onions) and water.

In the afternoon we walked through a Berber kasbah. We took a trail through the fields to learn about tribal farming; then walked through the kasbah and into a building where some women weavers presented their carpets. Bob was a sitting duck by this time and we are now the proud owners of a small Berber carpet.

By evening we reached an area where we were put astride camels that walked single file for a couple hours at sunset through the largest sand dunes in the world (the Al-chabbi sand dunes) to a Berber tent camp. One rides a camel on a big thick blanket just behind the camel�s hump with the pubic bone rocking back and forth against the hump. I told Bob to be careful or I�d trade him in for a camel! The Berber guy leading the trek cautioned the men to be careful of their ‘iggs.”

The encampment consisted of cloth tents joined together with heavy blankets and pads on the ground. Two good looking young Berber men cooked delicious Tagine with beef, carrots, onions and potatoes which we ate sitting in a circle on the ground with bread and our hands in groups of four. They served orange slices sprinkled with cinnamon and mint tea for dessert. Afterward the boys played Berber beats on the drums. Roosters from a nearby encampment woke us up at a breathtaking sunrise over the dunes.

The next day offered an eleven hour brutal van ride back to Marrakech with a short stop to eat lunch on a terrace at a small restaurant in Tirhan. We both ordered a �hamburger� that turned out to be a stew of tiny meatballs in tomato, onion, eggplant mixture. It surprised the heck out of us but was very good.

A few hours out of Marrakech we were pretty nervous about the narrow and curvy mountain road and we begged the driver to stop and take a break-which he did. The roadside stand had fresh Tangine, soup mint tea, coffee and soft drinks. The very friendly older man standing behind the food bench was offering me a small bowl of soup for 1.5 euros when I heard the driver in a scolding voice tell the food seller to charge 5 euros.

In Marakech that night the Ali Hotel was full because there was a holiday that weekend (we never did figure out what it was.) There also was an international meeting of some kind in the city during this time. So we stayed in the Hotel Eddakhla-a pretty basic hotel on a pretty rough street with a lot of beggars, no lift-just stairs-very deep and steep and narrow and on top of that the WC and shower was down on the first floor. The room had a sink and bidet but was very stuffy with no window to the outside. Bob bristled when a young man at the desk demanded his passport �for the police,� Bob of course thinking he wanted to take the passport which would violate rule number one: never give up your passport to anyone for any reason!

Ate dinner at one of the hundreds of eating stalls set up in the square every night that serve harira, kabobs and fish stews. Some of the stalls specialized in goat head meat-complete with whole goat heads set up in a row for viewing-that was patronized almost entirely by the locals. However, we sat at a stall that was probably set up to attract the tourists. We had beef kebobs peppers, spinach, fish, moroccan salad olives and mint tea. It was the worst meal in Morocco and Bob was very offended when the waiter slammed a small tin plate down on the table and demanded a tip. There goes those filters again!

How people experience a country seems almost accidental at times!

The Registan

Posted on September 30, 1995 by Laughingnomad

It is said, the sand was strewn on the ground to soak up the blood from the public executions that were held there until early in the 20th century. The Registan is where Tamerlane stuck his victims’ heads on spikes, and is where people gathered to hear royal proclamations, heralded by blasts on enormous copper pipes called dzharchis. But it obviously could be only before the first of charming historical buildings had been constructed, because Tamerlane died in 1405.

The Registan is composed of three Madrasahs. A Madrasah is a medieval Moslem clergy academy.

One of the three madrasahs of the Registan is Ulugbek Madrasah (1417-1420), on the west, was finished in 1420 and contains mosaics with astronomical themes. The Ulugbek Madrasah has an imposing portal with lancet arch facing the square. The corners are flanked by the high well-proportioned minarets. Mosaic panel over the entrance arch is decorated by geometrical stylized ornaments. About 100 students were taught the sciences, astronomy, and philosophy in addition to theology.

The Sher-Dor Madrasah (1619-1636) on the east was completed in 1636 as a mirror image of Ulugh Beg Madrassa, except with decoration of roaring lions, in blatant violation of Islamic rules. The harmony of large and small rooms, exquisite mosaic decor, monumentality and efficient symmetry put the structure among the best architectural monuments of Samarkand.

The Tilya-Kori Madrasah (1646-1660) in between was completed in 1660, with a golden decoration and with a pleasant courtyard. It was not only the place of training students, but also it played the role of grand mosque. It has two-storied main facade, vast courtyard fringed by dormitory cells with four galleries along axes. Mosque building is situated in the western section of the courtyard. The main hall of the mosque is abundantly gilded.

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