Travels in the Riel World

A couple of days ago, at the end of a larger post about African news, I noted that Swahili and other African languages were gaining a bigger presence on wikipedia.  To show just how much other languages are spreading on the internet, though, a recent issue of The Atlantic charts the fastest-growing foreign language wikipedias.  Number one on the list?  Turkish, followed by Thai and Farsi. After that, Lithuanian, Slovak, Arabic and Russian are close behind.  The internet is growing more global every day.

In his Traveling Light column, Rolf Potts this week takes a look at how much travel has changed in the past decade.  He cites email, internet travel planning, digital cameras, cell phones and iPods as devices that have most changed the travel experience “for better and for worse” since he first hit the road in 1994.

When I look back through my old journals and photos, I’m struck by how much travel has changed since 1994.  These days, I take it for granted that the Internet keeps me in touch with friends and family, even from far-flung places like Mongolia and Patagonia; in 1994, contacting a single person from Montana or Pennsylvania required a phone booth, a pocket full of quarters, and a lot of patience.  In 1994, I navigated with paper maps, got my information from a single Let’s Go: USA guidebook, and met people at random. …

Before I get too wistful about the “purer” travel conditions of 1994, however, I’ll admit that travel has always been getting easier and more accessible.  In the 19^th century, people claimed that the efficiency of the steamship had destroyed the romance of sailboat travel; in the 15^th century, coach carriages were ridiculed as a wimpy alternative to going it on horseback.

I’ve seen a number of Africa-related articles in the news the past few days.  A sampling of topics includes…

Politics is transcending country at the moment in Kenya, where U.S. Senator Barack Obama is receiving a hero’s welcome.  The LA Times examines Obama’s Kenyan experience.  Obama was born in the U.S. and has an American mother, but his father grew up in Kenya as a goat-herder who later became an economist, and his grandmother still lives in the family’s ancestral Kenyan village.  As Reuters reports:

A carnival atmosphere prevailed as residents banged drums, sang songs and waved flags reading “Obama we love you.”  Weaving through the excited masses, vendors sold red popsicles to ward off the Equatorial heat, while others hawked T-shirts and calendars saying “Welcome home Senator Obama”.

Born in Hawaii to a white American mother and a Kenyan father, the 45-year-old is revered by many Kenyans the way the Irish idolized former U.S. President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s — as a native who succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Another politician who is popular in Africa is former President Bill Clinton.  The NY Times has an extensive article on Clinton’s post-presidency obsession with Africa, particularly the efforts of his foundation to provide support in battling AIDS.

Meanwhile, airline business to Africa is growing considerably, with an annual 14 percent increase in passenger traffic between the U.S. and African nations, according to this MSNBC report.

And, in another sign of the continent’s emergence, this story notes that African languages are becoming more common on wikipedia. For an example, here is the Swahili version of the online encyclopedia.

Anyone who likes to argue that Islam cannot exist in conjunction with either capitalism or democracy needs to take a closer look at Turkey.  Not only does the country have a functioning democracy, but the region of central Turkey is fast developing into much more than an agricultural economy, as noted by this recent article in the International Herald Tribune.

Many Europeans and secular Turks alike have long dismissed this poor, largely agricultural region as the “other” Turkey, a decidedly non-European backwater where you are more likely to see women in head scarves than businessmen in pinstripes. Islam, they argue, never underwent its own Reformation and so is not receptive to capitalism and innovation.

Yet Kayseri and surrounding towns like Hacilar have produced so many successful Muslim entrepreneurs that the area has earned the title of “Anatolian tiger.” … The region’s mix of Muslim values, hard work and raging capitalism has even prompted sociologists to coin a new term to describe the phenomenon: “Calvinist Islam.”

As Turkey seeks to join the European Union amid growing skepticism in Europe about the prospect of integrating a large agrarian Muslim country into one of the world’s biggest trading blocs, the case of Kayseri shows that Islam, capitalism and globalization can be compatible.

Central Anatolia is profiting from its mix of religion and business because of what local Muslim entrepreneurs refer to without irony as their “Protestant work ethic” - a willingness to work long hours, a commitment to combine religious conservatism with democracy and a pro-business bias within Turkish Islam.

There’s a fun story in the Christian Science Monitor about one person’s experiences hitchhiking in Cuba.  Because of the scarcity of automobiles and the overcrowded nature of public transportation, Danna Harman explains, hitchhiking is a way of life on the island, with a culture all its own.

Outside Trinidad, it became clear that life on the road involved a lot of waiting by the side of it. An hour after arriving, I was still standing there with the off-duty policeman and co. By then, we had been joined by a family going to the beach, a dozen people heading to work, an elderly man on crutches, a young couple on a date, and a church group. And, of course, an “amarillo.”

As might be expected, hitchhiking in a land of rules is no free-wheeling affair. State officials, known as amarillos for their yellow uniforms, are stationed along the country’s highways to oversee the process. Their job - for which they earn a respectable 400 pesos ($15) a month - is to make lists of riders and flag down passing cars.

Not all cars are required to stop. Those with yellow, caramel, and white plates indicate state vehicles and must pull over. Brown plates (military) and blue (private) should stop but don’t have to. Little is expected of green (tourists) or black (diplomats) plates because, as Araceli explained, “they think differently about their responsibilities to the community.”

Although the going was slow at first, the writer’s road experiences picked up by the third day:

I was getting discouraged with hitchhiking, when, on Day 3, it all came together. As I stood outside Remedios, an amarillo finally stopped a state vehicle, a minivan filled with workers returning from a “fun day” at the beach. I jumped in. We then pulled over for the driver to buy some avocados. We stopped later for onions for the driver’s assistant. We picked up a family going to see cousins. No one talked to me, but it felt great. I was hitchhiking.

I got dropped off in Santa Clara, where … I got another ride. And another - all the way back to Havana. My fortunes had turned.  There was Pablo with his horse and buggy, who wedged my laptop bag between his legs and the horse’s backside for “safekeeping.” Caesar and Diego from the national water department, who told me about their time as soldiers in Angola. And Luis Alfonso, a cancer specialist, who took me for tea at his great aunt’s home. By the time I rolled into Havana the next evening, chatting baseball with my new friend Jamie from the Finance Ministry, I was a bona fide hitchhiker - living the Cuban experience.

There’s been an upswing in recent years in people using some of their vacation time to do international volunteer work.  It seems to be especially popular among families who want to expose their children to the world.  Claire Spiegel just wrote an article for the NY Times travel section on a one-week trip her family took to Niger to work with desert nomads.  The inspiration for the journey, she says…

…grew out of a question our 16-year-old daughter, Leslie Brian, posed after hearing yet another news account of suffering in Africa. “So, is there anything we can do about it?” she had asked.

The family went to Niger with the Nomad Foundation.  The goal was to bring supplies in and to bring handicrafts out, which would then be sold in the U.S. to raise money for schools and wells in the Niger desert.  In the article, Spiegel recounts the beginning of their journey in Niger:

As our S.U.V. navigated a narrow road studded with potholes the size of mattresses, the landscape grew starker, and tiny villages of mud-brick huts with conical thatched roofs disappeared altogether. We passed only two gas stations, but scores of shacks that fix flat tires, including several of our own.

It was pitch dark when we finally came to a stop, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. As we sat in silence, concluding we were - at best - lost, it seemed maybe this adventure was a mistake. Then a boy clad in a turquoise tunic bounded out of the darkness, hugging our guide and leading us the last few miles to his home - an encampment of stick huts covered with fabric.

There, in an remote area of the Sahara known as the Azouag, about 50 families of Wodaabe nomads are trying to survive, scrounging for vegetation for their herds and looking for water from wells dug 100 feet deep by hand. The five wives of the tribal leader, Peroji Danieri, welcomed us; as the night wore on, children drew closer, examining our folding chairs, testing our flashlights and playing with our daughter’s long blond ponytail. As we mingled, we stretched our minds to fathom a new world where a family can own only what can be carried on a few donkeys, where a two-wheeled cart is a rare luxury and where starvation and privation are reality.

According to the article, other resources for similar volunteer journeys include the book Volunteer Vacations, and the organizations Ambassadors for Children or Volunteer International.

Events in Africa may not enter into the public consciousness very often in the U.S., but there is nevertheless a big experiment in democracy going on right now in one of Africa’s largest countries, Congo.

On Sunday, Congo announced the results of its first real election in more than four decades.  Since none of the 32 candidates garnered the necessary 50 percent of the vote in the presidential election, the two top finishers (Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba) will compete in a run-off election in October.  Unfortunately, supporters of each candidate have already engaged in gun battles and the European Union has sent in additional peacekeeping troops.

This election is important because a successful transition to democracy in such a large African nation would be an important step forward for that continent.  And because it may actually bring some peace to a war-torn nation.  It’s a difficult election, however, not only because of the nation’s lack of a democratic history but also because of east-west cultural divisions within Congo.  This BBC News article includes a chart that visually illustrates the country’s division.

As the Christian Science Monitor writes:

The election results confirmed a stark division between the east and west of this vast central African country. …

Kabila, the young former soldier who inherited the presidency from his father following his assassination in 2001, won a landslide victory in the east, where life proceeded normally after the vote. Congolese here in the east call Kabila “Le Pacificateur,” crediting him with bringing an end to years of brutal conflict in which an estimated 3.9 million people died.

In Kinshasa and elsewhere in the west, Kabila is unpopular. He speaks Swahili, the language of the east, and has only a loose grasp of Lingala, the main western language. Kabila’s opponents branded him a foreigner during the campaign period.  Here, he was trounced by Bemba, a former rebel leader and the son of a wealthy businessman who made his money during the 32-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko.

Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail and the violence abates enough for a legitimate vote to be conducted.  A successful and peaceful election in Congo could help make some headway towards peace and democracy in an important region of Africa.  If you want information on the workings of the election, you can follow updates from the Carter Center, which is monitoring the vote.

Do immigrants have an easier time assimiliating into some countries than into others?  Obviously, it’s difficult for anyone to meld into a strongly homogenous nation, such as Japan.  But what about cultures that seem equally open and diverse?  The NY Times this morning has an article that looks at the experience of Pakistani communities in the U.S. and Britain.

The conclusion?  Pakistani immigrants seem to be more integrated into America than into Britain.  Part of this is due to socioeconomic factors, and part of it is attributed to the culture in general.

… one major difference between the United States and Britain, some say, is the United States’ historical ideal of being a melting-pot meritocracy.

“You can keep the flavor of your ethnicity, but you are expected to become an American,” said Omer Mozaffar, 34, a Pakistani-American raised here who is working toward a doctorate in Islamic studies at the University of Chicago.

Britain remains far more rigid. In the United States, for example, Pakistani physicians are more likely to lead departments at hospitals or universities than they are in Britain, said Dr. Tariq H. Butt, a 52-year-old family physician who arrived in the United States 25 years ago for his residency.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the U.S. is immune from the sort of radicalism that has seeped into some immigrant communities in Britain.  All it takes, after all, is one angry young man to turn into a Timothy McVeigh.  As the articles notes…

The idea of a relatively smaller, more prosperous, more striving immigrant community inoculating against terror cells goes only so far. … A more important factor in determining who becomes a militant is most likely the feeling of being stigmatized as less than equal, community activists say, noting that such discrimination remains far more common in Britain. …

Overt bigotry is rarer here, but it exists. For instance, Mohamed Hanis, a taxi driver who is a Pakistani immigrant, said that on the Friday night after the terror alert in London, a young white man climbed into his cab. Noticing the name Mohamed, the man threatened to report that Mr. Hanis had admitted to supporting terrorist attacks unless he could get a free ride. Instead, Mr. Hanis hailed a police officer who forced the passenger to pay.

An alluring cosmopolitan lifestyle combined with low costs have drawn a number of expat entrepreneurs to Buenos Aires in recent years, according to this article.

There’s more to Argentina these days than tango, tourism and tasty beef. Lured here as tourists, adventuresome foreigners are increasingly deciding to stay — launching businesses that offer everything from English tea to pad Thai and even California-style burritos topped with guacamole and spicy salsa.

Despite a crippling 2002 devaluation that saw the peso lose two-thirds of its value practically overnight, eviscerated workers’ savings and sent unemployment and poverty soaring, Argentines never lost their famous predilection for living well.

And with startup costs and wages still low in post-crisis Argentina, entrepreneurs say their savings in dollars, euros and pounds go a lot further here — letting them chase entrepreneurial dreams while reveling in the nation’s cosmopolitan blend of Latin America and Europe.

What does one gain from travel?  Numerous writers over the years have tried their hand at answering that question, and Sophia Dembling adds her name to the list with her recent “Wandering Mind” column in the Chicago Tribune.  Here is an excerpt from her piece:

Travel is enlightening in so many ways. … I think having traveled informs everything you think or do, if only in that it forces you to confront the minuscule place you hold in an enormous world. It requires that you accept without debate that your way is only one way in millions. It gives you points of reference all over the globe.

And, done right, travel begins to unravel some of the mysteries of modern times so that we are perpetually conscious of the wide world even as we mill about the small world we inhabit daily. Which means that our small world gets bigger with every trip.

The Boston Globe yesterday ran an article about a man named Solomon Murungu, who teaches Americans about Zimbabwean and African culture partly by utilizing the mbira, “a musical instrument of the Shona people in his home country.”  His presentations have been so popular that he formed an organization called Zambuko Projects Unlimited to serve as an umbrella for his educational programs.

In Murungu’s mind, Zambuko can help break the barriers and show how many things the American and African cultures have in common. He calls his organization Zambuko because the word means “bridge” in the Shona language.

“My own experience with people [in the US is] they were very American-centric,” says Murungu. “No experience with the outside world. I felt that by exposing them to another culture, being able to appreciate another culture, they’ll be more likely to open up not just to me but to other Africans and other non-Americans.”

NPR recently did a four-part series called “Hacking the Himalayas.”  It looks at several interconnected topics, including how the community of Dharamsala, India has been changed by the influx of Tibetan refugees; how Lhasa, Tibet has been affected by the settlement of ethnic Chinese; and how some Tibetans are utilizing technology and the internet to stay connected and to preserve their culture.

Here is an excerpt about Lhasa, Tibet:

Inside what’s known as the Tibetan Quarter, the timeless rituals of faith unfold. At the ornate, massive Jokhang Temple in the heart of the quarter, visitors are greeted with the sights and sounds of prostrating pilgrims. They stretch flat on the ground, then rise up, palms clasped in prayer. The stone beneath is polished smooth from centuries of this devotional gesture. The towering Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama’s former residence, dominates the horizon.

But just a short rickshaw drive away, a different world unfolds. Outside the Tibetan Quarter, Lhasa feels more like a modern Chinese city, full of garish sights and sounds. The pace of change has never been faster than in the last decade.

And about technology differences between Lhasa and Dharamsala:

While some Tibetans have access to the Web, it’s not the freewheeling information superhighway Westerners enjoy — thanks in large part to the so-called Great Firewall of China. …

It’s telling that in the Tibetan refugee “capital” of Dharamsala, in northern India, a team of experts works to build a large wireless network for Web access. The goal is to open a flow of news and information about what’s happening in the Tibetan homeland. But within Tibet, those voices remain unheard.

Newsweek has a story this week on the globalization of universities…

… the opening of national borders to the flow of goods, services, information and especially people has made universities a powerful force for global integration, mutual understanding and geopolitical stability.

Of the forces shaping higher education none is more sweeping than the movement across borders. Over the past three decades the number of students leaving home each year to study abroad has grown at an annual rate of 3.9 percent, from 800,000 in 1975 to 2.5 million in 2004.

What are the consequences of these shifts among the highly educated? Consider this: on the night after the attacks on the World Trade Center, Jewish students at Yale (most of them American) came together with Muslim students (most of them foreign) to organize a vigil. Or this: every year the student-run Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford (FACES) organizes conferences in both China and at Stanford, bringing together students from both countries chosen to discuss Sino-U.S. relations with leading experts. …

The bottom line: the flow of students across national borders—students who are disproportionately likely to become leaders in their home countries—enables deeper mutual understanding, tolerance and global integration.

The magazine also devised a ranking of the 100 most global universities.  Harvard tops the list, which can be seen in its entirety here.

Interesting story in the London Times about how Western business practices seem to be a cause of rising anxiety and depression in Japan.  The more individualistic practices common to Western business go against the grain of a Japanese society that is traditionally more group-oriented.  Other anecdotal stories in recent years seem to indicate that younger workers have an easier time adjusting to new ways of doing business than do older employees, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are real cultural challenges here.

Merit-based pay and promotion are of particular concern because they are at odds with the traditional system, built on seniority, that has reigned supreme in corporate Japan. … The trend is put down to Japanese companies’ attempts to globalise by adopting working practices more closely in line with US and British models. Larger numbers of temporary staff, a greater willingness to sack people and greater pay disparities are the downside.

A spokesman for the Mental Health Institute said that the emphasis on individual performance was driving Japanese workers - particularly those in their thirties - to mental turmoil. “People tend to be individualised under the new working patterns,” he said. “When people worked in teams they were happier.”

Sometimes, it does seem as if the world has gone mad.  Terrorists plot to blow up airliners, no one seems to have a solution for the ongoing conflict and killing in the Middle East, nor to the genocide in Sudan. One does wonder at times if there really is any hope of people finally understanding one another and putting an end to such useless sectarian and ethnic violence.

Well, there is no magical or instant solution, that’s for certain. But surely there is hope.  After all, it was only decades ago that all of Europe seemed engulfed in a never-ending conflict.  There isn’t room here to go into the many factors that helped bring some of these cultures together in the late 20th century.  But one reason was that enough people got sick and tired of the violence that there was a critical mass of individuals willing to work toward common solutions.  And another smaller but vital factor was the increasing role of travel and cultural exchange in helping people to learn about each other.

That’s why I’m encouraged by stories, such as this one in the Washington Post, that indicate the record numbers of students who are traveling and studying abroad.

Once, a junior year abroad was something a few adventurous foreign-language majors did. Now, the number of students receiving college credit abroad keeps rising. During the past 20 years, it has nearly tripled, to about 175,000 in the 2003-04 academic year, the last year for which statistics are available.

Business and education have become so global that “now it’s like, ‘Where is your study abroad experience?’ ” said Rebecca Brown, director of the International Studies Office at U-Va.

Equally important, in my opinion, is this nugget of information:

…students are more willing to venture beyond drinking Foster’s on the beaches of Australia to study in Africa, China, Latin America.

I’ve touched on this topic in other posts (such as here and here) , but I can’t emphasize it enough - it seems well past time for us to go beyond understanding Europe or Australia or Japan and to begin learning about other areas of the world. After all, we’re less likely to demonize other cultures when we understand them, and less likely to fight when we feel that we know each other.

Need a break from the relentless drumbeat of war stories filling the news these days?  There aren’t many places where one can totally disconnect from the world, but Mt. Athos is one of them.  This isolated Eastern Orthodox monastic community in Greece has no television, radio or newspapers.  It is also in an autonomous region of Greece that acts as if the Byzantine Empire still exists.

Neil Averitt wrote about Mt. Athos for the travel section of the Washington Post.  You can read his story here.

Psychologically and geographically speaking, it’s a world apart. … No road connects the peninsula with the mainland — access is solely by boat. Scattered over this rugged landscape are 20 large monasteries, a dozen smaller communities, innumerable hermitages and about 2,500 monks.

This exotic little state, sometimes described as a Christian Tibet, has many features making for a truly great travel destination: grand architecture, hiking trails along cliff tops or through virgin forests, guest rooms in monasteries, meals of fresh natural foods, and a chance to talk with wise and thoughtful men about the nature of the good life and the state of your soul.

There are, of course, challenges.  Before visiting, one must apply for permission.  Everyone is expected to arise for 4 a.m. services.  Hot showers are rare.  And, in addition to shutting out the modern world, Mt. Athos also bars visits from women.  But regardless of whether you’d ever visit, this article provides an intriguing glimpse into a centuries-old monastic tradition and into a place where the 21st century barely exists.

Yoga is an ancient tradition with origins in India.  Even so, the newest advocates of the practice are a bit surprising.  According to this story, the Indian military is now utilizing yoga as a means of reducing stress among troops in hazardous deployments.

Embraced by fashionable Westerners as a way to exercise and get in touch with, well, whatever, yoga has now become a necessary component of India’s 17-year-long counterinsurgency effort in the disputed state of Kashmir. … India’s main counter-insurgency police force in Kashmir has begun requiring its paramilitary troops to “de-stress” as a way to cope with the tensions of a conflict that shows no sign of ending.

The men of the 1st Battalion meet to start their yoga - and a related practice of deep-breathing exercises called pranayam - every morning at 6:30, on mats and tarpaulins laid out under the shade of a giant Chinar tree. … It’s hard to imagine any other counterinsurgency force in the world - say, the US Army’s Green Berets - adding yoga to their combat training, but according to the soldiers themselves, it’s bringing results.

“Even after CRPF, I will never leave this,” says Constable Suresh Chand Yadav, of Varanasi. “I lost 12 kilos in weight, and when I go on duty, I have a peace of mind that keeps me sharp.”

If you want an example of how challenging it can sometimes be to communicate across cultures, I came across an excellent article that details some of the differences between the U.S. and Iranian styles of speaking.

For example, do ‘yes’ and ‘no’ always mean what we think?

“Speech has a different function than it does in the West,” said Kian Tajbakhsh, a social scientist who lived for many years in England and the United States before returning to Iran a decade ago. … In the West, “yes” generally means yes. In Iran, “yes” can mean yes, but it often means maybe or no. In Iran, Dr. Tajbakhsh said, listeners are expected to understand that words don’t necessarily mean exactly what they mean.

The article notes there is a cultural concept in Iran that describes the practice of saying one thing but meaning another…

There is a social principle in Iran called taarof, a concept that describes the practice of insincerity — of inviting people to dinner when you don’t really want their company, for example. Iranians understand such practices as manners and are not offended by them.

Here is a good overview of how the two cultures look at language differently:

Americans are pragmatists and word choice is often based on the shortest route from here to there. Iranians are poets and tend to use language as though it were paint, to be spread out, blended, swirled. Words can be presented as pieces in a puzzle, pieces that may or may not fit together neatly.

Iran is far from the only culture in the world that communicates indirectly or by nonverbal means.  It’s common throughout the Arab world, and to varying degrees in Latin America, Asia and Africa, as well.  But rarely do you see a newspaper article that attempts to explain these differences in any depth, so it’s worth reading if you’re interested in cross-cultural communication.