Travels in the Riel World

For anyone curious about whether the situation on the ground in Iraq is improving much these days, there is a heartbreaking story in the NY Times about a Sunni woman who tried to protect her home and family from two men who wanted to evict them from a Shiite neighborhood, allegedly on orders from the government.

The two men showed up on Tuesday afternoon to evict Suaada Saadoun’s family. One was carrying a shiny black pistol. Ms. Saadoun was a Sunni Arab living in a Shiite enclave of western Baghdad. A widowed mother of seven, she and her family had been chased out once before. This time, she called American and Kurdish soldiers at a base less than a mile to the east. The men tried to drive away, but the soldiers had blocked the street. They pulled the men out of the car.

“If anything happens to us, they’re the ones responsible,” said Ms. Saadoun, 49, a burly, boisterous woman in a black robe and lavender-blue head scarf.

The Americans shoved the men into a Humvee. Neighbors clapped and cheered as if their soccer team had just won a title.

The next morning, Ms. Saadoun was shot dead while walking by a bakery in the local market.

After the shooting:

Captain Morales heard the news about Ms. Saadoun the next day around noon. She had been shot in the market earlier that morning, just northeast of the base and within spitting distance of the same checkpoint where the two Shiite men had been stopped. The captain paced around the hallway inside his command center. His face was ashen.

“What can you do?” his first sergeant said to him. “It’s their problem. This is their country, and they need to work it out among themselves. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

An American patrol rolled out to Ms. Saadoun’s home at 2 p.m. More than a dozen women dressed in black sat wailing in the backyard, awaiting the arrival of Ms. Saadoun’s body from the hospital.

“I told you, ‘Don’t go out, they’ll kill you,’ ” one daughter cried out. “I told you, my lovely mother, ‘Don’t go out, they’ll kill you.’ ”

By the next morning, everyone living in the house had fled.

The U.S. military apparently recognizes the need to train troops in cultural awareness, so it has developed some virtual reality technology that enables soldiers to practice interacting with people from different societies. At the moment, not surprisingly, this is particularly focused on learning about Iraqis and Arabs. According to an article in the Arizona Daily Star:

The U.S. military historically has been weak at understanding the mind-set of enemies, Proffitt said. By promoting cultural awareness, the new training system may help change that, he said.

“I think that’s the hard part for the Army. We tend to go over there and fight with our machinery and our tactics without a really innate understanding of the psyche of the other guy,” he said.

Remarkably, not only does the technology give individuals the sense that they are talking to a real person, but it is designed to warn about potential cultural mistakes being made during the conversation.

To increase the chance of gaining Iraqi cooperation, soldiers also need to be on guard for cultural pitfalls such as inquiring about the well-being of an Iraqi man’s wife, which is considered extremely rude. The virtual translator is programmed to warn interrogators when they stray into that kind of sensitive territory.

The 2007 World Cup of Cricket is currently being played in the Caribbean. The sporting event is not getting much coverage in the U.S., not surprisingly, especially with March Madness going on. Shashi Tharoor, a diplomat and writer who recently published an op-ed column about his passion for cricket, says he is resigned to the fact that the sport will not catch on in this country.

… friends of mine in New York are already planning a World Cup party at the home of an expatriate with a satellite dish. The party will be attended by a raucous group of Indians and Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Brits, Australians and Zimbabweans. But of course there will be no Americans.

What I found more interesting about Tahroor’s op-ed, though, are the points he makes about the sport of cricket and the cultures that are most passionate about it.

In any event, nothing about cricket seems suited to the American national character: its rich complexity, the infinite possibilities that could occur with each delivery of the ball, the dozen different ways of getting out, are all patterned for a society of endless forms and varieties, not of a homogenized McWorld. They are rather like Indian classical music, in which the basic laws are laid down but the performer then improvises gloriously, unshackled by anything so mundane as a written score.

Cricket is better suited to a country like India, where a majority of the population still consults astrologers and believes in the capricious influence of the planets — so they can well appreciate a sport in which, even more than in baseball, an ill-timed cloudburst, a badly prepared pitch, a lost toss of the coin at the start of a match or the sun in the eyes of a fielder can transform the outcome of a game. Even the possibility that five tense, hotly contested, occasionally meandering days of cricketing could still end in a draw seems derived from ancient Indian philosophy, which accepts profoundly that in life the journey is as important as the destination. Not exactly the American Dream.

His piece is a fun read. And, if you are by chance interested in knowing more about the Cricket World Cup, you can read about it here.

Suddenly, it seems, U.S. students are clamoring to learn Chinese. In the past seven years, according to this article in the Christian Science Monitor, enrollment in Mandarin classes has jumped tenfold among primary and secondary students. Of course, it’s still a mere pittance compared to the huge numbers of people in China who are learning English. And it has posed a new challenge for American schools, namely a severe shortage of Chinese language teachers.

Just as the United States has built up a huge trade deficit with China, the teacher shortage reveals America’s language deficit. In China, some 200 million students are studying English through programs put in place decades ago. In the US, the sudden attention on Mandarin has exposed a serious lack of infrastructure.

“In our education system, world language has always been marginalized, and Chinese is even more on the outside,” says Shuhan Wang, head of Chinese language initiatives at the Asia Society in New York. “That the world is speaking English is really a double-edged sword for the American people. It makes it easier for us [Americans]…. The problem is that people understand us, but we don’t comprehend them at all.”

To address the need for language teachers, school districts are recruiting teachers in China and Taiwan. Although that then poses cultural challenges, for Chinese and American students tend to have different ways of interacting with teachers.

“In China or Taiwan, you don’t talk back to your teachers. What the teacher says goes,” says Heather Lin, assistant to the head of school at the Chinese American International School (CAIS) in San Francisco. “We have had one of our teachers who came to CAIS after having taught in China for nine years. She came from a classroom of 60 students in China, to a class of 16 here, and she said it was so much more work to teach the 16.”

The American model emphasizes “talking back” in the good sense of interactive learning. And the smaller number of students means that the teaching should be more individually tailored. That’s a tall order for some foreign teachers, especially when classrooms have students with widely different abilities, backgrounds, and behaviors.

Does it represent the unconscionable renting of the national heritage, or is it a way to forge new understanding between cultures? It depends whom you ask, but those are the two sides of the debate in France right now over plans to open a new Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. According to this recent Washington Post article:

In the largest foreign museum deal in French history, the petro-rich but museum-poor Persian Gulf emirate agreed last week to pay France $1.3 billion to borrow the Louvre’s name and hundreds of its artworks …

French President Jacques Chirac described the mega-museum agreement as an important way of bridging what the “world considers a clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West. To many French art experts and historians, however, it represents little more than putting the nation’s priceless patrimony up for rent …

The “Desert Louvre,” as the French press has dubbed the deal, is part of a revolutionary initiative by France to expand its global influence through its vast cultural heritage and holdings — the one realm where it remains a dominant world power — in the face of its shrinking diplomatic and economic clout.

The French are concerned because art is such an integral part of their national heritage, although agreements such as this aren’t completely new in the art world. The Guggenheim, for instance, now has branches in Bilbao, Spain and Venice, Italy. And soon, apparently, in Abu Dhabi, as well.

The Abu Dhabi Louvre will be housed in a French-designed, domed building … The complex, scheduled to be completed in five years, will include the world’s largest Guggenheim Museum, 29 luxury hotels and three marinas with berths for 10,000 yachts. Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon al-Nahyan, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, said the emirate’s ambition is to “reach an arts and architectural level never before achieved.”

Michael Joseph Gross loves waterfalls. So when he heard that a group was planning a short hiking expedition to Victoria Falls in honor of the 150th anniversary of its discovery by the Scottish explorer David Livingstone, he had to go. Later, he wrote about his experiences on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border in this travel article.

On the third day, we reached the falls.

“Creeping with awe to the verge,” Livingstone had looked down into the gorge, and when I left the group to do the same, all the homework I had done drained out of me. Knees burning on black basalt, one hand grabbing a clump of dead grass, the other clutching my grimy Tilley hat, I pressed my head over Livingstone Island’s edge.

I laughed because, I think, the falls seemed improbable, even absurd. There is a river — with rocks and boats and fishermen — plain, clear, slow-moving water — and then there is a crazed, frothing, broken, foaming force, gliding slowly through the misty air.

At this moment, it wasn’t difficult to imagine why, 150 years ago, Victoria Falls was the only sight that drove Livingstone to the sheer juvenile exuberance of carving his initials into a tree.

I just had the one-year anniversary of my first entry on this blog. When I began writing, I labored in solitude for more than a month before finally having somewhat of a public launch May 12. I’m pleased that readership has consistently increased and is now more than triple what it was just six months ago. So thanks to those of you who check in here regularly and also those who have sent me emails or left comments.

I’m planning a few upgrades to the site later in the spring, including more original content. But for the moment, in honor of one year worth of entries, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some of the most viewed posts of the past 12 months.

There are two clear leaders for most popular post. They are:

1. Starbucks takes on French cafe culture

2. The Masai and the gift of cattle

These are two diverse entries, one about coffee and cafe culture, the other about the unique traditions of the Masai people. After this, a number of posts had similar numbers in terms of page views, but they did fall into a few clear categories.

China was a popular topic, especially these two entries:

- Learning Chinese in Latin America

- India vs. China

Given current world events, it’s not surprising that several entries about Islam or the culture of Middle Eastern countries were also popular. But the most well-read of these was:

- The tribal culture of Iraq

Finally, I would expect readers of this site to be interested in travel and education, so it’s appropriate that two closely related posts also made the leaderboard:

- Educational benefits of travel

- Educational benefits of travel, part two

Thanks again for visiting. Let others know about the site and please continue to stop by. The next year is going to be even better and more interesting!

If you are interested in understanding more about Africa, there is a fascinating story in Time Magazine that traces the history of Ghana over the past 50 years, along with some of the successes and failures of the African continent in general. The story achieves this by focusing on the lives of three generations of a single family - Kwame Deh, 72, who was a young man when Ghana first achieved independence, and his daughter Suzzy and grandson Delight.

When citizens of the British colony called the Gold Coast gathered to witness the founding of their new nation a half-century ago, they carried not only their personal hopes and fears but also the aspirations of a continent.

As the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to break away from its foreign master in the post-1945 era of independence, Ghana was the symbol of a land throwing off its shackles, the first breeze of what British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan would later dub “the wind of change.” “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent,” said Nkrumah that night.

Fifty years later, Ghana, a country of 22.6 million, remains an uncannily accurate measure of Africa’s successes and failures, its ambitions and broken dreams. As was true for many African states, the optimism of independence gave way to unrest, militarism and economic decline. As elsewhere, Ghanaians struggled back, rebuilding their country, renewing their democracy and securing fresh reason to hope.

Today Ghana is a bright beacon for a continent the world too often sees only for its suffering. The country’s rise and fall and rise again have given many Ghanaians–and many Africans–a more realistic understanding of what it will take to develop their continent’s fragile fortunes than they had in the first flush of freedom. And it has left them with a deep appreciation of basic principles that others take for granted: stability, democracy, jobs.

First came the book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Then the Travel Channel decided to base a television series around the concept and selected a Denver couple, Albin and Melanie Ulle, to embark “on a 14-week excursion across 13 countries.” The Ulle’s experiences were filmed for the series, which premieres March 29, according to this story.

The Ulles came back changed by the experience:

When Albin and Melanie Ulle are asked about their favorite places … they talk less about the destinations than the people they met:

• The maitre d’ in France who proudly wore an American flag on his lapel.
• The Bhutan citizens who measure “gross national happiness” rather than the gross national product.
• And a poor black South African woman who single-handedly put four girls through private school during apartheid and later ran for mayor of her township.

Even some of the small lessons affected the way the couple now looks at things:

“There are all these little things that have changed for us,” Melanie says, noting one. “I notice that I don’t want to (do) drive-through coffee anymore. I enjoy drinking coffee, and people all over the world treat it as a ritual. I know its so minor, so dumb, but that means something.”

Albin adds: “We’re so rushed a lot of the time, and I think we all kind of know that, but to see people actually slow down, sit and talk and laugh. Good things can come from slowing down sometimes.”

The story notes that experiences such as these are part of a growing trend for people to take sabbaticals to travel or have other life experiences. And if you follow my blog, you know I’m a believer in that.

A debate has broken out in Germany over a suggestion to enforce a speed limit on the autobahn in an effort to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions. Although some areas of the legendary highway do have speed limits now, the Germans obsessively protect the wide open stretches and are legendary for taking full advantage of the lack of a speed limit on much of the road. As this recent article in the International Herald Tribune describes it:

Ask Marc Bongers about the wisdom of introducing a speed limit on the German autobahn, and he answers by revving the 435-horsepower engine of his specially modified Porsche … With a stretch of empty road ahead, Bongers floored his accelerator — something that is still legal here — and within seconds the speedometer was registering 286 kilometers, or 178 miles, per hour. That, by way of comparison, is about the speed of a commercial jet on takeoff…

“It’s a kind of freedom,” said Bongers, 40, who once pushed his own Porsche 911 to more than 300 kilometers an hour to prove that he had the guts to do it. “Speed is relative on the autobahn.”

No one knows quite why the Germans have such a need for speed, but it’s a central part of their national character. Some have suggested it may even be a reaction to cultural and legal limits in other areas of their lives.

Rule-bound and risk- averse in so many other ways, Germans regard driving at face-peeling speeds on the autobahn as close to an inalienable right.

In any case, the debate has sparked chagrin in Germany, particularly since the country is also known for caring deeply about environmental issues.

“Given the pride of Germans about being No. 1 in protecting the environment, this could lead to a breakthrough,” said Peter Schneider, a writer.

Jeff Greenwald directs a program called Ethical Traveler, which promotes the idea that we should all be more aware of how we impact other cultures and communities by the decisions we make when traveling. Or, in Greenwald’s words, to realize that “what we do as travelers really does matter.” The NY Times ran a short profile of Jeff this week in its business travel section.

An excerpt:

When strangers in strange lands impress you with unexpected care and generosity, you start to wonder about your own impact as a traveler: how much your dollars benefit local businesses, what your visit does to the environment and how your behavior — your ability to listen, as well as to speak — affects the world’s impression of who you are.

Ethical travel is the natural outgrowth of these questions. It’s being mindful of what everyone who travels, for business or pleasure, should remember. This includes knowing where your money is going, respecting local customs, bargaining fairly and remembering to pack your sense of humor…

Travel itself is now the biggest industry on earth; even bigger than oil. As a result, travelers have the power to affect global policy in very tangible ways. 

The Japanese are known to have a polite and respectful culture. When two people bow in greeting, the younger or lower ranking individual traditionally bows lower. This week, even the world of American baseball glimpsed an example of this formality. I was amused to see this Boston Globe article, which describes the first on-field meeting between Yankees outfielder Hideki Matsui and Red Sox pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima.

Nothing casual about the greeting exchanged last night between Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui and his Japanese countrymen on the Red Sox, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima.

With photographers and TV cameras forming a semicircle behind the plate 15 minutes before the game, the three met in a ceremony that set new standards of etiquette for a Yankees-Sox game. For those keeping score at home, Matsuzaka and Okajima outbowed Matsui by a wide margin, the show of respect startling for anyone more accustomed to seeing Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk whaling on each other…

Matsuzaka’s remarks were equally polite.

“I said to Matsui-san, ‘I’m sorry to bother you right before your game.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Thanks for coming over to say hello.’ He wished me good luck so I wished him the same and said thanks.”

I assure you, no Red Sox and Yankees players have ever bowed to each other before. 

If you’re interested in knowing more about the unique cultural traditions of Japanese baseball, a great source is Robert Whiting’s classic book, You Gotta Have Wa.

A simple conversation between a doctor and a patient can often cause problems when the two individuals are from different cultures. Due to a growing awareness of such challenges, some efforts are now underway to improve the cultural competence of health care providers. One such program has been launched in Maryland and was recently profiled in this article, which provides a few examples of how cultural confusion can occur.

For instance, the preference of some cultures to deal with individuals in positions of authority:

Marcos Pesquera of North Potomac left his native Puerto Rico behind nearly 30 years ago to study at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. As he moved from behind a People’s drug store counter into retail pharmacy and managed care administration, he sometimes found himself in a totally unexpected role as a translator for Spanish-speaking patients.

He quickly realized that clear communication depends on more than just words. Asked to translate between a young female doctor and an elderly Hispanic woman with congestive heart failure, he was baffled by the patient’s refusal to listen to the doctor’s advice.

‘‘[The patient] said, ‘She has no white on the top of her head, she looks like a kid,’” Pesquera said.

With the aid of an organizational chart showing that the doctor headed the department, he won the patient over.

Or, the way in which gender roles can influence decisions:

… while some doctors may be uneasy with the preference by some Middle Eastern women to have their husbands accompany them during consultations, to the patient it’s all about the husband showing a proper level of love and care.

‘‘There’s a clash of cultures at times, but it’s not about wrong or right. It just is,” Pesquera said.

There is a fun article in Newsweek International about the increased interest in wine in China. In part, the story lays out the evidence for China’s arrival as a wine drinking nation.

The average Chinese has doubled his or her wine intake over the last five years. In 2005, the Asian giant eked into the world’s top-10 wine-consuming countries. Last year Chinese wine imports doubled over the previous year … And with annual consumption at a mere .7 liter per person—compared with 57 liters in France—there’s plenty of room for growth. No wonder wine-market analysts foresee a 36 percent increase in Chinese wine imports by 2010.

This growing appetite for these imports thrills the French wine industry, which is facing increased competition from new wine makers in the U.S., Australia and other countries. Of course, some of the Chinese habits do give the French traditionalists some pause.

China’s novice wine drinkers can be a pretty gauche bunch. To hide the actual taste of foreign wines, some dilute their Bordeaux with ice or, worse, Coca-Cola. After business people raise their glasses for a toast, they tend to drain them as if they were shots of tequila.

Indeed, Ying Qunhua, China’s elegant young first secretary of the Chinese Embassy in France, recently admitted during a visit to the limestone village of Saint Emilion in Bordeaux that her colleagues back home sometimes fear wasting a bottle of fine wine on “people who won’t actually taste it.”

Nevertheless, the French are pushing ahead with plans to promote their wines in China.  And there are even signs of hope that the Chinese are becoming a bit more educated about the wines they are drinking.

“Before, wine was mixed with ice or soft drinks just about anywhere,” says Alberto Fernández, general manager of Torres China. “Now you see people in the main cities drinking with sophistication. It is becoming normal.”

In Bordeaux, that is definitely something to toast.

In his NY Times column, Nicholas Kristof has been a longtime proponent of the benefits of travel, particularly as an educational tool. Now he’s at it again and, as he puts it, “putting my company’s money where my mouth is.” He announced in yesterday’s column that he is running another “win a trip” contest and, as he did last year, will take a university student with him on a future reporting trip to Africa, likely to Rwanda, Burundi and Congo. He’s also expanding the program this year to include a high school or middle school teacher.

Why does Kristof push international travel experience, especially to the developing world?

That lack of firsthand experience abroad also helps explain why we are so awful at foreign policy: we just don’t get how our actions will be perceived abroad, so time and again - in Vietnam, China, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Latin America - we end up clumsily empowering our enemies.

Part of the problem is that American universities do an execrable job preparing students for global citizenship. A majority of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, but the vast majority of American students graduate without ever gaining any insight into how that global majority lives. …

That’s one reason that I always exhort college students to take a gap year and roam the world, or at least to take a summer or semester abroad - and spend it not in Paris or London, but traveling through Chinese or African villages. Universities should give course credit for such experiences.

More information and an online application are available here. Deadline is April 6.

Tony Horwitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Confederates in the Attic and several other popular travel books, stopped by Rolf Potts’ website recently to talk about travel and travel writing.  Some excerpts from his interview:

As a traveler and fact/story gatherer, what is your biggest challenge on the road?

Wearing down, mentally and physically. Travel comes from the French word, travail; it can be hard work. … Improvising in strange places makes for the best stories, but it’s also exhausting. You’re never really off work; everything that happens from the moment you wake to the moment you fall asleep is potential material. You’re also planning ahead — where do I go next, how do I get there, what will I do there? — while trying to milk the most out of the place you’re in.

What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?

Take risks. Not necessarily physical risks, though that often comes with the territory. Rather, personal and professional risks. And do it while you’re young. Travel is potentially punishing: to your body, to your relationships, to your bank account. … If you do it young, the worst that can happen (apart from death, dismemberment, or chronic dysentery) is that you’ll suffer for awhile and find something else to do, which is better than being filled with regret years later over never having tried.

What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?

Seeing the world at someone else’s expense, and having something to do while you’re out there. Writing about travel makes you pay closer attention, and it gives you a way into whatever place you’re visiting. It makes you a traveler rather than just a tourist, or a vagrant. As Raban puts it, taking notes on the road “gives me occupation and identity when I might otherwise recognize myself as an ageing unkempt drifter without visible means of support.”

There is a fascinating article in yesterday’s NY Times about the differences between Somalia and Somaliland, which shows some of the ways in which culture and history can influence societies.

If you’ve never heard of Somaliland, don’t worry. It’s likely that many people have never heard of the place, since no one recognizes it a country even though it declared its independence in 1991, holds democratic elections and produces its own money and passports. The story is particularly interesting because Somaliland today is a functioning society with little of the violence or lawlessness that pervades Somalia.

Both regions are dominated by a tribal culture and populated by a series of clans and subclans. 

In a sparsely populated nomadic society, where many people live far from government services, clan elders are traditionally the ones to reconcile differences and maintain social order.  

In Somalia, these groups have spent years fighting each other for power or pledging allegiance to different warlords.  In Somaliland, though, the government has been limited to just three political parties in “an attempt to create parties based on ideology, not tribe.”  Moreover:

The Somali National Movement … set up the guurti, a council of wise men from every clan. … The leaders also turned the guurti, whose 82 elders are appointed by their respective clans, into the upper house of Parliament, “Somaliland’s senators,” as people here like to say.

The guurti in Somaliland can strike down laws passed by the elected House of Representatives, though the representatives can override the guurti with a two-thirds vote. It is a mix of tradition and modernity, Western-style democracy meets Somali-style politics.

So why the stark differences in how the two lands are now governed?

When the colonial powers sliced up the Horn of Africa in the 19th century, the British got Somaliland and the Italians got Somalia. While the British relied mostly on clan chiefs to govern, the Italians created an entire Italian-speaking administration and imported thousands of people from Italy to farm bananas, build cathedrals and teach the people how to pour espresso.

One result was that Mogadishu, along the southern coast, became a major commercial hub and one of the most beautiful cities in Africa, but its traditional systems of authority were weakened. … The British, on the other hand, never invested much in Somaliland, leaving it poor and dusty but with its traditions more or less intact.

Another lesson, perhaps, in the need to understand and work with, not against, local traditions.

Another delectable offering from NPR’s Kitchen Window, which publishes essays and recipes about foods from around the world.  Today’s focus is on the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, as Kendra Bailey Morris discusses the soul soothing benefits of beans and cornbread.

A bowl of smoky pinto beans is to West Virginia what an earthy Cabernet is to the Napa Valley: It’s an indulgence relished by locals, intriguing to outsiders and central to the region’s culinary landscape.

For a true West Virginian, nothing compares to sitting down to a steaming bowl of brown beans served up with a crumbly wedge of homemade cornbread (or grit bread, as we like to call it). Simmered all day in a cast-iron pot with a big slug of fatback, brown beans have warmed the bodies and souls of many hardworking men and women of the Appalachian coalfields.

The essay includes recipes for West Virginia brown beans, country grit bread, and chow chow relish.