Travels in the Riel World

Earlier this week, I linked to a NY Times story about traveling in Syria. The writer had noted how incredibly friendly the Syrian people were. Now, there is a guest column in the Arizona Daily Star saying much the same thing about an individual’s visit to Iran.

It’s not such a surprise, really. Lisa and I were in Egypt a couple of years ago, at the time of a terrorist bombing in Sharm el Sheikh, and spoke to many Egyptians about their perceptions of America and Americans. We kept hearing a variation of this statement:

“Look, it is true that we don’t like Bush. And we don’t like decision to go to war in Iraq. But American people we like. People are not government. We know there is a difference.”

Most people won’t be traveling to Iran or Syria anytime soon. Nevertheless, it’s still important to remember that most people in those countries actually like Americans and are able to differentiate between people and governments. As Jeff Thorner wrote in his recent column:

I just returned from a three-week trip to Iran. I seized the opportunity to travel there with a small group of New Zealanders, thinking it might be wise as an American citizen to keep a low profile and enjoy the “cover” provided by this non-American contingent of travelers…

Upon arrival, our concerns about being American were immediately dispelled. There was not a single incident of animosity. Rather, the vast majority of the Iranians we met expressed admiration for the American people and appreciated the fact that we chose to visit their country.

In one encounter, we met an elderly man who asked where we were from. When I told him America, his face broke into a huge grin, and he said, “Ah! We’re enemies then!” A long, friendly conversation followed.

Overall, we found the people engaging; Persian history inspiring; the architecture, poetry, art and geography impressive; and the food excellent.

There is an interesting new feature in this week’s issue of Newsweek, called “Global Literacy,” which is an effort to start a conversation about some of the things people should know about the world in which we live. In the magazine, there is a series of essays about a wide range of global topics, from the economy and politics to literature and health. Online, there is also a 130-question quiz to test your Global IQ.

Newsweek explains the project this way:

We are hoping to start a conversation about what we are calling Global Literacy—facts and insights about the world (some objective, some subjective) that we think are worth knowing. We are not saying this is all you need to know; just that what you are about to read amounts to a good start…we will be returning to the subject in the coming months, and expect this large-scale undertaking to become an annual project…

In a new Newsweek poll, more Americans were able to name the latest winner of “American Idol” (Jordin Sparks) than could identify the Chief Justice of the United States (John Roberts). We are not tut-tutting or wagging our fingers; there is nothing wrong with knowing the former; our view is that people should probably be fluent with both reality TV and the highest court in the land. Makes life more interesting. It is more troubling, though, that nearly half of the Americans we polled did not know that Judaism is older than Christianity and Islam, or that Libya does not border Iraq…

We do not mean to lecture or hector or show off. To whom much is given, however, much is expected. Americans remain rich beyond most of the world’s imagination—rich in property, in liberty, in security. None of these things is free, and all are vulnerable, either to market reversals, to grasping leaders, to terrorists. But we cannot survive and thrive if we do not know what that world is like—what it loves, what it hates, and why.

You can take the magazine’s Global IQ quiz here.

Ever wondered how wedding celebrations differ among cultures? The Washington Post has a colorful report from a Kashmiri wedding in India.

Somehow, the wedding procession — in theory, groom first, then his father, followed by close relatives and friends — makes it to the Cardoba Hotel, where lights strung around bushes and gates make the neighborhood glow. Once the procession moves inside, it’s SHUSH, SHUSH. Quiet. Quiet.

The women and men are seated separately. Not a sound is to be made as the bride, Tamkeen Masoodi, a medical student, and Qadri, already a doctor, sit in a room carpeted with hand-stitched Kashmiri rugs. The “Nikkah Nammah,” or marriage contract, is read and signed. It’s written in calligraphic Urdu and festooned with painted flowers — climbing roses in pastel colors…

On the staircase on the women’s side, dozens of the bride’s smiling friends and giggling relatives lean in, with stacks of purple and orange bangles jangling, almond perfumes wafting. They are decked out in gold earrings and necklaces, hands covered with orange henna paint and black hair hidden under flowing silk scarves of pink, saffron and green.

The bride’s hands and feet are also coated in elaborate swirls of orange henna. Over her hair, she wears a wedding shawl, hand-stitched with intricate embroidery, the Kashmiri version of a veil.

After the contract is signed, the bride and groom quickly separate. The bride rushes off to a backroom to coo with her family — sisters, mother, other female relatives — and to be congratulated.

Perhaps the most famous religious conversion in history happened on the road to Damascus. Yesterday, the NY Times published a travel article entitled “The Road Back to Damascus.” The gist of the story by Seth Sherwood is that the Syria seen by travelers is actually an interesting and incredibly friendly country, in contrast to the general image most people have of the place because of its authoritarian government.

An excerpt:

As I discreetly tried to photograph a Damascus sidewalk stand of militant Islamic religious posters — including the Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and his Kalashnikov-toting guerrillas — I looked around and realized that the young, rough-shaven salesman had spotted my camera.

“Where you from?” he said, in English, as women in headscarves battled for plastic shoes from an adjacent sidewalk dealer.

“New York,” I answered, lowering my lens and awaiting a tirade against my country — or worse. Instead, he broke into a smile.

“New York, great city!” he said. “Ahlan wa sahlan bi Sham.”

Ahlan wa sahlan bi Sham: Welcome to Damascus. During a weeklong visit in May — during which I explored the Old City of Damascus (including its proliferating nightclubs), the Silk Road bazaars of Aleppo and the ruins of ancient Palmyra — unexpected welcomes seemed to erupt from every corner of this ancient nation of Bronze Age, Classical, Biblical and Islamic history. No matter where I was or whom I encountered, local greetings were never long in coming.

Though most Americans might be wary of sojourning in a country whose authoritarian government stands accused of some serious charges — financing Hezbollah, allowing foreign fighters into neighboring Iraq and assassinating the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri — a week among the regular citizens of Syria and its cultural riches is eye-opening.

Sudan “tops” the list, followed by a disintegrating Iraq and long-troubled Somalia. These are the world’s weakest countries, according to the annual Failed States Index compiled by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace. According to a Washington Post article about the index:

Sudan, largely because of the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur, is the world’s most unstable country, the group concluded. As many as 450,000 Sudanese have died, and an additional 2 million to 3 million have been displaced.

“There were only marginal differences between Iraq and Sudan, and Iraq is worse then Somalia, which is already a failed state,” Baker said…

The organization reported that Africa is the continent with the most significant slide. Eight of the 10 most unstable countries are in Africa, the report concludes.

The other two are Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where the Bush administration has made enormous military and financial commitments since 2001. Their experiences show that billions of dollars in development and security aid may be futile unless accompanied by a functioning government and plans for peacekeeping and economic development.

Foreign Policy magazine, meanwhile, explains why it believes the rest of the world should care about the fate of these failing nations:

It is an accepted axiom of the modern age that distance no longer matters. Sectarian carnage can sway stock markets on the other side of the planet. Anarchic cities that host open-air arms bazaars imperil the security of the world’s superpower. A hermit leader’s erratic behavior not only makes life miserable for the impoverished millions he rules but also upends the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime.

The threats of weak states, in other words, ripple far beyond their borders and endanger the development and security of nations that are their political and economic opposites.

Well, not exactly Disneyland perhaps, but a tourism and entertainment center that is larger than the entire city of Orlando, Florida. That is what is being built in Dubai, as the United Arab Emirates tries to look beyond oil and to use tourism as a foundation for its economy. Here is an excerpt from a Yahoo News article:

Widely touted as the Middle East’s very own Orlando, Dubailand, a cluster of mega-billion-dollar projects, is gradually emerging across the desert sands of the booming Gulf emirate.

Faced with a dwindling wealth of oil, Dubai has taken on a new challenge of larger-than-life projects in line with its ambition to become the region’s main business and leisure hub.

Already primed as a holiday destination, it is fast executing plans to build a host of new hotels, golf courses, malls and leisure facilities in order to more than double the number of tourists to 15 million by 2015.

Initially planned to cover an area of two billion square feet (185 square kilometres), Dubailand, billed as the “world’s most ambitious tourism, leisure and entertainment project,” is expected to be a sprawling three billion square feet. This would make it larger than the entire city of Orlando, Florida — home to Walt Disney World, Universal Resort, Sea World and a variety of other attractions and hotels…

Western-oriented Dubai’s bid to position itself on the world tourism map has propelled it way ahead of its oil-rich conservative Gulf neighbours.

The topic has been debated for years, and Jason Pontin recently joined the debate with a NY Times article. Pontin wrote about his thoughts while in Tanzania at the Technology, Entertainment and Design Global 2007 conference.

…the conference’s organizer, Chris Anderson…described his purposes as frankly promotional. Too often, he said, the only images of Africa that Westerners see are of drought, famine, disease and civil war. By contrast, TED Global 2007 would present an Africa that was newly entrepreneurial, increasingly wealthy and tech savvy, and largely politically stable.

“It’s a story,” Mr. Anderson said, “that is unfolding across the continent, and it’s a story that’s not well known outside of Africa.”

But beyond this Panglossian message, however much a corrective to the common images of African misery and however flattering to the pride of TED’s African attendees, was something that everyone at the conference knew (and which I saw every morning on my runs). Whether measured by per capita income or by the gross domestic product of its nations, Africa is the poorest place on earth. The question that the conference was really exploring was this: How can we make every African family richer?

At TED Global 2007, I witnessed one small skirmish in a larger ideological conflict between those who believe that Africa needs more and better international aid, and those who think entrepreneurialism and technology will lift the continent out of poverty and thus reduce its miseries.

Predictably, TED’s attendees and speakers were spellbound by technology and entrepreneurialism and, at the same time, distrustful of international aid.

Pontin concludes, though, that the reality is that Africa needs both aid and trade, at least in the immediate future.

In truth, Africa will need both investment in entrepreneurialism and aid, intelligently directed toward education, health and food.

Herman Chinery-Hesse, the founder of Softtribe, a software development company in Ghana, expressed this thought more personally than I could. “I think this choice between aid and entrepreneurship is false,” he told TED’s attendees. “If we wait for trade, it will take generations, and people need help now. On the other hand, only entrepreneurship can make us rich.”

Ushuaia, Argentina, is the southernmost city in the world, sitting at the tip of South America, just 700 miles from Argentina. Hence, the city gets a lot of tourist mileage out of its claim to be situated at “the end of the world.” The Los Angeles Times just ran a story on Ushuaia and its growing cachet as a travel destination.

Once marked on maps as Terra Incognita (Unknown Land), this is believed to be the last place on the globe that prehistoric humans reached by foot as the ice shelf retreated about 14,000 years ago.

Over the years, Ushuaia has served as an indigenous campsite, Anglican mission, prison colony and way station for corsairs, whalers, pirates and gold-diggers, among others. The indigenous peoples, convicts and shipwreck survivors are all gone, replaced by guidebook-toting, exotica-seeking sightseers in waterproof gear and hiking boots. Tourism pumps more than $120 million a year into the economy.

Amid the worldwide eco-awareness boom, Ushuaia has gained global traction as a base to visit receding glaciers, observe penguin and sea lion colonies, follow the path of Charles Darwin and even trek (with sunscreen) beneath the ozone hole, which occasionally extends above the city, though it can’t be seen. Ushuaia is also the southern terminus of Patagonia, another tourist brand oozing cachet…

But the onslaught of world-end chic hasn’t shattered the allure — not yet, anyway. Although some unsightly development mars the town, nearby parks and waterways offer access to a largely unspoiled landscape of inlets and moorlands, forests and bays.

“There’s something here that touches the imagination,” says Gotz Bernau, violinist and concert-master of the Berlin Symphonic orchestra, seated at a picture window in a pricey hillside hotel as cottony snowflakes fell on the pines outside. “This could be Sweden or Switzerland. But you know it’s the End of the World.”

That is the interesting question posed recently by columnist Paul Krugman, who investigated the evidence that Europeans have been growing taller whereas Americans (who used to be the tallest people in the world) are not.

Traveling through Europe recently, I’ve been able to confirm through personal experience what statistical surveys tell us: the perceived stature of Americans is not what it was. Europeans used to look up to us; now, many of them look down on us instead. No, I’m not talking metaphorically about our loss of moral authority in the wake of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. I’m literally talking about feet and inches…

The data show that Americans, who in the words of a recent paper by the economic historian John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale in Social Science Quarterly, were “tallest in the world between colonial times and the middle of the 20th century,” have now “become shorter (and fatter) than Western and Northern Europeans. In fact, the U.S. population is currently at the bottom end of the height distribution in advanced industrial countries.”

This is not a trivial matter. As the paper says, “height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment.”

Krugman notes that this is a bit of a puzzle because, although there is “normally a strong association between per capita income and a country’s average height,” that is evidently not the determining cause of this height shift since the U.S. still has a higher per capita GDP than other nations. So what is the cause? Well, that’s where it gets a bit depressing.

We seem to be left with two main possible explanations of the height gap.

One is that America really has turned into “Fast Food Nation.”

“U.S. children,” write Mr. Komlos and Mr. Lauderdale, “consume more meals prepared outside the home, more fast food rich in fat, high in energy density and low in essential micronutrients, than do European children.” Our reliance on fast food, in turn, may reflect lack of family time because we work too much: U.S. G.D.P. per capita is high partly because employed Americans work many more hours than their European counterparts.

A broader explanation would be that contemporary America is a society that, in a variety of ways, doesn’t take very good care of its children. Recently, Unicef issued a report comparing a number of measures of child well-being in 21 rich countries, including health and safety, family and peer relationships and such things as whether children eat fruit and are physically active. The report put the Netherlands at the top; sure enough, the Dutch are now the world’s tallest people, almost 3 inches taller, on average, than non-Hispanic American whites. The U.S. ended up in 20th place, below Poland, Portugal and Hungary, but ahead of Britain.

In short, Americans spend so many hours at work that they don’t devote enough time to family, physical activity and a good diet. If this is all true, then you might say that the work and task-oriented culture of the U.S. is now even affecting our height.

In the most recent edition of Newsweek, there is a story about Ryan Crocker, the new U.S. ambassador to Baghdad. In the middle of the article are some excerpts which indicate that Crocker takes the role of culture seriously and that he goes out of his way to learn about the country he is working in.

“My checkered past has taught me a few things,” he says. “One of them is respect for other people’s reality. Iraq has its own reality, its own institutions, its own way of doing things, certainly its own problems that will have to be solved in Iraqi terms. Understanding why they approach things as they do is pretty important.”

He knows Iraq intimately. In the late 1970s, when foreign diplomats were kept under strict surveillance by young Saddam Hussein’s regime, Crocker somehow wangled permission to travel the length of the Euphrates River valley. He drove off in a Toyota Land Cruiser, giving lifts to hitchhiking (and talkative) Iraqi soldiers along the way for 10 days until he reached Qaim, on the Syrian border, where horrified authorities detained him for several hours before sending him back down the river.

“Ryan takes the trouble to get out and really understand the country he’s working in,” says one of Crocker’s former colleagues, Ambassador David Mack.

The article even provides a glimpse of some of the cultural insights Crocker has gained through his in-country experiences, such as how Arab Bedouins view time:

As a young Foreign Service officer studying intensive Arabic, Crocker spent a month with a family of Bedouin shepherds in Jordan’s fabled Wadi Rum. “I learned 27 different words for camel,” he says. More important, he also learned how the region’s tribesmen recall events as vividly as if they happened last week “when actually they date back 300 or 400 years, through the mists of time.”

Thomas Swick, travel writer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, just published a column with a humorous but factual collection of international behavior tips. A sampling:

In South America, don’t tell people you’re from America. (They are, too.)

In Italy, don’t order cappuccino after 11 a.m.

In Greece, don’t say, “I didn’t order this,” when your ouzo arrives with a small plate of peanuts or olives or cheese. (It’s complimentary.)

In England, don’t touch the queen.

In Thailand, don’t badmouth the king.

In Vatican City, don’t correct the pope.

In Scotland, don’t call the people English.

In Kazakhstan, don’t mention Borat.

In Ireland, don’t ask, “Are there any good books by local authors?”

In Singapore, don’t do a lot of things.

In Indonesia, don’t say you’re planning to explore the country by car.

And whatever you do, wherever you go, never say you don’t like soccer.

There is an intriguing article in the Christian Science Monitor about some of the challenges faced by single women in India, particularly for those who are independent enough to want to live on their own. It is apparently still somewhat rare for individual females to move out of their family home, so those that do often discover that landlords are reluctant to rent them an apartment.

It took Chiya Singh three months and seven real estate agents working in tandem to find an apartment to rent in New Delhi. The problem wasn’t her credit history or salary. It was her status as a single Indian woman. The questions blocking Ms. Singh from a room of her own were a bit personal, she says. Prospective landlords wanted to know why, at age 29, she wasn’t married and why, as a single person, she didn’t want to live with her parents.

“It was an exhausting process,” Singh says, of trying to find her own place after she divorced. “I became a broken record. They asked ‘Why do you want to live alone?’ I said, ‘Um, because I think I’m old enough.’ ”

That response usually netted Singh a cold expression and a vague “We’ll let you know” from the landlord.

Finding an apartment in any big city can be daunting, but in New Delhi, single Indian women face the added social expectation of living at home until they wed. Many young, middle-class, well-educated single Indian women, however, are overcoming family resistance only to run into suspicious landlords…

In less than a decade, the portion of middle-class women joining India’s workforce has jumped from 1 to 15 percent. While job opportunities have given women in the upper-middle class economic independence, it has not changed Indian society’s views about women, Ms. Addlakha says.

In Indian society, multiple generations often live under one roof with the eldest male serving as the head. Though it is increasingly acceptable for newlyweds to move out, single daughters are expected to stay home.

The International Herald Tribune recently debuted a travel blog called Globespotters, in which the paper’s foreign correspondents provide news, tips and advice from six of the world’s most traveled cities - Paris, Rome, London, Berlin, Hong Kong and Bangkok. An entry a few days ago speculated about the best croissant in Paris.

One of the great pleasures of returning to France on an overnight flight from North America or Asia is arriving in the world’s most beautiful city as it wakes.

The best place to enjoy it - to my mind - is on rue Montorgueil, the pedestrian street running past our apartment.

I stop first at Stohrer, a boulangerie that was once official baker to Louis XV. (A favorite of the queen, Nicolas Stohrer is credited with inventing the baba au rhum, a delicious dessert for which he must be praised.)

But the real reason to visit Stohrer in the morning is their delicious croissant: Glazed, crumbly, crisp on the outside, but soft in the middle - and no doubt highly unhealthy.

I often take the croissant up the street to the Cafe des Petits Carreaux for a large cafe au lait to sip as I take a seat by the bar to glance at the tabloid Le Parisien for the latest crime stories while watching the pedestrians pass by.

Can any croissant in Paris beat that?

With all the sound and fury in the U.S. these days about immigration, it’s easy to forget that immigration and emigration are global issues that affect many countries. NPR took on the topic this week in an effort to “set the record straight” about some facts and figures. An excerpt:

The current debate over immigration in the United States is part of a much larger global issue. The world today consists of vast networks of floating populations — from the Indian construction worker who moves to Dubai to the American retiree who heads for the beaches of Acapulco. A lot of myths, and misunderstandings, surround the issue of global migration. Here, we try to set the record straight with a true-or-false test.

We know how many people are international migrants.

False. There are some 200 million migrants — defined as people living for at least one year outside their home country — globally. But that figure includes undocumented migrants, who are not easily counted. In Europe for instance, the estimates of undocumented migrants range from 6 to 15 million. Also, immigration figures do not include people moving within a country. In China, for instance, at least 100 million people in search of work have moved from rural areas to big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

More people are picking up roots than at any time in history.

True and false. In absolute numbers, there are more immigrants than ever. But during the last age of globalization, from 1870 to 1915, the percentage of the world population that migrated was slightly larger than it is today.

Migration is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1620, some cities had huge immigrant populations. In Amsterdam, for example, one-quarter of the residents were foreign-born. But there are some big differences today. For instance, in years past, it was difficult to travel from one country to another, yet relatively easy to clear any regulatory hurdles once you arrived. The reverse is true today. Modern technology makes it easy to travel, but migration is now highly regulated in most parts of the world.

Most migration is from poor countries to wealthy developed ones.

False. Some 60 percent of all global migration is within the developed world. This so-called “south-south migration” might include a Bangladeshi laborer moving to India or an Indian laborer moving to Kuwait, for example.

There is more in-depth coverage at NPR, including an interactive map of some immigration hot spots.

A number of international businesspeople who work in the U.S. or with Americans have apparently spurred the development of a new consulting industry - that of the “accent reduction” coach. There is an interesting article about it in the International Herald Tribune:

It was not what Sergei Petukhov said. It was how he said it. “The way I said ‘accent reduction,’ he couldn’t understand me,” Petukhov said. That was enough for Petukhov, a Moscow native who works for the law firm Kaye Scholer as a scientific adviser, to get his employer’s approval to pay for training to decrease his Russian accent.

He is one of many educated, non-native English speakers working in the United States who take voice training and accent reduction to improve presentations, workshops and everyday conversations with their American-born co-workers.

Petukhov’s accent coach, Jennifer Pawlitschek, said that from her experience in New York, the field is growing. “Here it’s hot, and I think it’s because it’s an international crossroads,” she said, both because the United Nations is in the city and because of New York’s role in global financial markets.

Pawlitschek, who has a Master of Fine Arts degree in drama from the University of California, Irvine, said “the posture of the mouth” affects accent. She teaches how to change “the way you hold your jaw, lips and tongue,” along with stress and intonation.

She contended that the term “accent reduction” is a misnomer. “Accent reduction is learning an accent. It is learning an American accent,” she said.

From early 20th century Paris to late 20th century Prague, there is a long history of trying to discover cheap, trendy international outposts for expatriates. Some regard Buenos Aires as a hip and contemporary expat haven, and now the NY Times has labeled Krakow, Poland, as a popular international city for young Westerners.

“There’s a lot of creative energy here,” said Garrett Van Reed, 25, a writer from Pennsylvania, who is part of a growing expatriate community that is turning Krakow into Eastern Europe’s newest bohemian capital. “There’s tons of artists and street performers. And there’s always something going on in Rynek Glowny,” he said, referring to the picturesque main square. “You’re constantly stumbling upon something new.” …

“Krakow has exploded,” said Thymn Chase, 26, a musician and writer who moved to Krakow shortly after graduating from Skidmore College in 2003, and started Lost in Krakow, an English-language zine, which he first published in September to give voice to the growing expat community.

A brooding man with a goatee and long hair, Mr. Chase embodies the backpacker-philosopher type who might have chain-smoked in Prague during the early 1990s. “Within a half-hour of arriving in Krakow, I knew this is where I wanted to be,” he said over a beer at Lokator, a new lounge on Ulica Krakowska. “Krakow has an incredible artistic atmosphere.”

In October, a dozen expats and Poles gathered at Mr. Chase’s grungy apartment in Old Town. Sprawled on beat-up couches and flea-market chairs, they were a motley crew — unemployed artists, Web designers, writers and musicians — eager to make their mark as cultural pioneers, colonizing a new frontier in Eastern Europe.

“I’m in several bands here,” said Anna Spysz, 24, a pixieish guitarist from Austin, who wore a low-cut T-shirt, hip-hugging jeans and fake pearls. “It’s very easy to book a gig here. You don’t have the pressures of London, New York or Austin. And you don’t need two jobs to survive.”

There is a very interesting story in the most recent issue of Time Magazine, called “How the World Eats.” The writer, Bryan Walsh, discusses the connection between food and culture.

Food and diet are the cornerstones of any culture, one of the most reliable symbols of national identity. Think of the long Spanish lunch followed by the afternoon siesta, a rhythm of food and rest perfectly suited to the blistering heat of the Iberian peninsula in summer. Think of the Chinese meal of rice, vegetables and (only recently) meat, usually served in big collective dishes, the better for extended clans to dine together.

National diets come to incorporate all aspects of who we are: our religious taboos, class structure, geography, economy, even government. When we eat together, “we are ordering the world around us and defining the community most important to us,” says Martin Jones, a bioarchaeologist at Cambridge University and author of the new book Feast: Why Humans Share Food.

Our contemporary society, not surprisingly, has begun to force changes in the eating habits of many cultures. As the story notes:

Take Italy. It’s no secret that the Mediterranean diet—with its emphasis on olive oil, seafood and fresh produce—is healthy, but it was also a joy to prepare and eat. Italians, says Counihan, traditionally began the day with a small meal called colazione, consisting of light baked goods and coffee. The big meal came at around 1 p.m. and included a first course of pasta, rice or soup; a second of meat and vegetables; a third, fruit course and, of course, wine. In between the midday meal and a late, smaller dinner came a small snack, the merenda.

Today, when time zones have less and less meaning, there is little tolerance for offices’ closing for lunch, and worsening traffic in cities means workers can’t make it home and back fast enough anyway. So the formerly small supper after sundown becomes the big meal of the day, the only one at which the family has a chance to get together. “The evening meal carries the full burden that used to be spread over two meals,” says Counihan.

South Americans are struggling with similar changes. John Brett, a nutritional anthropologist at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, says that many Latin Americans too prefer a large family meal at midday, heavy on starchy grains like quinoa or plants like yucca. But migration from the country to the cities has made that impossible.

“They don’t have the luxury of two hours of lunch,” says Brett. “The economy moves on.” Not only do these changes add stress for families, but nutritional quality declines as well. “They tend to eat whatever is cheap and quick, ” says Chaiken.

If you read the Time story online, don’t miss the fascinating photo essay that accompanies it, with pictures of families around the world posing with a week’s worth of food for their households.

According to a story today in the Boston Globe, students have been showing increasing interest in recent years in global health careers.

The number of graduates from US master’s degree programs in international health has grown by 69 percent in the last decade as a part of an overall boom among students interested in saving lives in the poorest parts of the world. The trend is also seen in heightened interest among undergraduates and medical school students in global health issues…

Jim Yong Kim , chairman of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Social Medicine, said just a handful of people in his Harvard Medical School class two decades ago expressed any interest in global health. This year, he said, roughly a third of the 130 first-year students petitioned him and Paul Farmer, with whom he was teaching a course on social justice in medicine, to put more global health material into their class.

The two professors added 10 seminars examining nitty-gritty subjects such as how organizations deliver syringes and anti retroviral AIDS medicines to remote villages in Africa.

The article attributed the interest to a variety of factors, from a greater desire among students for a meaningful career to increased celebrity-driven media coverage of global health issues.

“We’re seeing really good students who seem to have less concern about getting any job and more concern about having a job that is meaningful to them,” said Joel Lamstein , president and co founder of John Snow Inc. , a Boston-based public health research and consulting firm that employs 1,000 people…

Michael H. Merson , director of the six-month-old Duke Global Health Institute in Durham, N.C., founded with $30 million in seed money, believes that students are being drawn to international health for many reasons, including an increase in media coverage of such issues as the SARS outbreak and AIDS as well as a heightened awareness of foreign issues since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Merson also cited the increasing amount of money in the field and a greater number of health organizations. He singled out the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given $6 billion to global health projects since 1999.

“The Gates Foundation has really mattered, and related to that is the celebrity factor. I admire Bono the most,” Merson said of the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2. “But there are many others out there — George Clooney with Darfur, Oprah with orphans in South Africa, Alicia Keys, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie. To our youth, that matters. The fact they have turned such devotion to such causes, many of them in Africa, makes it sort of a cool thing to do.”