Travels in the Riel World

There was an interesting cultural snippet in a recent NY Times interview of novelist Dalia Sofer, who was born in Iran but now lives in New York. It came when Sofer discussed the communication style of Iranians.

I would think that Iranian-born women see memoir-writing as a kind of protest against a society that demands so much stillness and silence of them.

Perhaps. Even Farsi, as a language, is elusive and indirect. There’s this whole idea of taarof — you say something you don’t mean, and the other person is supposed to pick up on it.

For example?

If I am visiting you, I may say, “It is getting late; I must go,” and you say, “No, please stay,” and I am supposed to know that you really want me to go. People have to pick up on codes.

Saying what you don’t mean, but with the assumption that you will still be understood. One more example of how communication styles differ around the globe.

The Arctic climate of Greenland hasn’t traditionally been a big tourist attraction, but interest is growing. Climate change, ironically, is one of the factors behind a rise in tourism to Greenland, as this Associated Press article notes:

Hunting is the central element of the Inuit culture in Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory, but that immutable way of life is facing its greatest challenge: climate change. It’s a double-edged sword for the Inuit. It’s transforming their frozen landscape, melting glaciers and disrupting animal life…

Since 1995, Greenland’s vast ice cap has lost 7 percent of its mass and 300 feet in height…But the change also presents new opportunities. Twenty years ago, when visitors were rare, the fjords and bays were clogged with ice through July. Now, those bays are navigable by April or May. That means more tourists _ eager to explore one of the most remote and unexploited corners of the globe. Eight cruise ships will come to the area for the first time this month and next.

“You could say that the Inuit on Greenland are the early adapters to climate change,” said Jacqueline McGlade, EEA executive director. “The people here are determined to embrace a sustainable form of tourism that fosters their traditions and respects their landscape.”

A similar story in the Toronto Globe and Mail makes the same point, in between descriptions of the dramatic iceberg views:

I’m sitting atop a small hill of smooth rock watching centuries of history drift by. In front of me, Disko Bay is filled with icebergs – big ones, smooth ones, small ones. They seem to be waiting, glinting in the midnight sun. It’s approaching 11 p.m. in this village north of the Arctic Circle, but the sun is still two arms’ lengths away from the horizon and won’t set for a couple of weeks.

From my perch, it’s the scale of the scene, not the beauty of each iceberg, that is most impressive. The view is both peaceful and striking. It’s one of those travel-earned vistas that stays in your mind: the red rooftops of Florence from the Campanile, the golden forts of Jaisalmer at sunset, and, here, the shimmering white icebergs of Greenland pausing in the bay…

While Greenland often draws a passing glance on a polar-route flight or conjures up Vikings – or the 10th-century marketing spin by Erik the Red, who came up with the island’s contrary name – today, the country is becoming known as a destination at the forefront of climate change.

In many of the world’s warmer climates, the mid-day siesta is a time-honored tradition. People have always taken time off to rest or nap in the mid-day heat and then tend to keep more active in the cooler hours of evening. But in many of these regions, modern life is causing the decline of the siesta, as noted in this NPR story about Greece.

For most of history, climate shaped the way people lived their everyday lives. In some of the world’s hottest places, people still take a midday siesta. But modern life is making that a rarity…

Even in the hottest climates, the midday siesta is a disappearing habit. With globalization, people work longer hours. Air-conditioning shields them from the heat. Many live in suburbs and farther away from where they work, which makes going home for a midday nap impractical.

Interestingly, just as the siesta is in decline, there is intriguing evidence that there may actually be health benefits to a mid-day nap.

“Napping is a response, an adaptation to the hot climate,” Trichopoulos says. “Siesta is a very pleasant habit. In a way, it doubles your day. Because you start all over again at 5 o’clock and you can go on until 11 or 12 o’clock which is not uncommon at all in our part of the world.”

Trichopoulos’ expertise is in cancer prevention. A courtly man at 68, he teaches both at Harvard and at the University of Athens. So he can’t help but notice the difference in the pace of life in Greece and in the United States.

“In the way life is organized here, you start with stress commuting,” he says. “And you finish with stress, which is again the commuting. So to have in the middle of the day a time when you can relax, it can only be good, or at least not bad.”

Trichopoulos looked specifically at whether taking a nap gives protection against heart attacks. The results were published earlier this year in an American medical journal. Greek men who napped at least 30 minutes a day were significantly less likely to die from heart attacks, compared with those who didn’t nap.

His theory is that napping helps reduce stress, which is known to increase one’s risk of heart attack. Trichopoulos cautions that more study is needed to confirm his findings — but he’s excited about the health implications.

Most of us grew up believing that maps and globes were accurate, objective portrayals of reality. At some point, though, we discovered that maps can be as subjective as anything else in the world of politics and diplomacy. That point is explained nicely in a recent article in the International Herald Tribune, about the cartography challenges faced by the Italian mapmaker Nova Rico.

“The problems of cartography are the same that exist in diplomatic relations,” said Stefano Strata, co-director of Nova Rico, which has been producing custom globes for 50 years in Impruneta, near Florence.

For mapmakers like Nova Rico, disputes over geography are commonplace. For a Turkish customer, Cyprus is shown split in two, a division that Greek Cypriots do not recognize. In one globe, Chile gets parts of Antarctica that on another globe go to Argentina. And in much of the Arab world, Israel is nonexistent.

“Maps aren’t faithful portraits of reality but subjective constructions,” said Vladimiro Valerio, an expert in the history of cartography on the architectural faculty at the University of Venice. “Maps reflect the design for which they are to be used. They reflect who commissioned it.”

In sum, he said, “cartographers don’t lie, but they take a position.”

Traveling by bus in developing countries is often a challenge and always an interesting experience, as Henry Homeyer discovered recently when he endured a 19-hour trip from Nairobi, Kenya to Mwanza, Tanzania, which he wrote about for the Christian Science Monitor. An excerpt:

The bus left 3-1/2 hours late, at 12:30 a.m. Like many others, I worried that if I were inside the station, I might miss the bus. So I paced the sidewalk and rested against sacks of grain stacked on it…

I had expected to travel on something like a Greyhound bus. “Very modern, very comfortable,” I had been told by Emma’s parents. The bus was modern looking, but basic. The seats didn’t adjust and there was no air conditioning, although my window did open. Unlike American coaches, this one had no chemical toilet in the back. It came with seat belts, and given the roads and the skills of our driver, most of us wore them.

We began by traveling on main roads that were paved, or had once been. Large potholes caused the bus to thump, bump, and sway. By morning, we had traveled less than 100 miles. This was not going to be a fast trip. There were numerous checkpoints run by guys with AK-47s. And, of course, we stopped to pick up and drop off passengers.

The other passengers were kind to me. They pointed out, or even lead me to, toilets at rest stops. They warned me when the bus was ready to leave. They lent me their cellphones when it became obvious that we would be arriving late – and then later – so that I could call Emma’s parents…

Food was available at every stop: bananas (4 cents a bunch), roast peanuts (a penny for a small bag), and flat breads called chapattis, hot off roadside griddles. When we stopped for a lunch break in Bunda, Tanzania, I bought roast meat and fried potatoes for the equivalent of 80 cents, and felt well fed…

I finally got to Mwanza 19 hours after arriving at the Nairobi bus station, dusty and tired, but elated to see Emma’s parents there, waiting for me. And when we reached their home there was a sign on the front door: “Karibu, Henry.” Welcome, it said in Swahili, and they meant it.

Travel is always interesting, no matter how you do it. But the chance to interact with locals tends to take the experience up a level. So I was interested to read this article in the Boston Globe about an organization called Couch Surfing that connects people around the world by offering free places to stay in each other’s homes.

On a recent Saturday morning, five twentysomethings huddle in a cozy living room to map out their day. Two are from Montreal. Another is from Chicago. The hosts, Jesse Fenton and Erin Benoit, have lived in the apartment for three years. The guests have had plans to visit for more than a month, but their only contact with their hosts has been through computer screens.

The five met through CouchSurfing.com, an online network of travelers, mostly in their 20s, who are tired of staying in hotels and hostels and who want to see the world with a free place to crash — often on someone’s couch. But what sets CouchSurfing.com apart from a bevy of similar free services such as hospitalityclub.org is its focus on its mission, which according to the group’s website “is not just about free accommodations” but about human interaction.

“It makes the world a smaller place,” says Benoit, 25, a medical technologist at Boston Medical Center. “Eventually, we’ll have friends all over the world.”

Ever wondered what happens to the clothing you donate to charitable organizations in the U.S.? Believe it or not, some of it actually ends up being sold in developing countries, a fact that some international shoppers appreciate while others bemoan the affect on native textile industries. This Associated Press story has the details.

Those stained T-shirts and stretched-neck sweaters you clean out of your closet may one day wind up heaped waist-high on a plastic tarp in this chilly Andean city’s vast outdoor market.

Clothes dropped off at charities in the United States and Europe are often sold and delivered to the developing world, where each year $1.2 billion in used clothing sent from wealthy nations are rummaged through by poor shoppers in search of a bargain.

It’s a business that Bolivian President Evo Morales considers shameful. In April, his Andean country became the 32nd nation to ban or restrict used clothing imports in an attempt to protect native clothing industries…

“It’s impossible to think that we can be dignified if, in the name of poverty, we wear clothing that has been thrown out in another country,” Ramiro Uchani, the deputy minister of small business, told The Associated Press…

Not all those shirts end up in poor countries. Canada and Japan are two of the world’s largest used clothing importers, and trendy Tokyo shoppers will pay $100 for the right threadbare American tee. But in the developing world, used clothing sells for rock-bottom prices that can cripple local textile industries.

The American road trip is a classic journey. Many is the person who has either completed or dreamed of a drive across the United States. The latest such individual is Matt Gross, who reported on his cross-country driving adventures for the NY Times. Here is an excerpt from the tail end of his journey:

“Nothing but sagebrush for 130 miles,” said the construction worker in the orange vest who was temporarily blocking U.S. Highway 20 in southeastern Oregon. As the Volvo idled in the midday heat, I looked past her at the landscape — at the dry, slowly rising hills matted with blue-green-purple tufts of hip-high scrub — then down at my map, and was impressed with her precision: For almost exactly 130 miles to the east, south and west, there was indeed nothing but sagebrush. This really was the desert. I shut off the engine and crossed my fingers, hoping the car and I would survive…

These car troubles, which I should have expected in my final week on the road, only deepened my desire to see Oregon’s deserts. I wasn’t drawn simply to their reputed beauty and remoteness, but by their place in American road-trip history. This was, in a way, where the fabled tradition began.

Back in 1903, the automobile was a novelty, expensive and unreliable. And with no gas stations and few paved roads outside of major cities, horses and railroads offered more reliable transport than a creaky chassis powered by a breakdown-prone internal combustion engine.

Which is probably why Horatio Nelson Jackson, a 31-year-old doctor, bet friends at the University Club of San Francisco that he could drive a car from coast to coast. They scoffed. A few days later, Jackson was at the helm of a $3,000, two-cylinder Winton automobile, accompanied by Sewall K. Crocker, a mechanic and chauffeur, and heading east.

Ever wondered what the world looked like from the windows of people in various parts of the world? Now you can find out, thanks to a novel project by blogger Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic. He has a feature called The World from Your Window, which publishes reader photos from around the world of the view they see outside their home or office windows. It’s fascinating. Check it out.

It’s easy to dismiss ancient nomadic traditions as quaint relics of the past. But researchers are now discovering that these tribal traditions are not only the building blocks of Central Asian cultures but are also representative of values that continue to influence contemporary politics. Some of these insights were discussed in a recent article in the International Herald Tribune.

While the view that tribe and clan — the basic building blocks of nomadic, or semi-transient societies— influence the contemporary politics of some countries is nothing new, specialists in nomadic studies argue that policy makers have overlooked important “cultural intelligence,” like family relationships, when analyzing governments that grew out of tribal traditions.

“Families, tribes these are the things that matter here,” said Oraz Jandosov, co-chairman of a Kazakhstan opposition political party. “Foreigners talk about these things, but it’s only talk. They don’t understand them.”

Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan may take on the trappings of modern, Western nation-states, with parliaments, justice departments and other governmental agencies, researchers say. But politics are still driven by the customs and institutions of nomadism, in which political disputes were settled at the level of family, clan and tribe.

“In and of itself you can’t graft what happened two thousand years ago and say that’s what it is today, but it helps to understand how these societies have found successful strategies and how they respond to outside forces,” Frachetti said. “By not exploring the depth to which nomadic populations have contributed to local political systems, we are naïve to an important aspect of the social fabric of parts of the Near East and Central Asia.”

Lorena Ochoa has made her mark as the top women’s golfer in the world today, capped by her recent victory in the Women’s British Open. In Mexico, though, she is known not only for her golfing exploits but also for how much she is trying to give back to her home country. This article does a nice job of putting into context where Ochoa came from and how much Mexico still influences her worldview and her charitable efforts.

There are two Mexicos, it is often said, and on the northeast outskirts of Guadalajara is a prime example of the one that drew the short stick. Bouncing along a deeply rutted dirt road that passes through the middle of a barrio known as La Coronilla, a passenger is jarred by the scenes of abject poverty: an open-air meat market where hanging beef and poultry carcasses draw flies in sweltering heat; an emaciated horse struggling to pull a cart; small stucco houses with roofs of corrugated metal. The bleak, baked-out backdrop evokes the depressing footage of a Middle East war zone, except that these wary inhabitants are mestizos.

“These are the people that try to escape to los Estados Unidos because they have nothing,” says the driver, Guadalajara social worker Pedro Merino, as he wrestles the steering wheel through a rough turn. But as the car rolls haltingly down a steep hill to a dead end, a majestic canyon that drops some 2,000 feet to a green valley floor is suddenly revealed. So is a simple but just as surprising steel and concrete building whose windows and balconies are perched on the cliff’s edge. It’s an elementary school called La Barranca, the place Lorena Ochoa, the world’s best woman golfer, has focused her deep desire to help and give back.

Employing an experimental curriculum aimed at breaking through Mexico’s extreme class divisions, La Barranca charges no student more than $20 a month, and most far less. The school day opens with 45 minutes of exercise, stretching and meditation designed to put kids in a calm state they reach too rarely in their often chaotic home environments. The school emphasizes theater arts as a way of tapping into creativity that is too often repressed. The children frequently learn songs containing their lessons in order to better retain knowledge. They also practice judo as a way to channel latent anger and aggression and foster self-control and self-esteem.

Each day, a group of neighborhood mothers gathers to cook breakfast and lunch for the children in the school kitchen. At night, the classrooms are used to address the widespread illiteracy problem among adults in the barrio, as well as for community workshops on parenting, drug and alcohol counseling, and domestic violence prevention. The panorama of the majestic canyon is always present, a subliminal reminder—along with benefactor Ochoa’s accomplishments as the first Mexican athlete to achieve world No. 1 status—of possibilities.

Ochoa got involved in La Barranca after she started the Fundación Lorena Ochoa upon joining the LPGA Tour in 2003. “People said, ‘No, Lorena, it’s too soon, you are too busy, too young, you don’t have enough money, you don’t know what’s going to happen,’” the 25-year-old says in accented but articulate English, a language she did not begin to learn until her late teens. “I said, ‘I don’t care, I want to do it.’ Somehow, I just knew the thing would work, and it did.”

Not long ago, Colombia was mostly known for drug cartels, kidnappings and violence. These days, though, the violence has receded and tourists are once again making their way to this South American destination, as Grace Bastidas reported recently for the NY Times.

It was Thursday evening in Medellín and the open-air bars and cafes along fashionable Lleras Park were overflowing with after-work singles. At Triada, a stylish lounge with an orange neon bar and low-slung couches, laughter filled the subtropical air along with the deep-toned drumming of cumbia music. From around the corner, a small group of motorcyclists screeched by, their shiny engines puttering like machine guns. No one flinched, and the party kept rolling.

Not long ago, this scene would have been unthinkable in Medellín, once considered the most dangerous place on earth.

During the 1980s, Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, was home to the drug lord Pablo Escobar, whose infamous cartel turned the city into a bloody battleground and the world’s cocaine capital. Gangs roamed the narrow streets, extortionists preyed on the city’s residents and narcotics traffickers staged attacks against police.

“You couldn’t step outside,” said Bibian Gomez, 28, a commercial real estate broker who sought refuge in the resort town of Cartagena at the height of the violence. “Whenever you saw a young guy on a motorcycle you thought that he was an assassin.”

But in the last decade, this city of two million, with its beautiful colonial architecture and year-round spring-like weather, has awakened from its drug nightmare. Mr. Escobar and his minions are gone and the cocaine trade has been largely dispersed. Bullet-riddled neighborhoods are coming to life with art museums and well-designed parks. And the constant rumble of construction — new shopping malls, flashy casinos and luxury hotels — can be heard throughout the city.

Sometimes a crisis really can be defused by a few wise elders. At least in cultures that have a tradition of respect for such individuals. That’s what happened in Ethiopia recently when a political crisis was solved through mediation by a newly formed Council of Elders. The Christian Science Monitor has the story:

As the gray-haired man of letters strode into the posh restaurant in Ethiopia’s capital recently, wearing his signature long, white yemiyakora tunic and black and white cap, patrons stood up and applauded.

Professor Ephraim Isaac, a retired Ethiopian Harvard scholar who lectures around the world on religion, peace, and conflict, had just helped resolve his country’s two-year political crisis using problem-solving methods as traditionally Ethiopian as his garb.

Just weeks ago, 35 opposition members were sentenced to life in prison for spurring election protests back in 2005. Despite widespread pressure from donors and human rights groups who accused Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of stifling dissent, the opposition leaders had been kept in jail for almost two years for attempting to overthrow the government.

It was a deadlock that no amount of outside pressure seemed able to loosen, and the life sentences threatened to escalate the crisis. So it was clear to Mr. Isaac that his people needed a strong dose of traditional peacemaking methods. He led a nonpartisan Ethiopian “council of elders” that quickly negotiated a deal acceptable to both sides: clemency in exchange for an admission of guilt and promise to respect the rule of law.

“In our tradition there is forgiveness and elders mediate and we do not believe in grudge and vengeance,” Mr. Isaac explains. “This is a very rich culture.”

There was an interesting profile a few days ago in the NY Times about Maleeha Lodhi, the high commissioner of Pakistan in Britain. What I found particularly intriguing were some of the cultural issues she discussed.

The British are individualistic and private, as are people in many other Western societies, while the Pakistanis are more of a group and family-oriented culture, which explains this humorous but revealing insight:

The Pakistan Festival … was the most visible endeavor, so far, in Ms. Lodhi’s mission to bridge the social and cultural gap between the stiff-upper-lip British and the community togetherness of the Pakistani immigrants…

An outgoing person who thinks little of entertaining 100 people at her Hampstead residence, wine included, Ms. Lodhi says she often tries a test on British officials to illustrate that integration is a two-way street.

“The British have their own test from Norman Tebbit, a Conservative politician,” Ms. Lodhi said. “They say to immigrants, are you for the British or the Pakistani cricket team? My test for the British is: When was the last time you invited a Muslim family to dinner?”

The answer from the British is uniform, and unsettling, she said. “ ‘It’s not that we don’t invite Muslims, we don’t invite anyone,’ ” she said.

Despite other changes in Japanese society, women who pursue a career path in Japan still battle ingrained cultural traditions that make it difficult for them to advance on the job, according to this International Herald Tribune story.

Yukako Kurose joined the work force in 1986, a year after Japan passed its first equal opportunity law. Like other career-minded young women, she hoped the law would open doors. But her promising career at a department-store corporate office ended 15 years ago when she had a baby.

She was passed over for promotions after she started leaving work before 6:30 each evening to pick up her daughter from day care. Then, she was pushed into a dead-end clerical job. Finally, she quit.

“Japanese work customs make it almost impossible for women to have both a family and a career,” said Kurose, 45, who now works for a polyester company.

Although discrimination may be responsible for part of this problem, most observers say the bigger issue is a demanding Japanese work culture that makes few allowances for family responsibilities.

Experts on women’s issues say outright prejudice is only part of Japan’s problem. An even bigger barrier to the advancement of women is the nation’s notoriously demanding corporate culture, particularly its expectation of morning-to-midnight work hours.

Government statistics show that many women drop out of management-track jobs when they reach their late 20s and early 30s and start having children. As Japan’s birthrate rapidly declines and its population ages, there are growing concerns that Japan can ill afford to lose so much potential.

“If expected to work 15 hours a day, then most women will give up,” said Kuniko Inoguchi, a former cabinet minister in charge of gender equality. “Japan is losing half of its brainpower as it faces a labor shortage.”

In some group-oriented cultures, the threat of being embarrassed or losing face in front of one’s peers is a powerful influence on behavior. So I found this anecdote in a morning news story somewhat interesting - it appears Thailand is using the threat of public shame to get its police force to behave in a particular manner. The shame? Being forced to wear pink Hello Kitty armbands while on duty if an officer has been found to have broken certain rules.

Thai police officers who break police rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring “Hello Kitty,” the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.

Police officers caught littering, parking in a prohibited area, or arriving late — among other misdemeanors — will also be forced to stay in the division office with the deputy chief all day, said Police Col. Pongpat Chayaphan. The striking armband features Sanrio’s Hello Kitty sitting atop two hearts.

“Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,” said Pongpat, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok.

“(Hello) Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps,” Pongpat said.

Sure, everyone knows about outsourcing technical and telemarketing services to India, but outsourcing nursing home care? That was the grudging decision made by Steve Herzfeld when, running short of money and energy after three years of nonstop caring for his ailing parents, he moved with them to India and arranged for all-day medical and nursing home care that cost significantly less than what the family was paying in the U.S. As this article reports:

After three years of caring for his increasingly frail mother and father in their Florida retirement home, Steve Herzfeld was exhausted and faced with spending his family’s last resources to put the couple in a cheap nursing home.

So he made what he saw as the only sensible decision: He outsourced his parents to India.

Today his 89-year-old mother, Frances, who suffers from advanced Parkinson’s disease, gets daily massages, physical therapy and 24-hour help getting to the bathroom, all for about $15 a day. His father, Ernest, 93, an Alzheimer’s patient, has a full-time personal assistant and a cook who has won him over to a vegetarian diet healthy enough that he no longer needs his cholesterol medication.

Best of all, the plentiful drugs the couple require cost less than 20 percent of what they do at home, and salaries for their six-person staff are so cheap that the pair now bank $1,000 a month of their $3,000 Social Security payment. They aim to use the savings as an emergency fund, or to pay for airline tickets if family members want to visit.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a solution for everybody, but I consider it the best solution to our problem,” said Herzfeld, 56, a management expert who made the move to India with his parents, and now, as “care manager rather than the actual worker” has time for things like bike rides to the grocery and strolls in the botanical gardens with his father.

Tom Haines of the Boston Globe, one of the country’s better travel journalists, is currently wandering about in the Arctic regions of Norway. He’s blogging about his experiences for the Globe, and also just did an online interview with World Hum:

World Hum: Where in the world are you?

Right now, at the harbor in Vardo, an island town a mile or so offshore at the far northern edge of Norway. It’s the end of the road—E75—which begins in Greece.

What are you doing there?

I’m here on assignment for the Boston Globe with photographer Essdras Suarez, and we spent a night on Hornoya, another island a 20-minute tug ride from this harbor.

Hornoya is home to a lighthouse and more than 10,000 nesting seabirds. On Hornoya, watching the high summer drama of life for puffins and guillemots, kittiwakes and cormorants…

The puffins and friends are just one part, though, of a look at life at this edge of Europe. Third part of a series that so far has landed in Romania and Turkey. Here we’re hanging out with scientists and miscellaneous locals to see how nature and the life settled in it are changing these days. It will all go toward a package for the Globe in a few weeks.

What did you experience in the last 24 hours that you’d recommend?

Stood in the tundra just south of Vardo and watched an eagle owl fly low in search of prey. Fog had lifted a bit, the 11 p.m. sunset blazed—literally, as the cliche comes from somewhere—over a low ridge, a cool breeze dropped the temperature from a midday high near 65 down into the 40s. The tundra is tree free in this part, so I could stand and watch the owl cruise a mile or more south—always just a few feet off the ground—then angle back.

There are so many places in the world to visit, aren’t there?