Travels in the Riel World

There was just a three-part series about Russia in the Christian Science Monitor. It focused on the young people who are part of what has been dubbed the “Putin Generation” - those who have come of age in a Russia that is more stable and prosperous, but still tightly-controlled politically and beset by corruption in business.

The whole series is worth a read, but there were some interesting cultural points in the second article, which focused on a young woman who has struggled to establish herself as a new business owner. The story points out the opportunities of the new Russia, but also the country’s inability so far to break free of some of the stifling practices of the past. An excerpt:

Yulia Barabasheva never wanted to have her own beauty salon…But with a dream of securing a steadier income and starting a family, she opened her unmarked brown metal door to the public in April last year.

It took the help of her husband, Igor Barabashev, a businessman, to get $180,000 in start-up loans and complete a six-month slog through Russia’s formidable bureaucracy to obtain a license. Now, she and her staff of 14 take clients up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, giving them thinner eyebrows or 5-inch nails.

At 25, Barabasheva is politically unengaged, like many of her “Putin generation.” But she enjoys a rising prosperity, which Russians typically chalk up to President Vladimir Putin. Serving that new wealth has opened the door to opportunities that would have been unheard of for average Russians just a decade ago. But even as Mr. Putin’s Russia allows ever greater numbers of people, like Barabasheva, to move up the economic ladder, it demands a scrappy persistence to battle red tape and corruption while trying to get ahead…

That shift toward broader prosperity, especially in Moscow, has been dramatic. In his first five years in office, Putin brought the poverty rate of his countrymen down to about 16 percent, according to the World Bank…Official figures put the middle class at about 20 percent of the population…

But the backstage of business in Putin’s Russia is much messier, according to Barabasheva and other entrepreneurs. “The state structure is quite complicated, quite corrupted, and it requires a lot of financial investment and emotional investment,” she says.

In a recent speech, Putin acknowledged such challenges. “To this day, it’s impossible to start a business within months,” he said, laying out his vision for Russia through 2020. “You have to go to every office with a bribe: firefighters, hospital orderlies, gynecologists, you name it. It’s just a nightmare.”

Shaba National Reserve, Kenya

In redesigning my blog, I decided to add a bit more original content. Part of that effort begins here, with Riel World travel photos, in which I will regularly publish photographs that I’ve taken during my travels. Many of these pictures can also be seen on my Flickr page.

This photo was taken during an early morning game drive in Kenya when we spotted a solitary giraffe, shortly after dawn, nibbling leaves for breakfast.

Here’s a report that should give many of us pause. The Southwestern United States could lose two of its largest sources of water within the next two decades.

Climate change and a growing demand for water could drain two of the nation’s largest manmade reservoirs within 13 years, depriving several Southwestern states of key water sources, scientists warn.

Researchers at San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Wednesday that there’s a 50 percent chance that lakes Mead and Powell will dry up by 2021, and a 10 percent chance the lakes will run out of usable water by 2013.

“We were surprised that it was so soon,” said climate scientist David Pierce, co-author of the institution’s study that detailed the findings…

Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border and the West’s largest storage reservoir, and Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, have been hit hard by a regional drought and are half full…Researchers said that if Lake Mead water levels drop below 1,000 feet, Nevada would lose access to all its river allocation, Arizona would lose much of the water that flows through the Central Arizona Project Canal.

From Oregon to Argentina, to be exact. At least that’s the goal of Jonathan Dunham, who has already trekked down the West coast of the United States, through Mexico and Central America, and is now in Venezuela. The donkey (named Judas) has been with him since Mexico, when it was given to him by a family with whom he lived for several months. The NY Times recently profiled Dunham:

His quest began more than two years ago in Portland, Ore., where he was working as a substitute teacher in the public schools. One day, he decided to start walking south, down through the western United States. From Texas he crossed the border into the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where he stopped for a while. He said he hoped to walk for two more years across the rest of South America until reaching Patagonia…

The precise motivation for Mr. Dunham’s travels is not entirely clear, even to him; perhaps it never will be, though at a minimum it is a journey of self-discovery and endurance. In the meantime, newspapers along his route have reported that he was walking for world peace or to set a world record or to spread the word of God.

“They always find something to say,” Mr. Dunham said of the reporters who beat a path to meet him and Judas.

Mr. Dunham has relied on the kindness of strangers along his way through Mexico, Central America and, now, Venezuela. He keeps away from big cities, aware that they are no place for a donkey like Judas. He often seeks out a church upon arriving in a new town or village in search of a safe place to sleep.

For most of my adult life, I’ve struggled to determine which generation I belong to. Not because I don’t know when I was born, but because I’ve never felt connected to the Baby Boom generation that, according to demographers, I technically belong to. However, since I was born at the end of that demographic explosion, I shared none of the iconic experiences of that generation. When the older Boomers were experiencing Vietnam, Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury, I was learning how to read.

This feeling of disconnection extends to my politics. For years, I’ve wanted our national leaders to get us past the seemingly never-ending battles that began in the 1960s and have carried into the Clinton and Bush presidencies. The old labels and the old fights don’t seem as relevant in today’s world. In this respect, I think Barack Obama has his finger on the pulse of a real desire among voters for change. But what some pundits fail to realize is that it’s not just a desire to move past the Bush presidency - it’s also a desire to move beyond a lot of the tired political battles of recent decades.

So I was thrilled to read this recent piece by Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, in which he breaks down some of the generational and political differences between “Early Boomers” and “Late Boomers.” An excerpt:

In the case of boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—the whole frame is wrong. It’s based on birthrates, not common cultural and political affinities…But those boomers born after 1955, now mostly in their 40s, missed Woodstock (unless a few snuck in as 14-year-olds). Our coming-of-age decade was the 1970s, not the 1960s. Our presidents were Carter and Reagan, not JFK, LBJ and Nixon. Our calling card was irony, not rebellion.

So it’s no surprise that Hillary Clinton (born 1947) would have a different generational identity from Barack Obama (born 1961). Late Boomers, dubbed “Generation Jones” by activist Jonathan Pontell (because of in-between anonymity and lots of Joneses in popular ’70s songs), make up the largest share of the voter pie—26 percent. Despite our size … we spent years feeling like generational stepchildren. It was as if we arrived late at the ’60s party, after everything turned bitter.

But if we weren’t convincing flower children (or anti-hippies, like George W. Bush), we weren’t part of Generation X either. The Gen-Xers were too cynical. Instead we became the perennial swing voters, with residual ’60s idealism mixed with the pragmatism and materialism of the ’80s. Even as demographers concluded that generations are really 10 to 15 years, not 20, no one represented us.

It’s an exaggeration to say that Obama now does, but at least he understands the argument…Well before he challenged the Clintons, Obama rejected what he called “the same old arguments” between left and right. His campaign is about “turning the page,” not just from BushClintonBushClinton, but from the cultural contentiousness of those years.

Sorry for missing a few days of posts, but I’ve been doing a slight redesign of the site.

After much thought, I’ve decided to begin broadening the focus of what I write about. Since 2006, I’ve been “cultivating a global curiosity” with a blog about travel and cross-cultural topics. Although that will remain the primary focus of what I do, I’m now going to begin covering a few other related issues. It’s not a radical departure — I will continue to explore the world from a cross-cultural perspective, I’ll simply be adding to what I’ve done in the past. Along the way, I also hope to offer a bit more in the way of original writing and opinion.

If you look around the site, you’ll see a few cosmetic changes, such as in the revamped topics and links on the left side of the page. Primarily, though, the changes will come in the subjects that I choose to write about in the future, which I now see as falling into three main areas:

Travel and cross-cultural topics. This has been and will remain the foundation of the site. It’s a continuing effort to learn about the world and to see it from a cross-cultural perspective, whether that is through a travel story or an article that looks at the intersection of business and culture. The objective is not to provide comprehensive reports about everything of international significance, but rather to highlight topics that can open a window into culture or provide readers with insight into a particular country or region of the world.

Politics and democracy. Here, I’m planning to cast a wider net than in the past. I’ll continue to write about politics, democracy and elections across cultures, but I’m also going to delve more into U.S. politics. I expect to do this in part by looking at issues and events from my personal perspective, which in turn has been influenced by my international travel experiences.

Ideas for our changing world - It’s not news that the world around us is changing rapidly as a result of technology, globalization and other issues, so I intend to pursue topics of interest in this area. I also plan to explore some of the new ideas and new ways of thinking that are shaping our world and our lifestyles.

I’m excited to expand the reach of this blog and to cultivate an even broader global curiosity. I hope you’ll follow along and join in the conversation.

There was an interesting article recently in the International Herald Tribune about Shamila Kohestani, a young woman who spends part of her life as a 19-year-old student at Blair Academy in New Jersey and the other part as the captain of the fledgling women’s national soccer team in Afghanistan. Hers is a remarkable journey from oppression under the Taliban to a symbol of hope for Afghani women.

In world religion class, Shamila Kohestani is neither the adolescent who defied the Taliban in Afghanistan nor the symbol of liberation who shared the stage with stars from Hollywood and sports at the 2006 ESPY Awards. She is a teenager whose lips move as she takes notes, and whose list of words to look up grows each minute, each hour and each day.

Some of her classmates at Blair Academy know that Kohestani, 19, is the captain of the Afghanistan national women’s soccer team. Some are aware that she is Muslim. Most know her only as the striking young woman who is eager to stock her iPod with any kind of music they recommend.

Until recently, they had no idea of what Kohestani has endured in her short life. The music that they take for granted is a luxury to her; the classwork they grumble about is a privilege.

When you have been deprived of both from age 8 to 13, as Kohestani had, this prep school in the woods of New Jersey is as perfect a place as exists on earth.

“With no soccer, there would be no school, and no hope,” said Kohestani, whose smile attests to the fact that hope is one thing she has in plenty now…

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, Kohestani and her six sisters were virtually confined to their small home in Kabul. They were not allowed to attend school or work, and when they appeared in public, they had to be covered in a burqa…

Kohestani said she was beaten for not wearing her burqa properly. “I threw the burqa off and ran,” she said. It was with the same determined abandon that Kohestani became one of the cornerstones of women’s soccer in Afghanistan.

The economic advances that have been made during the past decade or so in India are beginning to change the country in ways that reach beyond bank accounts and consumer goods. India’s younger generations, for example, have developed high expectations for their careers and are even beginning to question centuries-old social values. Business Week reports on the changes:

For Ravikiran M.S…security and stability simply aren’t enough. The 24-year-old programmer is brimming with ambition. He rides a motorbike to work and hopes to buy a car. And he expects quick promotions, dreaming of becoming a CEO. “I want the posh life,” he declares.

Ravikiran is typical of India’s in-a-hurry younger generation. With the tech-services boom, the country’s college grads are coming of age in a time of economic optimism, and unlike their parents and grandparents, this group has vibrant job prospects and high hopes. The challenge for companies is to harness their energy while reining in inflated expectations… “It’s a very different generation,” says S. Gopalakrishnan, chief executive of Indian tech giant Infosys Technologies. “They want immediate rewards.” …

The challenge for companies is to address both the desires and frustrations of the younger generation. These become abundantly evident in the cafés and bars of Bangalore. As the city has developed into India’s Silicon Valley, it also has become the country’s bar-hopping capital.

“We need capitalism with a human face,” says P.B. Devaiah, a 20-year-old industrial engineering major at a local college. Sitting with friends at Java City, a crowded coffee shop, he complains that much of the programming in India is the equivalent of sweatshop labor, where new hires are expected to spend as much as 12 hours a day writing code. “We’re being used as machines,” Devaiah says.

When the conversation turns to social issues, India’s young people are likely to erupt in grousing about arranged marriage, the caste system, and interactions with Westerners…One of the biggest concerns is the changing role of women. The tech industry was once almost exclusively male, but by last year about 35% of employees were women…

Veena Parashuram is one of this new generation of Indian women. The 26-year-old engineer grew up in a village so primitive that she never used a spoon, fork, or napkin until she went away to boarding school at age 10. When a teacher told her girls could become anything they wanted, “my mind opened up,” she says.

Although her parents wanted her to submit to an arranged marriage and settle in their village, she went to engineering school in Bangalore and the Netherlands, where she met a German man. The couple married to ease the difficulties of getting work permits, but Parashuram says “the concept of marriage is pretty weird.” While she’s planning a traditional Indian wedding, she says, she doesn’t “like to follow rules that were set down hundreds of years ago.”

Do you love to watch the tango? If, like writer Joe Ray, you’re obsessed by the sultry movements of the dancers and want to learn to tango yourself, you might want to do what he did and head to Buenos Aires for some lessons. He wrote about his experiences for the Boston Globe:

It’s every male wallflower’s dream: walk into a hall of beautiful people, choose the woman you would like as a partner, nod confidently in her direction, and watch as she meets you on the dance floor. One caveat: In this country, when you take her hand you had better know how to tango…

My obsession with the dance began in Paris where, weather permitting, a tango group meets a few times a week in an amphitheater on the banks of the Seine. The music caught me first: somehow light, sultry, and full of longing, with the accordion-like bandoneón grabbing my heartstrings as I rode by on my bicycle. I watched, entranced, trying to understand it all, but it seemed beyond me - everyone was doing different steps, forcing me to watch one couple at a time, and even then, I couldn’t figure it out. No matter. Simply watching and listening was a beautiful way to spend an evening.

In Buenos Aires, tango fanatic and area native Silvia Guzmán agrees to be my guide and immediately puts a finger on what fascinates me most about the dance.

“It’s three minutes of connection,” she says as we watch dancers go ’round in counterclockwise circles at the Salon Canning “milonga,” or tango hall. “You’re always right in front of your partner, never next to each other.”

The sensuality is delicious. We watch instructors call out a few steps - “uno, dos, tres” “apart, together, apart” - as his feet scissor in and out between hers, which flare in circles. When the class ends and the floor fills, people aren’t just connecting, they’re smoldering. I zero in on one couple and while their feet flit about, cat-and-mouse style, their heads touch, and their chests are pressed together. I might as well be staring through a bedroom window.

Two recent articles in different sections of the NY Times recently spotlighted the experiences of Americans traveling in Iran. First, there was a travel article in which James Vlahos explored the country and was particularly charmed by the city of Esfahan:

I knew only the news-report version of Iran: renegade developer of nuclear technology, member of the Axis of Evil, and mortal enemy of the Great Satan, the United States. I was hoping to learn what the country was actually like; I wanted to know how it would feel to be an American in Iran…

(In Esfahan) I emerged from the portal onto a grand plaza under brilliant sunshine. Measuring 1,680 feet long by 535 feet wide — over 20 acres —Iman Square is one of the largest plazas in the world, and holds what is possibly the most stunning assemblage of Islamic architecture. A procession of arched bays enclosed a grassy esplanade and long reflecting pool.

At the far south end, twin minarets guarded the towering alcove entryway to Imam Mosque, which was capped by onion-shaped domes. To the right was Ali Qapu Palace…Trotting horses towed carriages. Families picnicked on the grass. If a traveler had any lingering doubts about the hospitality of Iranians toward Americans, this was the place to dispel them. Making a new friend required no more effort than standing still for 30 seconds.

I was approached first by a trio of giggling girls in black chadors. Next came an older man who invited me to have tea with three of his friends. Everyone wanted to know why I had come to Iran, and wondered what people back home thought of this undertaking. They had a pretty good idea about the answer.

“People think that we are all religious extremists with nuclear weapons and beards down to our stomachs,” said a carpet vendor named Vahid Mousavifard. “But Iran is actually very safe for tourists.” …

Farther east, near the base of the Chubi Bridge, stood a small teahouse. The inside was packed with men sitting shoulder to shoulder smoking qalyans, or water pipes. Spotting the visitor, they squeezed even tighter to make room.

A waiter brought tea, sugar and a qalyan. The smoke was sweet and rich; there was so much in the air that the people across the room were hazy. The man on my right asked where I was from. “America,” I said.

The room got quieter. Everyone seemed to be looking my way. Then the man clapped my shoulder and smiled.

“Our governments are bad,” he said. “But the people are good.”

The other story, which ran a few days later in the world news section, seemed to confirm much of what Vlahos had experienced:

When the shah ruled Iran, the Westernized elite enjoyed Hollywood movies at a small theater in the center of the city. Today, that theater is an Islamic cultural center and a meeting place for fundamentalists.

So it was a bit of a surprise that in the gift shop, where almost everything was infused with a religious theme, the best-selling items last week were American children’s movies: “Rugrats Go Wild,” “Meet the Robinsons” and “The Incredibles.” All bootlegged, of course, and each for $1.50.

“Yes, we sell a lot of these,” said Amin Gorbani, a young bearded clerk at the cash register. Then he stood up, extended his hand and said, “When it comes to disputes between Iran and America, that is between governments. But when it comes to people, I don’t see any problem between the people.”

America’s image in the Middle East is as low as it has ever been. With the occupation of Iraq; the Israeli bombing of Lebanon; and Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the United States has been cited in polls as the gravest threat to peace in the region. But Iran is different, even the Iran of someone like Mr. Gorbani, who works in a fundamentalist gift shop.

Generally speaking, Iranians like Americans — not just American products, which remain very popular, but Americans. That is not entirely new: Iranians on an individual level have long expressed a desire to restore relations between the countries. But the sentiment seems much more out in the open now.

Though I haven’t been to Iran, these stories reflect my own travel experiences in Egypt, Jordan and other countries. The great majority of people do make distinctions betweeen governments and individuals. They are often welcoming to Americans even as they protest against the U.S. government.

Here’s an interesting confluence of religion and business - the Dow Jones Dharma for faith-based investing. Business Week has the story.

Back in India, a new generation of gurus is promoting the latest thing to hit the Indian stock market: values investing. Not to be confused with Warren Buffett-style value investing, values-based investing draws on the principles of Indian religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Last month Dow Jones launched the faith-based Dow Jones Dharma indices, which measure the performance of 254 companies that have characteristics like good governance and environmental friendliness in common.

Letters are pouring in to support the new group of five indices. They are not your typical congratulatory notes, but blessings and endorsements from assorted Indian spiritual leaders and scholars. “May the maximum number of investors utilize it, and thus globally advance core Hindu values,” writes Shastri Narayanswarupdas, a religious leader from Ahmedabad in western India. Writes another: “Trust is the breath of business, ethics its limbs, to uplift the spirit its goal.” …

The dharma-compliant stocks, according to Gor, are those that adhere to the precepts relevant to good conduct. They include opposition to animal slaughter, support of the environment, and adherence to good corporate governance. Assorted temples, scholars, and academicians support the idea…

There’s no shortage of companies that adhere to these Dharma principals. Already, in India, Dow Jones has compiled a list of 254 companies that are dharma-compliant.

Today is Valentine’s Day. Red roses, cards and romantic messages exchanged between loved ones. Well, unless you’re in Saudi Arabia, according to this report.

Saudi Arabia has asked florists and gift shops to remove all red items until after Valentine’s Day, calling the celebration of such a holiday a sin, local media reported Monday.

“As Muslims we shouldn’t celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women, ” Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies, told the Saudi Gazette, an English-language newspaper.

Every year, officials with the conservative Muslim kingdom’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice clamp down on shops a few days before February 14, instructing them to remove red roses, red wrapping paper, gift boxes and teddy bears. On the eve of the holiday, they raid stores and seize symbols of love.

Of course, inventive Saudia find ways around the crackdown.

Because of the ban on red roses, a black market has flowered ahead of Valentine’s Day. Roses that normally go for five Saudi riyal ($1.30) fetch up to 30 riyal ($8) on February 14, the Saudi Gazette said.

“Sometimes we deliver the bouquets in the middle of the night or early morning, to avoid suspicion,” one florist told the paper.

After all, they’ve had plenty of practice in avoiding the religious authorities. As evidenced by this Valentines-themed NY Times op-ed written by a Saudi woman who is now a graduate student in the U.S.

Some daredevils do meet in coffee shops or restaurants that have partitions to separate the tables so nobody can see the illicit couples. After all, being a Saudi means knowing what the rules are — and how to sidestep them without getting in trouble. But most young women prefer to get to know the guy through accepted channels like the Internet, friends, family or the phone.

These days, Saudi relationships start on Facebook or through Bluetooth. We “date” over the phone or by instant messaging, and we enjoy exchanging gifts — through our chauffeurs or housemaids…

All these strictures do not mean that Saudis don’t long for love. Songs and novels show how affectionate and passionate Saudi men and women can be. It’s just that some believe love is that warm feeling a couple develop after their parents have arranged a match and the marriage contract has been signed. Still, romantics dream of that surprise on Valentine’s Day.

Most people are likely not familiar with the name Sania Mirza. Nor should they be, really, since she’s an Asian female tennis player who has of late been ranked about 30th in the world singles rankings. In short, she’s an excellent tennis player, but she’s not exactly Maria Sharapova or Serena Williams.

In India, however, it’s a different story. She is the best female tennis player ever to come out of India and is ranked #1 in Asia. This status has brought her tremendous popularity in her homeland, but also a surprising amount of criticism. It’s difficult, after all, being a feminist icon and a short-skirt-wearing tennis player in a very traditional and conservative society.

Sania Mirza, the most successful tennis star in India, has announced that she has no desire to play in her country any more after a string of controversies that have exposed her to months of negative publicity…Mirza’s immense popularity has brought with it intense and often hostile scrutiny from fringe religious groups and from India’s newly aggressive television and print media…

Ramachandra Guha, a historian, argued that it was a reflection of “the rising power of bigotry and intolerance in Indian society.”

“Male chauvinists have taken exception to her dress; religious bigots have protested a picture that has both her and a mosque in the same frame; jingoists have exploded at the (purely accidental) closeness of her feet in another frame to the national flag,” he wrote in an article for The Telegraph, a newspaper in Calcutta.

Mirza is one of India’s few female sports stars. Her talent and charm have won her advertising contracts and trouble in equal measure since she broke through to the top 40 in 2005, the first female Indian tennis player to achieve such a ranking.

Ever fantasized about getting far away from it all? It’s hard to get much further away than a 10-day rafting trip above the Arctic Circle through the remote Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, so that’s where Paula Stone recently headed with her husband. She wrote about their experiences for the Washington Post.

But my biggest source of worry was the ANWR’s remoteness, at once one of this trip’s biggest draws and greatest risks. I tried not to think about the fact that our journey would begin 175 miles above the Arctic Circle, 175 miles from the nearest (dirt) road and 350 miles from comprehensive medical care in Fairbanks, or that we’d be pretty much completely out of contact with the rest of the world. I took some comfort in knowing we’d have a ground-to-air radio for an emergency — until I learned that using it would depend on an aircraft’s being within our line of sight. (Lots of luck!)

So why was I putting myself through this angst? Because I wanted the chance to witness one of North America’s last remaining — and one of the planet’s most remote and pristine — wild expanses, home to a huge diversity of flora and fauna, a place with no roads, no campgrounds, no hiking trails, not a single trace of human disturbance anywhere. Everything I had read about the ANWR enticed me: “the last great wilderness,” a sacred “little portion of our planet left alone.” If my brain ever started to churn with anxious what-ifs, I just hoped I could remember: Don’t anticipate. Enjoy each moment. What will be will be.

Leaving Fairbanks, we flew north in a single-engine commercial plane, crossing the Arctic Circle and landing on a gravel strip at Arctic Village (population 150), an isolated community of Gwich’in Athabascan Indians (”People of the Caribou”). From there we boarded an even smaller plane for the last hundred miles north over the mountains of the Brooks Range. I distracted myself from our impending abandonment by volunteering to sit next to the bush pilot as he threaded us through the remarkably precipitous terrain. With my nose pressed to the window, I watched no-name peaks, valleys and rivers pass below me. All looked so majestic, rugged, barren and, well, okay, maybe a tad desolate. My fears begged for attention: You are nowhere! And you’re about to land here! …

Our first full day in the refuge brought clear skies — and a sigh of temporary relief — and we spent it hiking. No amount of reading could have prepared me for the beauty of this treeless place. I kept kneeling on the tundra to inspect gorgeous wildflowers, grasses clinging to fragile soils, swelling berries and tiny spiders, while Seth clambered on the rocks. Overhead, chattering birds — most of which had migrated thousands of miles to breed here — raced the clock to raise their young during the short summer season. The vistas were enormous, stunning: a distant mountainside was awash in pink; another bloomed wispy white. We walked along ancient animal trails, over spongy tussocks, across shivery streams, in the wake of bear, wolf and caribou tracks. A rainbow halo encircled the sun.

And then I witnessed something equally wonderful — my husband on the top of a hillock in the full throes of exhilaration: “I have fantasized about taking the perfect hike here for 25 years. Today my fantasy came true.”

Although the outcome is still far from certain, there are now scattered whispers of hope that the two sides in Kenya’s ongoing electoral dispute may soon be able to reach some sort of power-sharing agreement. But regardless of any future political reconciliation, it’s hard not to feel that something irretrievable has been lost in Kenya, which until recently had been considered one of Africa’s most stable and tourist-friendly countries. The outpouring of violence has torn communities apart (for some eye-opening on-the-ground reporting from Kenya, check out this blog by Anne Holmes) and it will take a massive and lengthy effort to stitch everything together again.

For a sense of just how much everything has changed in the blink of an eye, first check out these short excerpts about Kenya from my recent book. First, driving through Kenya:

Only occasionally during the next week did we run into a small city, at places like Nakuru or Narok. On this day, we drove north past wheat-colored fields, banana and acacia trees and coffee plantations. The road took us through rolling foothills of green trees and deep red soil. These colors, and especially the red hue of the earth, became my lasting images of Kenya.

 

One of the biggest things I noticed as we drove were the number of people on the streets. Everywhere, even in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere between towns, we passed dozens of locals going about their daily lives. Many of them, especially the children, would wave as our van drove past.

And then at Lake Nakuru National Park:

We weren’t prepared for the full impact of seeing tens of thousands of pink flamingos strutting around the perimeter of a single lake. This was one of the most visually interesting spectacles we saw on the safari. From a distance, it appeared the water was ringed with stretches of pink sand. But as we approached, it became apparent this was an illusion, caused by the presence of more pink flamingoes than we ever knew existed, all living together on the edge of a lake…

 

We walked along the beachfront and gaped in amazement at the thousands of pink flamingoes squeezed together in front of us – feeding, walking, flying, landing…Interestingly, as we walked towards the birds, who formed a ring perhaps 15 or 20 feet deep along the perimeter of the lake, they edged away from us in unison. They moved calmly, and not in panic, but a giant pink wave would invariably form opposite whichever direction we moved…

 

It was raining fairly steadily at this point, but we were entranced and didn’t want to leave the flamingos. So we stood there for long minutes on the edge of the lake, hoods pulled over our heads, no sound but for the clamor of birds and the drumming of raindrops, thousands of pink flamingos forming a dreamlike picture in front of us, and we breathed in the sweet smell of rain on a warm African afternoon.

Now, compare those scenes with this recent description of the current situation in Nakuru, Kenya: 

In Nakuru, furious mobs rule the streets, burning homes, brutalizing people and expelling anyone not in their ethnic group, all with complete impunity.

On Saturday, hundreds of men prowled a section of the city with six-foot iron bars, poisoned swords, clubs, knives and crude circumcision tools. Boys carried gladiator-style shields and women strutted around with sharpened sticks…

One month after a deeply flawed election, Kenya is tearing itself apart along ethnic lines, despite intense international pressure on its leaders to compromise and stop the killings.

Nakuru, the biggest town in the beautiful Rift Valley, is the scene of a mass migration now moving in two directions. Luos are headed west, Kikuyus are headed east, and packed buses with mattresses strapped on top pass one another in the road, with the bewildered children of the two ethnic groups staring out the windows at one another.

How sad.

A few weeks ago, I saw an article in the NY Times about the exploding popularity of “cellphone novels” in Japan.

Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists.

An interesting phenomenon, to be sure, but as I filed the thought away I couldn’t decide what, if anything, it said about Japanese culture. Now, though, thanks to a post on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, I was led to an interesting description of the cell phone novel from the perspective of Japanese communication styles.

Is this the future of literature? In Japanese, maybe. There are a number of features of Japan’s language and culture that make a cell phone novel more palatable than it would be in English. First, Japanese grammar is much better suited than English to the kind of short sentences writing on a cell phone encourages.

As a high-context language, a complete sentence in Japanese can consist of just a single, lonely verb. Japanese speakers and writers frequently and freely omit subjects and objects from their sentences, expecting the reader to figure out what’s going on. Go figure. The use of Chinese characters also serves to compact sentences. Since you don’t have to actually spell out entire words, as in English, but can represent them with an ideogram, you can say a lot more in a much smaller space.

Secondly, and perhaps just as important, cell phone novels tap into long traditions of Japanese prose and poetry. First, even a cursory examination of a cell phone novel will show a visual connection to the poetic traditions of haiku and tanka. The connection doesn’t end there, at its best the writing itself has an economy and - I’ll regret saying this - poetry that taps into the same tradition. The medium - you try typing a novel on the keypad of a cell phone - forces the writers to make every word count, and (in Japanese at least) it shows.

The themes, as well, harken back to traditional Japanese themes. The first “modern” novel (written by Murasaki Shikibu in 11th century Japan), The Tale of Genji, was basically a high school love story, and nothing has changed since then…And the long, long literary tradition there, combined with the frequent use of public transportation, means that books in general, whether written on cell phones or not, occupy a much more important place in Japanese culture than in the West.

If you’re interested in learning more about high-context langauge and other such forms of communication, by the way, you can check out some of the writings of Edward Hall, such as The Silent Language.