Ideology

My favourite communist once told me "If you're not a liberal when you're in your 20s you haven't got a heart; if you're not a capitalist by the time you're 40 you haven't got a brain"

I have it arse about face. I went from being to the right of Attila the Hun to capitalism to socialism. Blame it on my Calvinistic upbringing.

Now? I'm older and wiser now.

Anarchism! Everything else sucks.

Christmas rant

Spousoid and I registered for this anonymous Christmas prezzie thing. You register online, and you get sent the name and brief profile of someone you need to send a prezzie to. In return someone else sends you one.

Now it gets interesting. Take two packages to post office. "Sorry Sir, American new rules say no packages more than 400g. More 400 grammes, you have send by Courier"

Back in the car, and off to the courier company.

At the courier company, a very pleasant Egyptian gentleman helps out..
"America? We have to phone Customs. Very sorry Sir, I think America not like us anymore.Too many rules"

What is in packet?
- A tshirt
Where was it made?
- I don't know! I bought it in the souk in Kuwaiti street
Sorry Sir, American customs rules..
- Well it was probably made by child slave labour in North Korea
Sir?
- Tell them China
Ok sir. Sir, they want to know what is it made of?
- Tell them 100% cotton.
Sir, the stitching?
- Do I look like a textile engineer? Tell them nylon.
Sir the beads on the shirt, what are they made of?
- plastic
Sir, if it was not made in UAE, do you have certificate of origin?
- No
Ok Sir, maybe problem, but we will try.
What else is in packet?
- cushion cover
Sir, for cushion cover I have to phone customs...
Sir, what is stuffing made of?
- It is a cushion cover, not a cushion - no stuffing
Sir, what is the material?
- do you really need to know?
Sir, if I dont write, they will not accept package for America.

This process gets repeated - until I get to the spices.
Sir, no spices allowed. Sir sorry Sir, but I think America very angry. They want not even Americans to send parcels home.

So I've taken my parcels back home. Rudolph the fucking reindeer isn't visiting fucking America this year.

Djibouti

 

I was in Djibouti last week. Before I left, all I knew about Djibouti involved desert, sand, and the French Foreign Legion. Their infamous 13th Demi-Brigade was here. And of course the desperates - those who have so little they try to escape to Yemen. Imagine just how bad it must be if Yemen is the promised land.

Now I know a bit more. The rulers of Dubai have built a Kempinski on the beach to protect you from the harshness of reality. But it doesn't work cos the hotel is full of troops. The Kempinski troops were from Spain and Japan and Germany. And America. Not the Foreign Legion of course. They actually like living out in the desert.

There's a new container harbour - also built by the men from Dubai. And a brand new road to Ethiopia.

The architecture in the old town square is Arabian Nights meets French Colonial. They're worn and old and faded - but shit you could fix one up and turn it into a stunning boutique hotel. Or a bordello.

But it won't work. No one goes there unless they have to. Except the Foreign Legion of course. They actually like living out in the desert.

An Arab Spring

The Arab Spring is more of an Arab Winter my Lebanese friend Alexis is fond of saying. I think she's right. I've heard three reasons for the civil war in Libya - freedom is a very low third on the list.

I'm convinced Nato and the US had more oil security in mind than freedom of the people when they helped the revolution from the air..their enthusiam of commodity poor Syria is distinctly lacking. America seems to have a history of propping up strongmen, only to get egg on their faces later - Seso Seko, Saddam, Mubarak, Muammar. The same politicians who made the deal with Muammar now sprout forth their everlasting support for the battle for democrasy. Denmark and rotten comes to mind.

Whether the new regimes will follow suit remains to be seen. The guys who rode the battlewagons to Sirte, the protestors in Tahrir Square - that's not what they fought for. I'm not sure they want democracy either - or at least not the American version of it.

We live in interesting times.

Mud City

 

Took this pic in a dry river bed in one valleys just north of Wadi Biyh.

11 November

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Faded Glory

About 15 years ago when I first arrived in Tanzania I was based at Mwadui. Once the richest diamond mine in Africa it had faded over the years. We were told there was an old club building at Songwa dam.

So on one of our rare off days, we drove down to the dam on a crappy dirt road and came across this. A palace of a place. Empty and discarded. But stunning. Under the deck we found some sailing boats from the 60's, and in the tower - a full size snooker table, lovingly covered with some old sheets. Legend has it the snooker table was imported all the way from the UK, and a technician accompanied it to make sure it was assembled correctly.

A few Sundays of hard work, a fiddled time sheet or two for some of the labourers in camp and we had the place cleaned up, sails put up on the boats, and the pool table gleaming. It became quite the place for a while. Memebership fees were set at $20 a year. We discovered that we had reciprocal rights at the Dar es Salaam Yacht Club, which swelled our club numbers remarkably. $20 was so much cheaper than the $1000+ they charged. Of course they put a stop to it when the found out what our place really looked like...

Times changed.The expat commnity at Mwadui is once again small. The new tar road has cut travelling time down from 5 hours to just over an hour. The old photos are still on the wall. As is an old painting by one of the club members. But once again the light is fading on the Songwa clubhouse. I'm glad I had a chance to take some pics. Now I have to figure out how to get that wind vane off the roof...

Sunset sounds

I was sitting on the roof of the house just before sundown. The roof area in our case is used to house the satellite tv dishes (yes, four of them), the central aircon units, and the water tanks. The real reason for me sitting on the roof was to try to make sense of what the pucking flumber had done to the water tanks. One of them had sprung a leak, and he had confidently (and wrongly) assured me that he could fix it by melting some plastic cover to the outside of the leak.

The imam's started their call to prayer, and I looked up. A dozen mosques surround the house, and the sounds intermingled with that of the last remnants of traffic - everyone was headed home for supper. Dusk was settling on the town, and I suddenly realized that the worst of the summer heat had dissipated. Haydn's Sonata came floating up the stairwell from where my teenage daughter was practising her music.

At moments like this you discover again that in spite of all the hardships and stress that go with living in a foreign country - life isn't too bad either.

Cape of Storms

It has many names. Cape of Good Hope is the politically correct version decided upon by the Dutch East India Company when the sailors started mumbling about the Cape of Storms too regularly. This was taken early in the morning from the top of Bantry Bay at the tail end of a viscious south-easterly that sprung up at 3 in the morning. I like storms.

Geiranger

Looking out over the town of Geiranger in Norway

The death of you and me

high tide, summer in the city
the kids are looking pretty
but isn't it a pity that the sunshine
is followed by the thunder, with thoughts of going under
and is it any wonder

why the sea is calling out to me
i seem to spend my whole life running
from people who would be
the death of you and me
cause i can feel the storm clouds
sucking up my soul

high tide, life is getting faster
and no one has the answer
i try to face the day though
in a new way
the bottom of a bottle
is every man's apostle
let's run away together

you and me
forever we'd be free
free to spend our whole lives running
from people who would be
the death of you and me
cause i can feel the storm clouds
sucking up my soul

let's run away and see
forever we'd be free
free to spend our whole lives running
from people who would be
the death of you and me
cause i can feel the storm clouds coming

i'm watching my tv, or is it watching me?
i see another new day dawning
it's rising over me, my mortality
and i can feel the storm clouds
sucking up my soul

UAE to UK

Dubai, Persian Gulf, Doha, Umm Qasr, Baghdad, Ba'qubah, Mosul, Diayrbakir, Elazig, Sivas, Cankiri, Black Sea, Constanta, Bucharest, Brasov, Cluj-Napuca, Budapest, Vienna, Brno, Regensburg, Nurnberg, Wurzburg, Frankfurt, Koblenz, Liege, Calais, London. The pic was taken over Regensburg, but most of the journey was clear. You could see the villages and the mountain passes of Eastern Turkey so clearly. I looked up some of the towns on google earth, not the ones I've been to.. the others. The ones I probably never will get to.

I was wondering - those people in Sivas and Ba'qubah, what did they think when they looked up and saw the glint of the sunlight on the plane? Did they also wonder about the lives of others? The separation is only 10km - but we were world's apart.

Carpets

 

The carpet seller from Kabul... he comes to the UAE once a year to sell his wares. We've bought some carpets from him over the years, and he recognizes us now. We cannot escape without some chai and a chat.