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.

Old tree

 

This valley is not well known at all - access is through a narrow ravine, and the valley is full of old abandoned houses. On top of one of the hills is a whole abandoned village. Will post some pics of that later.

Dubai

 

This was taken on the beach right next to the Burj al Arab - in the this neighbourhood of million dollar homes there are still little pockets of old Arab homes left over. They are fast disappearing though. The land is so valuable that change is inevitable

Sunset on the creek

 

Arabian bees

 

This is the strangest looking beehive I've ever seen, very unlike the African beehives I grew up with. We have three hives like this in the garden. And the bees are not aggressive at all....

11 November - Remembrance Day -

Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant

Do they remember?

"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."

Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time,
walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me,
it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

How not to get shot

A mate of mine does bomb disposal in Lebanon. We served in the same unit in South Africa many years ago. He wrote this recently. I thought it made sense...

The following is intended to serve as a useful guide to various activists, protesters, migrants and other completely non-violent folk who happen to be packing knives, guns, rocks and crowbars. You will encounter soldiers, border patrol officers and various law enforcement and military personnel-- this is how not to get shot by them.

First of all it's important to remember that if you attack an armed man in a uniform, he will very probably shoot you. Even given the most restrictive Rules of Engagement in the world which forbid him from opening fire unless he is outnumbered 600 to 1, there is a nuclear war in progress and only when he has been given specific authorization by the UN to use deadly force-- there will still come a time when he will open fire on you. This will occur when he feels that he or his comrades are in danger. At this point there will be bullets headed your way, and no matter what you learned at your Madrassa or in Protest Studies at Evergreen State High University, you are not bulletproof. Really, you're not.

The good news is that there is a very easy way not to get shot. It starts with you not attacking the nice men in uniform. That means not trying to disembowel them with your peaceful knife and not throwing rocks at their head. Because while you might think that legal activism includes attempted murder, the nice men in uniform think that attempted murder should result in sudden death. And when that happens you will realize that fanatical passion for your poorly thought out cause and a medieval weapon are no match for trained men who have guns and are comfortable using them.

Thinking of you

The autumn leaves are falling like rain.

Although my neighbors are all barbarians

and you, you are a thousand miles away;

there are always two cups at my table.

Abandoned

Just down river from where we're working there are two ships close to each other. This one didn't listen and was sunk. The other one hit a mine, and is lying on it's side.

Skipping stones

I still kick the round ones to the compound and back, but since we sculpted the beach with these I've re-aquainted myself with the joys of skipping rocks. Childish I know, but I'm at the shore at dawn when the water is like glass and there are a million flat stones just waiting there for me. How can a man resist? My childhood record of 8 skips has now improved to 13...... and my men reckon I really need a break right now.