The Long Dark Tea Time of the Blog

For those who would handle a bit of French, below is an interesting article that covers the recent decision that bans future construction of mosque minarets in Switzerland…by looking at the advertising campaign of the far right political group, UDC (the Democratic Union of the Centre or, perhaps better worded, the Centre Democratic Union).

Le Monde

The UDC is the group that can be credited, in part or in whole, with the decision. However, the party which claims the majority in Swiss politics, the SVP (the Swiss Peoples’ Party), is also right-wing and reflects a conservatism that many would recognize as Swiss.

By comparison, here is Reuters’ cast on the full story:

Please take care to note the numbers of Muslims the two articles state as living in Switzerland a mere 100,000 discrepancy, or 25% to 33% of the total population, depending on who you want to believe.

To cap this off, brief as this has been, a Canadian report on the matter.

The Atlantic

A future of journalism?

It’s been years since I last read an issue of the Atlantic.  The main reason was because the United States of America invaded Iraq–an act I opposed and felt had nothing to do with the greater and so called) war on terror.  During the period following immediately after September 11th, 2001 and well to the end of the George W. Bush presidency, the American media by and large became an extension of the American government.  In essence, the television, newspapers, magazines, and other reporting services spread propaganda.  Freedom of speech was subverted by self-censorship, all under the guise of preserving freedom per se.

Indeed, the American media stopped doing its job during this time and journalism consisted of toeing a line drawn by the White House.  Even though they may have been asked by individual journalists, hard questions related to the war on terror weren’t made public.  It was difficult to ascertain context, and the story of this new war was not one that explored nuances nor relative positions.  Publishers and owners were afraid of becoming one of those who were against America; and thus there was a palpable and gratuitous pro-Americanism to the collective American press corps that was at once admirable for its patriotism and shameless for its self-indulgence.  All the more grating because the war was being fought on the terms of freedom, justice, and democracy.

I stopped reading the National Geographic during this time in disappointment.  Their stories were more than just the typical National Geographic apple-pie Americanism, love of the homeland and the Earth with a scientific bent.  They were issuing spreads that glorified the war in Iraq and did nothing, absolutely nothing, to question why the soldiers dying there were there in the first place.  Context had little to do with Iraq; the stories were well-photographed patriotic statements that celebrated the trials of American freedom-making, irrespective of the means.  In there is a god for hypocrisy, the time between 2002 and 2004 was one of its glory days.

So, this was a deliberate editorial stance that showed little journalistic integrity.  And though the National Geographic is not an investigative news publication, its approach was congruent with that of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and all other notable media outlets of the United States.  If the apolitical National Geographic (for instance, see all its articles on South Africa published during Apartheid) was doing its version of supporting the war on terror, then how was the rest of the media doing it? The collective and overt message broadcast was America is going to War; the veiled tone of the media was that We’re Unwilling to Rock the Boat, less the Government Smite Us.  Bush had the support of the people, the ear of the world, and the American media rolled over and spread the news that was wanted of it.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic published stories that edged around the illicit nature of the War on Terror. Some articles going so far as to suggest that Iraq had little to do with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or terrorism.  These stories, however, equivocated and did not dare state that invading Iraq was wrong; that the American leadership was wrong in accusing the United Nations nuclear investigation teams for failing in their duties (which they had not failed, as it turns out, but done with success); that creating a legal loophole for torture was a deep evil against humanity; that Guantanamo Bay was cowardly and wrong; that polarizing the world debate around unilateral action was ruinous to American reputation abroad.

In short, punches were pulled, and whatever hard hitting stories the media should have authored were shelved.  Those that were delivered were white-washed both to be compatible with the political climate of the day as well as preserve some shred of dignity that the press was, in fact, doing journalism.

*

However, I digress.

The October, 2009, issue of the Atlantic had several good articles, and I was attracted to the issue by the cover.  The header said, “Special Report – Who is killing the media?” and the feature article was “Dear Mr. Bush, you approved Torture.  Only you can fix the damage.  Here’s how.”  I read the issue cover to cover and, as usual, felt humbled by the quality of writing therein. Christopher Hitchens was more than his normal miserable self; he was glowing with unhappiness and it had little to do with the books by Al Franken, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert that he was reviewing.  He seemed to be parrying Obama with every thrust of his pen, and it was interesting to see how he has fully adopted America as his home–despite his voice, birth certificate, and style being English:

“And the current president of the United States, whom it might not be altogether inaccurate to describe as the Galahad of the SNL and Stewart generations, has made exactly one speech about Muslim garb–defining the wearing of the hijab as a human right and indirectly attacking those French secularists who have their misgivings about it.” (p. 104)

Hitchens, the Hitch, as Martin Amis calls him, is a grumpy old man who uses his omnivorous reading habits to garrote his readers into submission, and as the quote above demonstrates, is not adverse to taking low-blow high-brow potshots, however tangentially they may be in relation to the subject he is supposedly reviewing, when the opportunity presents itself.

More to the point, several feature stories redeemed the Atlantic in my eye, in particular those that dealt with the downfall of the media.  The one I thought best was “The Story Behind the Story,” by Mark Bowden, a mid-length piece about the rise of bloggers and the decline of context in mainstream media.  He uses the case of US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as example, where two inflammatory video clips of her were aired soon after her nomination to the Supreme Court.  Both clips dominated the debate regarding her nomination, and were harmful to her reputation.  As Bowden uncovers, it seems that these clips originated from two bloggers, both of which took statements made by her out of context, and these soon went viral.  The point Bowden makes is “It succeeded in shaping the national debate over her nomination for weeks, but more serious assessments of her record would demolish the caricature soon enough . . . The incident does, however, illustrate one consequence of the collapse of professional journalism.  Work formerly done by reporters and producers is now routinely performed by political operatives and amateur ideologues of one stripe or another, whose goal is not to educate the public but to win.” (p. 48).

I make no pretense to be a journalist; little that I do here is journalism, as I respect the work that goes into good journalism, which is at heart, assiduous investigation and careful presentation of the facts.  Bowden concludes his article with a strong declaration on the nature of journalism, one that hit a chord with this reader:

“A reporter who thinks and speaks for himself, whose preeminent goal is providing deeper understanding, aspires even in political argument to persuade, which requires at the very least being seen as fair-minded and trustworthy by those–and this is the key–who are inclined to disagree with him.  The honest, disinterested voice of a true journalist carries an authority that no self-branded liberal or conservative can have.  “For a country to have a great writer is like having another government,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote.  Journalism, done right, is enormously powerful precisely because it does not seek power.  It seeks truth.  Those who forsake it to shill for a product or a candidate or a party or an ideology diminish their own power.  They are missing the most joyful part of the job.”

When looking in retrospect at American journalism of the past eight years, we don’t see so much of what Bowden describes, which is in part what he is arguing for.  He wants more of this; if only so much of it has not already disappeared.  Yet here, again, there is little willing introspection: the American media failed over Iraq.  Nonetheless, I give points to Bowden, and the Atlantic, for getting back to business.

Of course, the entire issue is built around a critique of the Bush doctrine of torture; many libertarian articles surround one that is written by a self-avowed Republican and former Bush supporter, Andrew Sullivan.  When one reads this article, one realizes how all the other articles–including Bowden’s–is the framework for this long opinion piece.  The argument is sound, that the torture of prisoners is illegal and damaging to the American war on terror, and it is well presented, with a thin veneer that does little to hide Sullivan’s horror and disgust.  By defending the right of media to speak well on difficult subjects (“Why I love Al Jazeera,” and “The Moguls’ New Clothes,” both part of this issue’s Special Report), the door is left open to an attack on the former president.  It says a great deal about the American regard for the presidency and the divine father-figure that this position entails in the collective mind of the country.  It also reveals how removed this position is from most Americans: there is chasm between the president and his people.

This last point is not worth going into at this point; the point I do want to make is that this argument was one that should have been published years ago, while Bush was in power, not after.  Sullivan and Bowden’s article reveal the lacuna that has existed in the media until this point: the reluctance to speak out against the president in harsh but honest terms.  It is a tacit admission that my assessment has been correct (not a happy victory, as far as I can tell).

(More to follow)

Genocide: Of Mice and Men

Blunt tools have their place in the world.

Lately, I’ve been locked into the role of reluctant mouse trapper.  I am the killer of the family of mice who have made winter refuge in the house.  It’s not yet winter, but mice are a careful lot, being prey to life’s assortment of hungry hunters and born killers.

If you were wondering, I’m no hungry hunter and even less of a born killer, though as a child I was pretty good at lopping off the fresh shoots of plants along woodland paths, imagining I was mowing down sprites.  Setting the old fashioned wood and spring traps felt ok at first; some form of nostalgia about it all, “just me setting the ol’ traps, dontcha know.”

Then, of course, I was a successful hunter (owing more to the well designed trap than to my meager skill).  The trap each morning would hold a new victim, a cute little guy, eyes bugging out, back broken, and no cheese in the trap.

A note on the cheese I used: two year aged Gouda for two days, then I moved over to the Irish whiskey cheddar leftover from a family visit.  When they finally succeeded in clearing the trap without getting caught, I switched to organic peanut butter and my winning ways returned.

Each morning, a dead mouse was tossed into the corners of the backyard, the body disappearing as some other creature made lunch of the little body, stuck in the tragic form of rigor mortis.  The last mouse I caught was only pinned on one leg and after twice trying to drown it, I let it go into the yard and felt better for my clemency, though really, I was copping out.

Part of me also felt satisfied that I was doing a good job, clearing the house of rodents, true pests, and making the house sanitary.  On the other hand, I was abhorred by my own hand of death, and it made me reconsider the fact of genocide.  Here I was, thinking, ‘Man, these mice must be getting worried: it’s an Agatha Christie murder, with a new victim every day and the remaining living are all worried stiff about who is going to get offed next.”

It also made me think about genocide of the human variety.  Supposing the Hollywood engine ever got over the Holocaust storylines, there would be a few other major purges of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that could be turned into dramas, action films, and tragic heartbreakers.  The key point is that there are a lot of dead people who have been killed by still-living people.

Not so long ago I read “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families” by Philip Gourevitch (1998).  It was a landmark book that described the circumstances of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the first popular account of the atrocity as recounted through the experiences of its survivors.  While the figures vary, somewhere around eight hundred thousand to one million Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus (the two major tribes) were killed during a short period of time.

Making your way through the book, you feel that Gourevitch did two things in writing this: he opened up the tragedy to the world beyond the international circles that were involved or implicated in the genocide.  This was achieved, unfortunately, in a borderling sensationalist and dramatic style, with too much self-importance written into his tone–a bit too rich for my blood–but which apparently didn’t bother too many other people who read it.
Beyond my own stylistic concerns (and those relating to Gourevitch’s depth of knowledge about African culture, history, and the continent as a whole), the book does detail the intimacy of genocide very well, almost too well.  What comes across is how it takes a hands-on approach to slaughter other human beings, about as intimate and as challenging as it was for me to catch and kill mice.

To avoid belabouring a point made by thousands of Holocaust authors, historians, and others affected by the nature of genocide, I would finish by stating I hope I never again have to drown a mouse first thing in the morning.  At least not until I’ve had some coffee.

Oein Colfer

Last night I made it to the International Festival of Authors for the first time and saw the author Oein Colfer speak.

It is an annual event held on the shores of Lake Ontario, at a mixed bag of a place called Harbourfront–a large complex that attempts to do many things at once.  For example, as a child, I attended day camps hosted here and learned the basics of paddling a canoe in an outdoor artificial concrete pond, the irony of which was apparent to me even as a seven year old.  The absurdity of paddling in a big fake pond three feet deep that situated right next to one of the biggest bodies of fresh water in the world always irked me: when were we going into the real thing?  Wasn’t this the whole point?  Why am I here?

Over twenty years later, I now pity the camp counselors, who probably dreamed of the overnight camps north of the city, where they would be paid next to nothing but would at least have the mixed rewards of wonderful nature, potential sexual liaisons with their co-workers, never ending gossip about their potential sex life, and a cabin of hyper children.   The upside of working for the day camps in the city?  Better money, I hope, the opportunity to live in the city during the summer–a pleasure in itself, if you’re a city type–and the opportunity to work with kids who don’t necessarily make it out to the cottage, or camps, in the great north.  Nonetheless, it was a daycare and we had all of Harbourfront’s concrete and white painted steel architectural utopianism to call ours.

Harbourfront is indeed a funny place, a mix bag of artists’ work quarters, high end boutique shops, a performance plaza and concert hall, some expensive condominium apartments, and designed in a low slung way with lots of finesses that, I guess, are meant to reflect sails and boats given its proximity to the lake.  Geographically, the complex is also notable for being isolated from the city by the towering expanse of the Gardiner Expressway and the Lakeshore boulevard immediately north of it.  Toronto long ago built these two major arteries along the lake shore, effectively cutting off the city from the lake, which is of course a terrible shame.  That being said, the lakeside is nice, with parks, walkways and boardwalks, and a spattering of places to eat and drink, and so it is only physically disconnected, but not physically empty.

Even so, the recent development of the city has been towards masses of condominium towers along the water’s edge, which in turn further isolates the lake from the city, except for those who live in the condos.  It’s been a few years since I was last at Harbourfront, and in this time a whole new city has grown up around it–where it used to be a kind of small satellite community to the downtown core, it is now a large satellite community.  Though I am no fan of most condominiums or of the type of development processes that they embody–and social economic force they engender–it is nice to see more people down in the once desolate stretches down there.

Oein Colfer is best known for his works Artemis Fowl and was presenting last night his recent work, the sixth book of the famed Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  The estate of Douglas Adams decided that Colfer, a small, soft-spoken Irishman with a penchant for fart jokes, to take on this dubious task.  It’s been a long time since I read the entire Hitchhiker’s series, but it made an impression on me and the old school text-only game frustrated me for several years, if you can believe my pre-adolescent game playing habits (and game-playing cum problem solving intellect).

What struck me most during the entertaining and funny reading, interview, and question and answer period with the audience was how congenial the man was.  I’ve only been to one other serious book reading and this was way back in 1997, when I saw Martin Amis deliver Night Train; as much as I admire the author, the man was an intimidating force despite his reserved style and apparently shy public reading persona.   He had the audience transfixed–and terrified–of him, which is both a reflection of his stature as an author as well as his style as a person.

Moreoever, the audience last night was a gentler crowd, far less black and intellectual ball than Amis’ affair, and younger, too, reflecting Colfer’s main literary audience.  As he admitted, “I don’t usually write for adults.”  That being said, the nature of the author and audience was much more interesting and fun than what I remember of sitting through Amis’ talk, where my neighbour perspired throughout the reading, fretting the moment when he would present the great author his fledgling manuscript, which he had shown me before the talk started, and then stuffed back into his bag immediately after.  The MC was also reduced to stuttering when introducing Amis and when he led Amis through the questions, both which had a lessening effect on the overall presentation.  Amis was nonetheless agreeable, and gave a commanding reading.

Funnily enough, I now recall that the conjunction between these two readings was more than just books: I had made it to both through friends who had tickets, which just goes to show how deep my love for books really goes.

A love of literature is more than what links Colfer and Amis together; as authors, they both tip their hats to their fathers as literary influences.  Amis’ father was, of course, the well-known Kingsley Amis. Colfer’s father also wrote, albeit in his spare time, something that “really impressed me”.

Pamela Anderson and the Native Canadian

One of Canada's quintessential natural vistas: proving that there is more to this land than just big boobed blond women. Too bad we killed almost all of the indigenous people who lived here before us.

Thanksgiving weekend just gone by, I went for a short walk in Algonquin Park to take in the fall colours on display.  In years gone by, the colours have come and gone by the time us city dwellers can make it north to enjoy the show.  This time around, perhaps due to climate change, the leaves were in their prime and few yet littered the ground.

It was an interesting walk, with the weather perfect, pleasantly cool, and the air crisp,  leaves crunching every so often under foot.  Autumn is my favourite season, without doubt because there is this obvious transition to another season.  While not so fecund as spring’s almost overpowering outpouring of life renewed, the fall at its best is a gradual handover to the iron grip of winter.  In the fall leaves there are the deep greens from the heart of summer; the light fresh greens of spring; the flame colours of glory in death; the browns and purples of the night.

After living in Kenya, where seasons change is marked by rainfall or the lack thereof, there are the two periods of fertility and two periods of lessened fertility.  Even during a drought, there is still green found on the land–acacias evergreen–as all the native plant life is resistant to these spells of intense aridity, better able to wear the bad times, unlike the people who, desperate, must make drastic choices in order to survive.  East Africa is a rich land, where only a small amount of water changes it overnight, only that water there is a sometimes rare commodity.

While walking the lake-side path, I read about how the lake ecology was less rich than I had previously assumed it to be.  The vast majority of the minerals and nutrients that enter the lake come from the surrounding rock; the rock in the area is hard and does not easily erode, and so lakes in southern Ontario can hold a hundred times more fish per water hectare than lakes in the north, due to the surrounding, softer, rock there.

Moreover, as my companions and I walked, we were struck not so much by the overwhelming number of other hikers on the path–it being Thanksgiving Saturday–but by the type of people.   During the walk, we came across three  anglo-saxon families, a dozen Chinese families–parents speaking Mandarin, their children speaking both Mandarin and English–and two southern Indian families.

In the parking area, it seemed like the reverse Chinese restaurant: in many  Chinese restaurants in Toronto, there are often large tables of white people having a meal, with one or two Chinese friends with them, showing them the way.  Here, it was the reverse, large groups of Chinese with a single foreign devil showing them around.

This struck me as a great indicator of the changing face of the country–at least this part of the country, as Toronto receives the large part of Canada’s new immigrants–but it did reflect the nature of Canadian society at large.  Of course, my own walking companions represented this change as well: my mother, a full-blood Chinese (“Han,” as she would well mention), and my sister’s boyfriend, a full-blood Pakistani, and myself, a very tall half-half Chinese-Irish.  I suppose that our group drew its own fair share of attention, too.

The main difference between our group and the others is that our group has likely been in the country for a slightly longer period of time.  Sister’s boyfriend has been here since he was an infant, well over thirty years now; my mother first came here in 1969.  I was born in central Canada nearly thirty years ago.  From what I could glean from our fellow path-walkers was that they were more recent arrivals, perhaps ten to twenty years, maybe less, maybe more.

In any case, the general assumption is that these people represent the later and more recent waves of immigrants who have come to suffer winter hardship and snow shoveling, the poor suckers.  It’s just great that they are also coming out to see a bit more of the country other than the ever growing, poorly planned, urban space of Toronto.

Leaving the park, I thought of the native people who once roamed this land,  namesake to this giant park, unfettered, free of the European blights–pest, gun, and alcohol–and the present prejudices against them.  Native peoples and native Canadians, new and otherwise, and the ironies of history.  Autumn is both the end of the fruitful season and the beginning of winter–but to me, winter’s a favourite time, and it always brings with it the promise of the new to come.

Norwegian Holidays

Not as big as Dahl's childhood breakfast table, but this breakfast was only for two--he was eating with eight others.

“Breakfast was the best meal of the day in our hotel, and it was all laid out on a huge table in the middle of the diningroom from which you helped yourself. There were maybe fifty different dishes to choose from on that table. There were large jugs of milk, which all Norwegian children drink at every meal. There were plates of cold beef, veal, ham and pork. There was cold boiled mackerel submerged in aspic. There were spiced and pickled herring fillets, sardines, smoked eels and cod’s roe. There was a large bowl piled high with hot boiled eggs. There cold omelettes with chopped ham in them, and cold chicken and hot coffee for the grown-ups, and hot crisp rolls baked in the hotel kitchen, which we ate with butter and cranberry jam. There were stewed apricots and five or six different cheeses including of course the ever-present gjetost, and tall brown rather sweet Norwegian goat’s cheese which you find on just about every table in the land.”

Norwegian brown cheese: candy disguised as food.

Taken from Roald Dahl, Boy.  Here Dahl recounts his summers spent in Norway, which from the sounds of it were nothing short of idyllic.  Having had breakfast with one or more Norwegians, I have a good idea of what he was on about.

Dutch Lesbians

Ladies and horny boys, this is the real deal. And these are my friends, too, so keep it to yourself.

Having spent the last two weeks in Western Europe, birthplace of the West and a bastion of Western culture, it’s an appropriate moment to reflect a bit on the differences between Kenya, Europe, and Canada (this last being my place of residence).

Sharing initial impressions are a funny thing; they say a great deal about the viewer and they are a gateway to their life experiences.

Knowing this, here are a few things that really made their impression on my while I walked, rode, and flew around the continent that some call “the best”.

What first struck me in Amsterdam was the convenience store.  You walk in and the food is well-packaged, chilled or heated, fresh, healthy, unhealthy, and it floods the senses.  There’s options; and not that there weren’t convenience stores in Kenya–Nairobi has them aplenty, as well as the major towns, the minor towns, new gas stations, and so forth–but the difference is that they were less well stocked with healthy options and, more importantly, they didn’t have half as many clients.

Danish beers with a Danish buddy. Denmark, I've decided, is a very cool place with cool people in it. They're both tough and sensitive, intelligent and wild. I at first used the word thuggish, but this is incorrect: it's Viking.

The clientele in the European convenience store is the everyman; the everyman in Kenya, the wananchi or kienyeji, will never be caught buying potato chips from the gas station, for this is the domain of the small number of urban petit bourgeoisie, expatriates, and tourists.

Next is the general healthy nature of Europeans; I’m not referring to the lack of individuals missing limbs, beggars with rotting flesh on street corners, or fact that Kenyan health services are too expensive, too limited, and generally unavailable to most Kenyans.  What I ended up paying most attention to was that most all Dutch, French, Danish, and Germans I saw fell within the norms of their body mass index.

While this isn’t a new observation for me–it’s obvious to most North Americans that Europeans don’t eat the way we do and shows in the way that they don’t carry extra weight, on average, that we do–but this time, moreover, I noticed also the shining general good health of all people, especially of the well-to-do.  Kenya’s over thirty who are successful and well-educated tend towards the unhealthy side of the spectrum, both men and women being overweight and under exercised.

Look: no dust. Only rental bikes, bike paths, and lots of water. Why can't this also be the case (in terms of the rental bikes and bike paths) in North America?

Kenya’s successful individuals are all too often workaholics and they eat well because they can afford it–and it’s also a sign of status that they can afford the luxury of expensive meals.  Unfortunately, they also look like they need sleep, less red meat, and more exercise.

Last is the lack of dust.  There’s little dust in Europe–or in the West, period–in the cities or even the countryside.  There’s water everywhere; it’s still shocking to have so much of it fall from the sky and be just about everywhere.   Water extravagance is a luxury that I know well–it’s an environmental connundrum: where there is an abundance of fresh water, the local population always uses it inefficiently; where there is little fresh water, the population uses it with great efficiency.

Running taps and flush toilets weren’t shocking or novel–they’re a fantastic concept that I am familiar with as my earliest memories and as part of living in upscale Nairobi–but I had forgotten how moist air feels against the skin.

Native trees in East Africa are beautiful, but they are not as a whole as lush or verdant as the trees of Europe or Eastern Canada.  They have dust on them, they preserve their moisture carefully by having hardier leaves, and they protect themselves from drought and pest in a way that disguises their fertility.

The South of France: what more needs to be said?

On the last section of the trip, traveling from Copenhagen down to Hamburg, I sat on a bus next to a Gambian who lived in Denmark.  He was traveling to Germany to visit his German girlfriend, and we spoke along the way.  It was an interesting conversation, because I realized how much I was used to this style of conversation–at once casual and yet very intimate–and realized then that this is what I would miss, also, in coming home.

In Toronto, big city that it is, and where I have grown up, the harshest moment has been when I fumbled with my change at the subway booth and the man in the kiosk banged the change receiver at me to call my attention and said in a baleful manner,  “Put the money in!”  It was shocking because it was so blatantly rude; and yet it was also typical behaviour in the North American context.  I looked at the guy and he avoided my eyes, and here I felt caught between two worlds,  like I was back home and yet I was reacting as I would if I were in Kenya, telling the guy to calm down and that there’s no hurry.

Copenhagen COP15

Approaching Copenhagen, the sky was lit by cloud storm and sunset, an ominous yet beautiful welcome: it seemed as if the wing of the plane was tearing a fiery hole in the sky. Which, in a manner of speaking, it does.

Looking at Copenhagen in the light of the upcoming massive global conference on climate change, better known as the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or in the muddled internationalists’ industry lingo, the Copenhagen COP 15, there’s been a few changes going down in town.

In Christiana, the free town within Copenhagen, police presence has been all but eliminated.  The police resources have been stretched by preparing for the onslaught of foreign dignataries, protesters, activists, and, well, just about everyone in the world who cares about keeping planet Earth a happy home for humanity.

Christiania is on Christianhavn, the island just next to Copenhagen city central, and was a military base that, once abandoned, was occupied by squatters who made this space into their own.  As it proclaims on the main entrance, exit-side, “You are now entering the EU,” and the people show a certain esprit de vivre which is increasingly being squashed by the aseptic quality of modern life.

Best known for the fact that pot and hashish are sold here, it’s also a haven for artists and musicians, alternative people, and non-conformists in general.  The squatters who live here decided from the beginning that they were a free town, their own state, with their own laws and regulations which, of course, frustrates the civil authorities of the greater city.

In normal times, the riot police patrol this little area of houses, converted warehouses, and wild gardens in large groups.  There are bars and music halls, families, children, drunks from Greenland, and tourists–it’s one of the major places to visit when in the city.  The architecture is also incredible, as many of the thousand or so residents have invested a lot of time and energy into building beautiful homes that reflect their eclectic tastes.  Enlightened hippies with architecture degrees, one suspects, but nonetheless a beautiful spot.

Winding up to the climate change talks is a big deal, but the issue with climate change is that it requires a readjustment in how people choose to live life, and having their choices heard by the industries that serve them.  What is seen in Christiana is individualism and the wild element of anarchy, where people are as people wish to be, and much of all is an organic development and outgrowth of  laissez-faire community development.

The problem with climate change talks is that there is a set of preconceived standards that nations subscribe to–industry performance, economic indicators, and subscription to the mantra of continual growth–which most individuals may not agree with given their environmental costs.

Industry and finance, however, have the most powerful set of lungs in the world, and they are careful to holler loud in the ear of policy setters, clear in their message.  It’s a kind of conformity which is at once productive, useful to those involved, and unfortunately successful; and at the end of the day, it is the most harmful sort of narrow-minded thinking that we could ever fear as the long term impacts of climate change are of a habitat hostile to human life as we know it.

Hello Europe

What makes the Netherlands is the Dutch attention to small details at the coziest of levels. The country is a cozy place, exemplified in Amsterdam, once outside of the major tourist drags.

As a short interlude before returning home, I extended my flight stopover in Amsterdam to a near two weeks.  The last time I flew home from Kenya, I had a first-time case of culture shock, which surprised me tremendously, given that I had spent most of my time living in Nairobi, a city of very Western qualities.

A layover in Europe allows for a few options that aren’t otherwise available in East Africa or Canada; it’s also a vacation where the object is to take it easy and take some time to organize myself for the months to come, which will undoubtably be busy, given the time I’ve spent away.  There’s preparing for living abroad, and then there’s preparing for returning home–neither is necessarily simple.

I left Toronto in May of 2008 for what was to be a three month internship; this has now turned into fifteen months of time in East Africa, which is at once a long and short period of time.  Coming home is a good thing, but it’s also wrought with subtle intricacies.

In Europe, my stops have been straightforward and economical.  The trip has been built around friends who have opened their homes to me in their respective  cities.

The French country kitchen: my kind of love.

I first flew into Amsterdam, where I spent two nights before visiting a friend in Rotterdam.  After which I flew down to Montpellier, in the South of France, and where I’ve been the last five days.  Today it’s off up to Copenhagen, again by plane, which shames me.  From there, I’ll pass by bus through Hamburg for a night before ending up once again in Amsterdam, where I’ll catch the second leg of my flight to Toronto.

The original plan had been to take a train or bus down from Amsterdam to Montpellier, but my inexperience in organizing this trip (by internet while in a small town in Kenya) and the cost itself prohibited this option.  It’s a terrible admission for me to make, given my active interest in reducing my carbon footprint; the flight from Kenya is large enough without this added extra being dumped into the atmosphere.

The view from Geraldine's parents' home in Caveirac, just outside of Nimes, France.

Without a doubt, I must now commit to a carbon offset scheme; my wish is that there was a mandatory scheme one had to buy into when flying by airplane (Virgin, I think, has such a scheme, but it is optional).

Mandatory offsets would, of course, increase the price of flying dramatically. However, it would be an additional cost that would force more travellers to view the high-speed trains in Europe as a positive alternative, as the train prices would then be comparable to the flights.

Air carriers make their margins by placing the true costs of air travel on the environment: a leviathan-sized amount of carbon deposited in the highest reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere, which also happens to be the most vulnerable to pollution.

Onward then today to Copenhagen, where the December meeting on Climate Change will be hosted, a hope for the future of humankind or a lost chance.

Goodbye Kenya

Good times with good people, good weather: this is Kenya at its best.

A traveler makes his way through Jomo Kenyatta International, anxious and tired. The drive to the airport had been slow, the evening traffic congested despite the late hour.

Once through the airport’s entrance security screening, the check-in had been smooth, and he had avoided paying a heavy surcharge on his checked-in baggage, smiling with his helpful agent. With the plane slated to fly out in only a few minutes, he stepped into the nearest duty free.

Selecting two bottles of local cane liquor, he chatted with the cheery store clerk and discovered his purchase limit. Still tired but relieved that the worst of the trip was over, he handed over his money to pay and took back his change. When he counted the bills, he realized that he’d been shortchanged by six dollars, fifty percent of the actual purchase.

Having been in the country for a time, he asked for a receipt. The request prompts the clerk to ask him, slowly, for his ticket; name; and home country. Prior to this, the clerk had assured him that his ticket and personal details were unnecessary, as many official steps sometimes are in Kenya.

The receipt is printed and the clerk hands it over, triumphant, to the traveller: it now shows a difference of seven dollars in favour of the clerk. The traveler points out that his two bottles cost a total of twelve US dollars, as marked on their neck. “Ah yes, the printer made an error,” says the clerk, and hurries to cross out the total and hand write the correct figure.

Now annoyed, the traveler collects his change and, expressionless, counts it once again, noting that now the clerk had given him four dollars too much. Uncaring and unabashed, concerned with the flight and less with the yo-yo morality of shortchanging clients, the traveler stuffs the money in his pocket and starts to leave.

When the clerk punches in the next sale and looks for change, he realizes his mistake and calls the traveler back.   When asked if his change was correct, the traveler shrugs–and he then takes his time in pulling out the bills, moving his lips as he counts. The surplus bill is noted, returned and, for the final time, the correct change is given.

A knowing look passes between the clerk and the traveler before they turn to go their separate ways.

Kwa heri Kenya