So I finally was disgusted enough with the whole work scene and decided to put myself and my loved ones first. I’ve quit my job and lazed around for a whole month (not nearly enough to make up for all the frenetic days but still it’s a start). Now I’m ready to go visit my partner in Africa!
The last few days of cleaning up and vacating the flat were fun because they were interspersed with drinks and meals and catching-ups. So I am finally here in Hargeisa, Somaliland. The flights were mercifully short & the transits too but I was so keyed up it was no joke.
Africa is something else. But as long as you are out for adventure (like I am!) you should have fun. My luggage got here a day later & the suitcase is in pieces & when I asked someone at the airport if the airlines would take care of it I was informed calmly that "this is Africa". My partner says I should shed “work mode” and learn to chill out and not stress about stuff and that's exactly what I propose to do!
So I'm all unpacked and now fully settled in to the ridiculously & unnecessarily large house (named Gorgor to mean Eagle). We share the house with with my partner’s colleague and another guy from the development world. They are both good fun and so far we've had awesome fun taking walks (we saw Dikdik - tiny deer like creatures which are smaller than dogs - a tortoise, a desert snake, goats and assorted birds and insects) watching movies, soccer, having dinner at the local Fish & Steak house and generally having a great time.
When I arrived I was told that one of our housemate’s friends (also from the development world) had been kidnapped by rebels but thankfully they were released the following day. Apparently this is a fairly regular occurrence with people being kidnapped and held for ransom. (Apparently) the hostages are treated well and there is nothing to fear(!)
The flight into Somaliland from Ethiopia was spectacular. The landscape is a mosaic of ridged and ruled greens and browns with diamante-glints of tins roofs. The city itself looks like it is laid out in a large dish and the view from our rooftop is beautiful.
The people are extremely friendly and easy going. Traffic is no different from any under-developed country you’ve been to but what’s great here is that people shout out in a friendly manner, smile and shake their heads and go on their way – which is very refreshing. You get greeted (with the Somali Navat!) whenever you take a walk and we always look like the Piped Piper with a string of kids following.
The terrain is slightly hilly and its cold in the shade (we don’t have/need fans/ac in the house) and in the evenings it gets pretty chilly while outside in the day the sun is scorching. The women are tall and strikingly beautiful in their colorful long dresses and flowing veils (like our maid Xaraqiya – pronounced Haraqiya - who could be a super model in different circumstances).
The women look amazingly serene despite the hard work and heat and carry their babies in slings across their backs. The little ones get to ride under their mother’s veils if the wind/sun gets too harsh. The men are quite noisy and sometimes I think there’s a fight breaking out but it only turns out to be friendly banter. Our office assistant Abdi (Abdul Rahman) and driver Ahmed are very friendly and helpful and since the office is set up downstairs always stop by to say hi and check on how I’m doing.
We have a visitor staying over for a few days and hope to host our first party tomorrow (Thursdays being half days and Fridays being the day off) I’m now silently cursing myself for bringing only one bottle of wine but our guest has brought us a small gift and between the guys I’m sure they will be able to conjure up something. Anyways the company promises to be good so its going to be camel/goat barbecue tomorrow!!
I’m still in the lazing-around-phase and crave for little tasks like seeing that the internet guy gets the work done and writing out grocery lists and planning where to put up pics. Between yoga, meals and lots of movies (yep we’ve got cable!) I can see I’m getting thoroughly spoiled and look forward to meeting some people at the party tomorrow to check out work opportunities. At present BBC Food is my favourite channel and my partner is my unsuspecting guinea pig (he doesn’t like the term lab rat). Meanwhile I’m also seriously considering learning the language.
Prep work on the proposed vegetable patch is being meticulously carried out by our watchmen (Daud and Mohomed) but I think we will have to build some cover first or the plants will never survive the wind (which I can hear even now at 10.33am howling outside)
I’m still a bit hesitant about carrying my camera around and appearing all “touristy” so pictures are yet to come.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Survivors guilt
I feel ill and there's a churning bitter bile rising in my throat.
It's not the the usual glad rush of getting "last-minute-gifts" for a friend going away. No chocolates, clothes, toys or novelties are required. These are distractions they have no need for.
So I have sent Shanti on her way with a bagful of medicines. Remedies for all types of bodily ailments. But she needs remedies of a different nature. She needs to be able to be. To laugh. To hope. To Live.
She carries the bag carefully not wanting to appear ungrateful. But I know that it is just weight in her hands and I am sorry I am sending her off, with this heavy bag. Heavy with my guilt and hope. Guilt that I am me and she is she and that we live such different lives though we are no different in the eyes of those who classify and demarcate according to ethnicity, race and other glorious things. Hope that we could be equally free to live a life of our choosing.
As the car pulls away I pass by the early morning flurry of people going on with their lives. They are standing at a counter of a new and sleek-looking sales outlet sporting a board that proclaims the sale of "fresh fish at cheap prices".
I swallow down the bile rising in my throat.
Shanti is on her way home, back to Jaffna.
7.56am outside the Expo Air office in Colombo on 14th June 2008
It's not the the usual glad rush of getting "last-minute-gifts" for a friend going away. No chocolates, clothes, toys or novelties are required. These are distractions they have no need for.
So I have sent Shanti on her way with a bagful of medicines. Remedies for all types of bodily ailments. But she needs remedies of a different nature. She needs to be able to be. To laugh. To hope. To Live.
She carries the bag carefully not wanting to appear ungrateful. But I know that it is just weight in her hands and I am sorry I am sending her off, with this heavy bag. Heavy with my guilt and hope. Guilt that I am me and she is she and that we live such different lives though we are no different in the eyes of those who classify and demarcate according to ethnicity, race and other glorious things. Hope that we could be equally free to live a life of our choosing.
As the car pulls away I pass by the early morning flurry of people going on with their lives. They are standing at a counter of a new and sleek-looking sales outlet sporting a board that proclaims the sale of "fresh fish at cheap prices".
I swallow down the bile rising in my throat.
Shanti is on her way home, back to Jaffna.
7.56am outside the Expo Air office in Colombo on 14th June 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Mea Culpa
This year, I missed Ash Wednesday. I unconsciously avoided watching television or reading the newspapers. I didn’t call my family or friends. I felt it helped me stay slightly removed from the madness of military victories and resultant casualties or indiscriminate violence and the bitterness it left in its wake.
I was only reminded that the season of Lent had begun when I received an email from a friend on how to make self-denial more meaningful than mere fasts and prayers.
This time of the year usually brings back memories of crowded churches I attended as a child, and the people lining up to kiss the feet of the statue of the crucified Christ.
However, for the last year or so, my memories have been of a service I attended in a church in Colombo. A member of the congregation spoke of Jesus’ long walk to Calvary bearing a 110 pound beam on which he was going to be nailed and left to die.
Beaten and tortured, he staggered and fell. Fearing he would not make it to the place where he was to be crucified, the Roman soldiers compelled an unwitting passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who had just come in from the country, to help him.
The speaker explained how crucifixion was the worst form of punishment given to criminals and the shame and humiliation attached to such a fate. It was also believed that anyone who touched the cross would be defiled and could not take part in the Passover.
Imagine what Simon must have felt like when he was asked to share in this fate. To stand next to a man who was already half dead having been taken from trial to trial and beaten and humiliated. To walk with him amid the jeers and taunts. Carrying the sign of shame.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like. Then the speaker compared this incident to all the many times we are called upon not only to witness the humiliation of someone else but to share in it. The example he used was his own experience in Jaffna long before the legendary “83 Riots”.
I can still remember him standing up there, telling us of an incident he witnessed while visiting Jaffna in the early ‘80s. He told us he saw a member of the Sri Lankan military reach down from the back of the truck he was travelling in and knock down a cyclist with the butt of his gun as he drove by. He said seeing the military behave like an occupying force in a foreign land, he had felt then that we were headed down a very dangerous path. How long could this go on? He said the letters he wrote to the various newspapers never made it past the censor.
More than two decades later, as we begin the season of Lent, I am reminded again of this man who dared speak of what many of us choose to ignore.
I wasn’t too sure what ethnic group he belonged to. But I was aware that he cared enough to stand up in front of the crowd and talk about something which most of us would consider "controversial".
Protected by censorship and fed by propaganda, we choose to be happily ignorant of what goes on in the “war-torn areas”. Even when are own streets are torn apart by the war which is no longer confined to these areas, or our neighbours are pulled out of their homes and taken away, we choose to happily sigh and pass on by.
We choose to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the many who stagger under their crosses of hopelessness, violence, harassment, fear, poverty, starvation, coercion, injury, grief, loss and death.
We choose not to care. We choose to let others do what they do because they have the authority to do so. We choose to ignore the injustice and the wrongs. We choose the crucified plaster statue to the real thing. We can endure blood as long as it comes out of a tin and doesn’t soil our hands.
And so as yet another brother falls and his mother wails, we must pray Mea Culpa… Mea Culpa… Mea Culpa…
11th February 2008
11.19pm
I was only reminded that the season of Lent had begun when I received an email from a friend on how to make self-denial more meaningful than mere fasts and prayers.
This time of the year usually brings back memories of crowded churches I attended as a child, and the people lining up to kiss the feet of the statue of the crucified Christ.
However, for the last year or so, my memories have been of a service I attended in a church in Colombo. A member of the congregation spoke of Jesus’ long walk to Calvary bearing a 110 pound beam on which he was going to be nailed and left to die.
Beaten and tortured, he staggered and fell. Fearing he would not make it to the place where he was to be crucified, the Roman soldiers compelled an unwitting passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who had just come in from the country, to help him.
The speaker explained how crucifixion was the worst form of punishment given to criminals and the shame and humiliation attached to such a fate. It was also believed that anyone who touched the cross would be defiled and could not take part in the Passover.
Imagine what Simon must have felt like when he was asked to share in this fate. To stand next to a man who was already half dead having been taken from trial to trial and beaten and humiliated. To walk with him amid the jeers and taunts. Carrying the sign of shame.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like. Then the speaker compared this incident to all the many times we are called upon not only to witness the humiliation of someone else but to share in it. The example he used was his own experience in Jaffna long before the legendary “83 Riots”.
I can still remember him standing up there, telling us of an incident he witnessed while visiting Jaffna in the early ‘80s. He told us he saw a member of the Sri Lankan military reach down from the back of the truck he was travelling in and knock down a cyclist with the butt of his gun as he drove by. He said seeing the military behave like an occupying force in a foreign land, he had felt then that we were headed down a very dangerous path. How long could this go on? He said the letters he wrote to the various newspapers never made it past the censor.
More than two decades later, as we begin the season of Lent, I am reminded again of this man who dared speak of what many of us choose to ignore.
I wasn’t too sure what ethnic group he belonged to. But I was aware that he cared enough to stand up in front of the crowd and talk about something which most of us would consider "controversial".
Protected by censorship and fed by propaganda, we choose to be happily ignorant of what goes on in the “war-torn areas”. Even when are own streets are torn apart by the war which is no longer confined to these areas, or our neighbours are pulled out of their homes and taken away, we choose to happily sigh and pass on by.
We choose to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the many who stagger under their crosses of hopelessness, violence, harassment, fear, poverty, starvation, coercion, injury, grief, loss and death.
We choose not to care. We choose to let others do what they do because they have the authority to do so. We choose to ignore the injustice and the wrongs. We choose the crucified plaster statue to the real thing. We can endure blood as long as it comes out of a tin and doesn’t soil our hands.
And so as yet another brother falls and his mother wails, we must pray Mea Culpa… Mea Culpa… Mea Culpa…
11th February 2008
11.19pm
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