Losing track of time- India and now Thailand

Has it really been three weeks since I last composed an entry!?  Since it is not possible to relate everything I have done, consider these exerpts or highlights from my adventures.

Escape Mumbai by plane.  Passed through the dense brown haze and smog at about 20,000 feet and finally saw blue sky.   Burning trash, polluting vehicles and too many people all contribute to the constant layer of particulates that covers the city.   If there is a reward, it is the few minutes in the evening when the sun, a giant red ball, disappears over the bay and the string of lights called the "Queen's necklace"  illuminate the promenade  along the waterfront.  Mumbai, in spite of its challenges, can provide experiences to last a lifetime, even during a brief visit.  I replaced  my plans at the last minute from a foray to the south to a flight north to Jaipur.  A couchsurfing host responded to my appeal and how could I pass up someone with the same name as a famous golfer, Vijay Singh!  Although I stayed with Ankur Sharma and his family, I was really hosted by he and his two best friends, all in their twenties.   The village where I stayed, Amer, is about 10 miles from Jaipur and has one of the region's most famous attractions, a beautiful castle, a fort and stone walls snaking their way over the surrounding hillsides in the style of the Great Wall of China.  Ankur gave up his bed and bedroom so I could be part of the family; mom, dad, 2 sisters, one brother, Ankur and me!   Tea with milk for breakfast, rice with a vegetable sauce for lunch and a similar meal for dinner, all accompanied by freshly made flat bread or nam.   The cast system is alive and well in India- Ankur and his family are Brahman, his friend Abhay is of the same cast and his family are the priests in charge of the largest and most historic temple of the village, and Vijay who is Rajistani has other obligations and traditions.  Each morning, Ankur went to the temple, usually before I got up, and then came to his room to pray before his personal alter.   He answered many of my questions about Hinduism and I shared trips to the temple.  Other than local excursions, walks on the surrounding walls, a tour of the palace, visits to an astounding observatory created hundreds of years ago in Jaipur, trips to the market and time on the roof watching children fly kites in preparation for the kite festival that I would miss by one day, the experience that is most vivid is a trip to see the Taj Mahal!
I had not planned to go to Agra since it was about 4 hours from Amer, but Vijay saw this as an opportunity for an outing with his friends.  He borrowed his uncle's car, I paid for the gas, and the four of us headed to the Taj Mahal.   Originally planning to share driving responsibilities on a divided highway, I soon changed my mind.  Divided highway yes, but that has a different meaning in India.  There is no limited access, so you share the road with camel carts full of short logs or bulging with giant bags of hay that obscure the roadway, buses in various stages of disrepair and trucks- yes, fully loaded trucks coming directly at you on the wrong side of the highway!!!!    It was an exhausting experience for both driver and passengers, but we managed to survive.  Honking is a national pasttime.  It took all day to drive the 150 miles, so we arrived just as the last tickets were being sold to enter the Taj Mahal complex; closing in 10 minutes!  We paid for a tuk tuk to get from the parking lot to the ticket booths, changed vehicles when the first one wouldn't start, had a guide who rushed us to the booth, paid another person to insert us at the head of the line, bypassing at least 200 people, and then ran for the entrance arch to take photos before sunset.    Worth the effort?  Yes!  It was one of those breathtaking experiences, unexpected beauty in a park like setting.   The sun was low in the sky, a slight misty haze filtered the sunlight and out came the cameras.   Even though it was crowded, I think there were fewer people than earlier in the day.  Reflecting ponds mirror the symetrical architecture of this amazingly beautiful white building.   We agreed on a meeting place and I was off to capture the atmosphere of this world class wonder.   Find the perfect angle, adjust the lighting, fight for position with other photographers, enter the mosque at the side in order to frame it through a doorway and then hurry to the end of the queue of people entering the building.   Daylight is fading, there are no lights inside, be pushed by the crowd,  stumble on the raised steps, follow someone with a lighted cell phone, give up on taking photos of the interior  and find the exit.  The post card photos of the inside confirm that I really did not miss the best part of the Taj Mahal.   Sunset, fading light, a few last photos and taking one last glance over our shoulders, we are among the last visitors to leave.
Where to spend the night?   Ask for directions, find a cheap guest house and then get something to eat . We parked while Ankur and Abhay wandered the streets near the railway station to find a suitable place.  When they returned, we found out there is an additional cast in India, the foreign tourist.   I was not allowed to spend the night in a guest house, and none of them was allowed to share a room in a hotel with me; result, they checked me into the inexpensive hotel room before going around the corner to their guest house.  We then met at the "cafe" in front of the hotel for something to eat.  The weather is cooler in the north of India than in Mumbai and none of us was prepared for the cold night.   I slept in my clothes and piled the three available blankets on top of me.  Even then, I didn't get a good nights sleep because I was freezing. 
At 8:00 am, my three friends knocked on the door, entered wearing hoods, hats and all of the clothes they had brought, we ordered hot tea delivered to the room and all crawled under the covers to watch TV while we warmed up.  The crazy photo taken by the delivery boy will be a treasured memory.   The Monday morning traffic was slightly less hectic than what we experienced on Sunday, but we did meet trucks on the wrong side of the highway once again and plenty of camel carts.  My three new friends continue to call me "dada" (grandpa) and to me they have become "beta" (grandsons)!  We all agreed that we had shared a unique and memorable experience.   Ah, this is India.

Arrival in Hong Kong.  At the airport information booth, I met a young man from the UK who had just experienced India and the countries I was about to visit.  With the smell of India still in our clothes, we bonded immediately.  He had a general neighborhood in mind for finding a cheap guest house and since I had made no previous plans, we figured out transportation to the center of the city and to the guest house where we ended up getting rooms. You wouldn't believe this massive, complicated building and the variety of things it housed.  Only describable in person.   Stephen and I shared the Hong Kong experience.   I later spent two nights couchsurfing with Ian, another young Englishman who is teaching in Hong Kong, and he showed Stephen and me places we had not yet visited.  Hong Kong, what a contrast to Mumbai.  Clean, efficient and organized, we were able to get everywhere either on foot or by using public transportation.  I had no preconeived notion of what Hong Kong would be like, and had only considered it a stop over on my way to Thailand.  What a pleasant surprise- a little bit of San Francisco, New York, Cape Town, Istanbul.   We never ran out of things to do and interesting places to visit.  One day we walked the city for fourteen hours, almost non-stop, including climbing long stairways, the steep winding streets leading to the observation areas above the city, taking the longest complex of escalators in the world, and descending in a cable car that sometimes hits a 45 degree angle.   It was absolutely spectacular looking down on the mass of high rise building clustered around the busy waterways.  We lingered in a traditional  neighborhood full of street markets and watched live fish swimming in tanks become still breathing segments on a well worn chopping block and attempted to identify strange looking and smelling foods displayed everywhere.  There is the challenge of ordering food  when everything is written in Chinese and  no photos- we just pointed to something identifyable on a neighboring table and laughed with the locals who tried to assist us.  All of this is just down the street from gigantic modern shopping centers filled with designer shops, Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuiton, Versace and surrounded by banks and investment firms known around the world.  Money!  there must be lots of it here.  Rich Chinese from the mainland come here to shop.   For a contrast, we sought the calm and isolation of Lamma Island; a short ferry ride and a world away from the bustle of the city center.   A fishing village with leaning houses built on stilts, trails leading to isolated and deserted beaches, pathways ending at mountain shrines and small restaurants displaying live lobsters, crab and fish in tanks near the entrance.   Only the passing of huge ships loaded with containers gave a hint of the 7 million inhabitants living just around the corner.    Farewell Hong Kong, hello Thailand.

Bandra Slum - A View from the Bridge

Wed. 5 January 2011 

View from the elevated walkway that leads to the Bandra train station.  There is a slight breeze, but the atmosphere is very hazy, the sky is gray, not blue, the filtered sunlight is warm.   People pass in a continual stream in both directions, even at this mid-afternoon hour.   Below me, and to the rear, four huge pipelines, at least 10 feet in diameter, parallel a dirt pathway that runs between them and an open sewage canal.  Men come and go from the corner behind the public toilet facility, urinating on the trash to avoid paying a few pennies to enter the official outhouse.  On the other side of the canal there is a green patch of grass and low bushes, bisected by dirt pathways where individuals often linger, squatting to defecate, sometimes in the middle of the path!  Is this related to the term "squatter" when applied to unofficial housing sites?  Next to the brush there is a small cultivated area with squares of low green plants, leafy vegetables that will be harvested and sold along the street.  They must be irrigated with water from the stagnant pond next to the toilet areas, the reason salads don't make up any part of my diet at this moment.  Hey kids, be happy you can eat the green things that make their way to the table in America!  Beyond the extension of this elevated walkway are several multi-story office buildings and my small hotel, the Armor Court.  A busy main street separated this area from the Bandra slum quarter, a dense jumble of buildings, most from three to five levels high.  My challenge is how to create an adequate visual of this scene.   The lines I see are like those left on the screen of an etch a sketch after several people have played with it; multiple layers of lines spreading in all directions.   The rooftops form slightly sloped lines; sheets of corregated steel or plywood.   The short vertical lines that are not always perpendicular, create geometric shapes whose names I have forgotten- trapezoids, parallelograms?  various triangles?  These figures outline single room dwellings and workshops where I sometimes spot groups of men seated at sewing machines or cutting patterns for clothing, women preparing dinner, people washing.    Most colorful are the bright blue plastic tarps draped over openings or covering parts of rooftops, adding color to the predominately  gray and brown landscape  dotted with small squares of faded yellow or pink.  Openings are sometimes filled with recycled doors and windows.  Water spews sporadically from pipes extending toward the sewage canal, adding to the already sluggish, stagnant and foul smelling sludge covered with trash.  Drying clothes, an occasional black water tank and an occasional satellite dish decorate the uneven and multi-layered roofs.  To the left of the sewage canal there is a busy bus stop, a dusty playground which serves as a cricket field in the evening ( the ball often ending up in the sewage canal and having to be retrieve with a pole or by throwing rocks to create ripples that propel it to the edge), a small street market and leanto tarps serving as housing.    Between this walkway and the rail station, women scrub their laundry on top of a cement platform that covers the large pipes where they go underground and cook over open fires.  Their living quarters are a kind of row house development of two and three story buildings constructed almost exclusively of sheets of corregated fiberglass and metal- gray, brick red, green and blue.  Access to the upper levels is achieved  by means of steep ladder stairs resting on the ground.  Children, goats and stray dogs share the trash dump that occupies about half of the open space.  The soundtrack to this panoramic scene- a cacaphony of notes eminating from the horns of tuk tuks (three wheeled motorized rickshaws), taxis, buses, trucks and cars, whose impatient drivers have developed the nervous habit of honking, necessary or not.  The shrill whistle of trains stopping in the station for 15-20 seconds to load and unload passengers adds variety to the musical score.

Time to vacate my seat, one of the three plastic chairs provided for pedestrians at the bend of the elevated walkway.  A maintenance worker, dressed in bright orange coveralls, someone I met on my first trip across this pathway, has been seated at my side watching me write this journal entry.  We have a communication problem, but as I rose to leave, he called someone in his family who speaks English, to tell me hello. The information I gained was basic; he is married and has a 3 year old daughter.   His welcoming smile, his handshake and hug, and the fact that he shared the seating space for nearly an hour conveyed his feelings and message.  Welcome to Mumbai.

Paris: a fifty year love affair!

Lots has happened since my last blog, but currently I have Paris on my mind.   It has been 50 years since my first trip to France and an academic year of study in Paris that changed my life.   How many times have I returned?   I have lost track, but I know that each time I arrive, it is like a homecoming.  In spite of the cold weather, I lost no time filling my schedule with interesting things to do in the "City of Light."   It was unofficial couchsurfing and having the keys to the small apartment of my former student Chris Wolter that made it seem like I was really living there.  Since Chris was still working, I could come and go as I pleased, although leaving in the morning, I rarely went "home" during the day. 
It still amazes me that a city with as many holes as a piece of Swiss cheese functions- the metro, the regional rail system called the RER, the sewers, the catecombs, pedestrian tunnels, underground rivers, all of these tunnel under various parts of the city.   In spite of the efficient and extensive public transportation system, many Parisians insist on driving their cars and are willing to sit in massive traffic jams each day while pedestrians, bikes, scooters and motorcycles keep moving. 
What did I do?  My goal was to view some of the photo exhibits that were  part of the November "mois de la photo."  I went to displays at the Maison europeenne de la photo, the Jeu de Paume Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Petit Palais.   Some were exhibits of photo journalism that captured shocking scenes of wars, hunger and other human tragedies that we do not usually see in newspapers and magazines.  The French are much more likely to include these in publications and on TV news than Americans.   Other photos were more artistic in nature.  
My personal photography goal was to find interesting street art and grafitti and to visit locations I had been previously to see how the art had changed.  The areas I visited were Belleville, a working class neighborhood on the Right Bank, the rue Mouffetard, on the Left Bank and the canal d'Ourq, a working class neighborhood on the north edge of the city.   The artists have been busy and I will return with hundreds of interesting photos to edit.  My Beta friend, Robert Ulmstadter, spent one day with me as I showed him many of my favorite parts of Paris, and helped spot grafitti art along the way.  I think he is now "hooked" and will be scanning walls for street art during the rest of his travels.  Early New Year's Day, I left at 8 am to investigate the northern outskirts of Paris.  Seeing a few tags in a parking lot, I soon found an opening to an abandonned freight yard along the canal de l'Ourq and stepped into a veritable living gallery of grafitti.  Street artists had covered all of the exterior walls of this delapidated five story building with a variety of designs, but it was the wall surrounding the area that was most interesting.   The most talented and skilled artists had painted a Halloween series, portraits and geometric designs.   With my fingers numb and not able to change settings on my camera, I decided it was time to return to the apartment, take a warm shower and get ready for the walking lecture visit that we had scheduled for the afternoon.  Beginning at the elegant Place Vendome, location of the Ritz Hotel, fashion houses and the most expensive jewelry boutiques, we walked the neighborhood with a guide who explained architecture, history and personal anecdotes about this historic area.  Two hours later we quickly found a local cafe where we could order a much needed cup of hot coffee.
Then it was off to celebrate the new year!

My favorite walking areas:  everywhere in the Quartier Latin because I love the small streets, numerous art galleries, coffee shops and book stores.  Even if I am not in the market for a new book, I wander through Shakespeare and Company where there are steep stairways, old couches, quiet hidden corners and a view of Notre Dame from the upstairs window; hangout in the 20's of American expats such as Hemingway.  Around the corner is the Hotel Esmaralda, where the 93 year old owner still greets her guests each evening before taking a walk in her long fur coat.  For Christmas, there is the antique and food market in front of the church of Saint Suplice, and other stands along the Tuilerie Gardens near the Louvre.  I walked through the courtyards of the Louvre at night, never tiring of the illuminated facades constructed during the reigns of numerous kings of France.   Stroll through the Marais district, down the rue des Rosiers passing famous Jewish delis and linger in the Place des Vosges where the arcades are lined with art galleries.   Recent rains and melting snow caused the Seine to flood so that normal boat traffic had ceased; there was not enough clearance  for boats to pass under the bridges; however, I pause to watch the raging courant just the same.

Although |I have added favorite cities to my list- Istanbul, Barcelona, Cape Town and Buenos Aires among them, Paris still tops the list.  In spite of many changes over the past 50 years, this city that has been around for 2000 years, retains a beauty and fascination that will keep me returning.

Phoenix has Camelback and Cape Town has Lion's Head

An incredible view!   No one I knew was enthusiastic about walking to the top of Lion's Head, the pointed mountain to the right of Table Mountain when viewing the Cape Town horizon, so I took a taxi to the parking area determined to make my way to the top. ( Cab driver- Norman, from Zimbabawe, married, 3 year old daughter, 3 years in Cape Town, now owns the older Mercedes he was driving, fare of 50 Rand = about $7 -the kind of information I usually glean from the drivers who are all from other countries.)  I was unsure if I should take the trail by myself so I ask a group of young people just getting out of their cars if I could walk along with them.  As a result of the ensuing conversations I learned that Matthew and John were brothers, sons of missionaries living in Mozambique, students at the University of Pretoria, Ruan and his friend were from Cape Town, one of the other girls, Nerina, was from Namibia, and is a pilot.   The trail circles the mountain twice, beginning as a gradual ascent and then becoming an irregular rocky climb, at one point, a short metal ladder and in another place a vertical ledge where chains and hand holds have been installed to make it safer.   I decided to watch the sunset from a flat area near the summit rather than go to the top of the last rocky pinnacle.   The view from this level space strewn with lichen covered granite boulders was spectacular- all of Cape Town, Table Mountain, beaches along the Atlantic Ocean, ships arriving at the port, Robben Island.  Although the winds were calm where I was sitting, I could see the clouds that formed along the ridges, tumble down the steep slopes and dissapate before reaching sea level.   This same down draft was so strong that it clipped the tops of breakers along the beach sending a spray backward toward the open sea.  Using these same winds, paragliders jump from the cliffs of Lion's Head and can stay aloft for as long as 2 hours!  The pointed shadow of Lion's head crept across Cape Town as the city lights began to glow; a few brave individuals, mere specks from this vantage point, walked through the blowing sand on beaches below, climbers continuing to the summit disappeared among the blocks of stone.  The sun set into a low bank of fog that formed along the horizon, first illuminating the wispy high clouds with streaks of pink and yellow and then suddenly disappearing; time to begin a rapid descent in order to reach the parking lot before complete darkness.  Interesting climbing companions, a breathtaking view, a wonderful memory- another day in Cape Town.

Backpacker hostel on Castle St.

The backpacker dorm experience has not been a problem, perhaps a bit inconvenient due to keeping my things in a locker, but I have learned to fall asleep anywhere.   Most of the travelers sharing the room came in after I went to bed and that was about 1 am, but on the second night several were already in bed by 11 pm.  I did wake up briefly smelling the shoes of the person who had left them near my head when he climbed to the third bunk!  I pushed them as far from my bunk as I could reach and fell back asleep.  Not particularly smelly, but disgustingly ugly are the herbed black pieces of dried flesh decorating the window sill by my head.  I think it is something like jerky, but in  a large chunk.  Because they were attracting ants and flies, I moved them to the outside ledge; however, the next day they had somehow managed to work their way back inside.  (Two days later, the pieces have gotten smaller so I guess someone must be consuming them.) 

The candle light service at the Lutheran Church was reminiscent of those at home where children in the audience anxiously await the final hymn, Silent Night, so they can light the candles setting on the back of the pew in front of them.  Playing with the candles is a continual temptation while standing for hymns, sitting for prayers, scripture readings and solo performances. One of the first announcements was a warning that the wood of the 200 year old building was very dry and that the lit candles were to be held with great care.  The highlight of the evening was the solo sung by  12 year old Lanelle Lewies,  whose angelic rendition of O Holy Night would have brought tears to Jesus himself.  Although he was not from the orphanage that was to benefit from a special offering at the close of the service, he captured the attention of those orphans seated across from me, who sometimes figeted during the other songs, mostly sung in English, but occasionally in German or Afrikaans.  For those two hours, hard wooden pews and all, it did seem like Christmastime.

From Cape Town, South Africa, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Fast forward to South Africa

A month of journals since my last report- sorry for the delay and it is not because I have been avoiding internet cafes!!!

Pretoria, met and spent time with my friend Emile, young man from Benin whom I first knew while he was working in the hotel Esplanade in Segou, Mali, three years ago.  He introduced me to his Afrikaan friends with whom we shared several dinners and a trip to a water park.  We visited Johannesburg and Soweto with Emile's friends; the mother works at the Embassy of Benin in Pretoria.   Toured the Nelson Mandela House in Soweto, took photos of the World Cup  soccer stadium nearby  and visited the Piet Peterson Museum, named for a boy who was killed during the demonstrations, and dedicated as a memorial to the struggle against apartheid.  I now have a better understanding of the struggle to eliminate apartheid.  In the evening, we shared a  traditional African meal with the family- pap with sauce and a salad.  Pap is the West African equivalent to rice or mashed potatoes, a paste the consistency of mashed potatoes made from white, finely ground corn flour mixed with water.  It is eaten with the fingers, a small portion on the fingertips dipped in the sauce and scraped off by inverting your hand over your lower teeth.  It is sticky enough not to fall off naturally in the process. Pap is nearly flavorless so it is the spicy sauce that you taste.

observations:
First of all, one's brain does not easily adjust to right hand drive cars and the traffic pattern they create.  I make sure I look in both directions before stepping into the street after having someone grab my shoulder a couple of times to prevent me from decorating the front of a vehicle.  Shifting with your left hand is very awkward!
Security:  I must say that I was not prepared for the security measures taken to protect personal property, but am now beginning to accept it.  Security fences surround homes in middle class neighborhoods, solid walls topped with spikes of razor wire, electronic gates, steelo grillwork fences.  Ground floor windows have security bars or interior folding grills like those of store fronts.   Car watchers or security guards are present in all public parking lots  and provide security along city streets.  These attendants are often refugees from other African countries and are willing to work for the tips they receive. 
When we went to Jaco's house for dinner, we passed through a community security gate manned by a guard who recorded our arrival in a register and then lifted the railroad crossing type barrier and opened the sliding electronic gate.  Jaco met us inside and opened the remaining two electronic gates that blocked portions of the long driveway.  His 4 German shepherd dogs met our car near the house.  Whew!  We had arrived at their island of tranquillity, had a wonderful barbeque dinner in their open air lounge with pitched roof of thatch, and then passed through the security in reverse as we left.  Yes, they have many beautiful things to protect, live on about 6 acres of land on the edge of the city, but at what price?  This situation was created by years of restrictions that resulted in a large class of people living in poverty, inadequate education for poor people, xenephobia.   The last time I passed through such extreme security was when I visited an awards ceremony in the Oregon State Penitentury!    I must say that I have seen less of this type of security in Cape Town and smaller towns I have visited. 

Cape Town:
Emile came to spend time with me in Cape Town, thus my use of the pronoun "we."

This beautiful city is located in a spectacular setting; ocean on one side with white sandy beaches, rocky promentories, hidden coves, Table Mountain and Lion's head forming the backdrop.  We took the cable car to the summit of the mountain in order to a birds eye view of the area.   This rocky, windswept landscape, a world heritage site, is covered in fynbos, a combination of low growing plants that sustain one another and that is found only on the cape.  The weather can change quickly with moisture in the strong updrafts forming dense clouds and fog as it reaches the flat summit.  Flowers are in bloom from miniscule rock plants to proteas and a kind of white straw flower, all bobbing and dancing in the strong breezes.
Table mountain in the afternoon, the Green Point Soccer Stadium at night.  The Mandela Challenge, an annual game between teams from  the USA and South Africa was sold out days before the game.   Our "challenge" was how to obtain tickets for this unique opportunity to watch a game in a world cup stadium.   Confident that it would be possible to attend, we walked with crowds of spectators, tens of thousands of them, holding valid tickets to the stadium following the route that had become legendary during the World Cup matches-crazy hats, colored wigs, national flags, and yes, vuvuzelas!  Near the entrance it was obvious others were also seeking tickets at the last minute and that a few people had them to sell in spite of the law banning such sales and the watchful eyes of everpresent security personnel.   When a transaction seemed to be immanent, a cluster of people would gather drawing the attention of the police.  We observed what was happening, but were not able to find anyone from whom to purchase a pair of tickets.  At one point we witnessed a seemingly successful transaction; the two happy fans left for the stadium and the police quickly surrounded the unfortunate seller, took his wallet and emptied it of the cash he has received!   We did not want to be involved in a similar situation.  With his trained "African" eye, Emile observed the body language of a seller of vuvuzelas who apparently had tickets to sell, but who was waiting for someone willing to meet his asking price.  Inconspiculously, and unsuccessfully,we attempted  to negotiate a reduction to his 800 Rand demand for tickets that originally sold for 100 Rand each,  alas, American major league prices of over $100 for the pair, but determined to attend the game we succombed!  Emile walked along side the seller to verify the authenticity of the tickets while I counted my Rand notes,  at the ok signal from Emile, I quickly caught up and slipped the money into the seller's hand and kept going toward the entrance.  Success!   It was exciting to be inside this unusual structure, a giant, flat, silver colored oval that flares outward from bottom to top, has three tiers of seating, an oval opening over the field, turf grown from Oregon grass seed, and lighting along the edges of the central opening that resembles a giant diamond neckless.  We were seated in the lower tier behind one of the goals with a good view of the field.   A military band played both national anthems, President Zuma of South Africa arrived, ceremonies for the Nelson Mandela Childeren's Fund were held and the game began.   The stands were filled with spectators wearing yellow and green, the incessant sound of vuvuzelas filled the air and occasional attempts were made to start the "wave."  With less than 6 minutes left in the match, the Americans scored the only goal, leaving South African fans quiet and disappointed.   The lady seated next to me explained that many South Africans who had not previously attended games, were now doing so thanks to the excitement generated by the World Cup.  Previously thought of as a lower class, and perhaps "black" sport, the crowds have become much more integrated, a positive step for South Africa.

Reflections on water

The Niger River overflowing its banks at the end of the rainy season serves as a partial barrier to the sands of the Sahara.  Source of life to those living along its banks, the Niger forms a delta, not at its mouth, but in the middle of Mali, bright green fields of rice, the breadbasket of the country.  Its surface teams with pinasses and pirogues, those long narrow, hand-crafted wooden boats that ferry people and products between cities, towns and villages.  This is where women do their laundry; those without water at home come to the river to bathe; herds of cattle and flocks of goats and sheep quench their thirst along this vast stream; fishermen catch fish to feed their families and dry the rest to sell in the markets. 

Away from the Niger it is a different story.  The first activity of  the day, for mainly women and girls, is to walk to a source of water and carry it home in containers balanced on their heads.  A few fortunate ones have sealed wells with hand pumps; however, most go to an open well where they must hoist buckets full of water without the aid of a pulley, the edges of the well revealing deep grooves formed by years of raising buckets with ropes or cords woven from the fibers of baobab bark; some go to a stream and others to an open pond shared with animals.   I always feel conspicuous with my ever present plastic bottle of pure water which costs more than most inhabitants earn in a day, but which I must drink in order to avoid getting dysentary.   The empty bottles are recycled, but not in a conventional way; children fight over them in order to have a container for their water.  A bottle left by the roadside will eventually be claimed by someone herding animals or walking to work in the millet or maize fields. 

Water, the source of life in Mali serves additional purposes in Morocco.  Every mosque has a ready supply of water so the faithful can perform their ablutions prior to praying.  In cities, fountains decorated with colorful tiles often occupy the center of public squares or courtyards.  Each neighborhood in the ancient medinas was required to have a public water fountain where residents could come to fill containers.  In palaces and royal gardens, elaborate systems of fountains were constructed using gravity to move the water from one location to another.  Bubbling, dripping and flowing water provided a soothing sound, a cooling effect in hot climates and a pleasing images.  Not to forget the hammam.- another requirement for each neighborhood along with a mosque, a fountain and a public oven.  This contemporary version of the Roman baths is a social tradition for some families, a necessity for personal hygiene for others.  The wood burning furnace situated  below the hammam heats the water to scalding temperatures while providing residents who have no stove at home with a place to have their food cooked. 

Cross the narrow Strait of Gibralter, a waterway that witnessed the departure of Columbus and other explorers, go up the Guadalquivir River and into the beautiful city of Sevilla for more water effects.  One legacy of the moors was their love for water.  It spouts from elaborate fountains in elegant plazas, drips from moss covered basins in obscure corners, babbles in geometric alabaster sculptures in courtyards of hotels, restaurants and public buildings.  Orange trees in the courtyard of the cathedral are irrigated by a network of small canals leading to the base of each plant.  And then there are the gardens of the Reales Alcazares, the royal palace, where every vista and pathway is enhanced by a water feature, many reflecting the influence of the moors. 

What a pleasure it would be to travel the world without having to buy and carry a bottle of pure drinking water!   Could the day possibly come when everyone would have access to a fountain, a faucet or a well that provided eau potable?  Let's hope that it is not simply a dream.