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2004 weblog entries
2004/12/28 Our life in Oman is following a daily pattern of giving trainings from morning till evening, interrupted only by the regular islamic prayer breaks, having meetings in the later evening, returning to our hotel, preparing for the next day, an hour-or-so of relaxing over a sheeha at al-Fishawi's, and going to sleep. There is hardly any time at all to do something else.
In the mean time I have a car at my disposal, which has made an end to the endless calls for taxis to and fro the office at al-Athaibah. Just for the Xmas weekend we have had an extra day off, and with Jerry and Agnes and Michaela I drove the 450 kms all the way through the Batinah alongside the Omani coast to Sohar and Shinas, and from there we took the short cut through the barren hills of Hatta and the sand desert of the Emirates to Dubai. It is a thrilling experience to drive the desert highway and see the impressive skyline of Dubai appearing in the hazy distance, and as you approach the city its sheer architectural wonder and complexity becomes even stronger. In Dubai we checked into our hotel near the clocktower roundabout and went straight to the souqs, where one soon discovers that Dubai is altogether an Indian city much rather than an Arabic one. Christmas itself we spent at Jumeira, browsing through bookshops, strolling along the beach, and dining at The Village with the seabreeze in our ears and some christmas carols in our heads.
Back in Masqat, we heard of the earthquake and the tsunami, and only hours later the skies over the Hajar Mountains darkened and it started to rain like it hasn't done here for years. At first everybody was happy and cheering and laughing and dancing, but pretty soon all Omani faces around us darkenend as well, as people realised that the wadis were quickly turning into rushing mountain rivers and people would have a really hard time to get home. So all offices and schools closed down and everybody rushed towards his/her family, over roads gushing with water, and in less than a half hour we were having a meeting in an empty building as the electricity snapped and everything went dark.
Tomorrow, again, is the last day of our working week. With my car I am more free than I was before, and we plan to spend a weekend in the Omani desert, where the Wahiba Sands, at the outskirts of the great Arabian Rub al-Khali (Empty Quarter), have been inviting us in vain since the day we got here five weeks ago.
Merry Xmas to you all! Eid Mubarak!
2004/12/03 Friday, for those living in an islamic country like Oman, means weekend: a day off-duty, mostly spent with the family or with friends. Yesterday evening our team was invited to a small party at the al-Athaibah residence of the customer service manager of the company we work for: an ideal occasion for us to mingle with some of our colleagues and get to know them better. The expat community in Masqat truly is a global affair. At our company alone, colleagues literally come from every corner of the world. Apart from the Omani, many are Danish or Swedish - but we have learned not to be surprised at meeting Slovaks, Serbs, Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Turks, Egytians, Pakistani, Bengali, Indians, or you-name-it-wherefroms. You will not be amazed to read that our minds were not really on being off-duty today: Our trainees are coming in tomorrow for their first day, and we feel tense about getting everything ready and right from the start. But yet, this morning, I took time for a Sunday morning walk. The area where we live, al-Khuwayr, is a fairly large residential zone sandwiched between the Gulf and the mountains. It takes no more than a 30 minutes stroll from the hotel gates to the hills. Black and threatening clouds were hanging over the hilltops today, and from the rocky outcrops one could easily notice the sandstorms whirling over the desert at the other side - which gave my presence in this peaceful and windless strectch of the Wadi al-Khuwayr an altogether gripping dimension.
Completely at ease, I zigzagged my way uphill, first cruising along the villa-lined lanes and avenues of the residential area, and later tracking an insignificant dustroad leading upwards - from where I had the most splendid view on the coastal plane, with the glitters of the ocean in the far distance.
Coming back, I mixed with a group of Bengali labourers and attended the Friday Prayers in the impressive Said bin Taimur Mosque standing proudly in the centre of the al-Khuwayr suburb. The Allahu Akbar chanting in Oman is substantially different from both the Indo-Pakistani and the Syrian versions which I am familiar with, and it was a great thrill to me to witness the spectacle in this new and incredibly clean Ottoman style building, sitting crosslegged under its slender twin minarets pointing to the blackish sky.
In the afternoon our team gathered for a train-the-trainer session, during which I went through the contents and the methodology of the trainings we have to facilitate in the coming week. Tomorrow, my colleagues Guy and Michaela are about to swing our trajectory in motion.
2004/12/02 I have received the sad news that my good friend, mentor, teacher and guide, the Reverend Obbegoda Dhammatilaka Nayaka Mahathera, has passed away at the Buduruvagala Theravada Monastery in Sri Lanka, aged 78. I have had the honour of being personally acquainted with the thera for over 15 years. My knowledge of the Pali Tipitaka, and particularly of the Suttanipata (including the Ratanasutta, the Mangalasutta and the Karaniyamettasutta) is largely due to Obbegoda's intimate relationship with these basic buddhist texts and his excellency and unlimited readiness in explaining and teaching them to his students and visitors. The Suttanipata threesome will forever remain a cornerstone of my personal outlook on life and happiness - and for this reason I will always keep the memory of Obbegoda in my heart.
But besides being a mentor and a teacher, he was also a dear friend. Whenever I came to his hermitage, hidden away in the Buduruvagala jungle, he jumped up to welcome me and hold hands. My stays at the hermitage have often been for extended periods, but never was he tired of entertaining me with his remarkable insights, his never-ending wit, and his overpowering charismatic personality.
I will dearly miss him. And so, I am sure, will those among you who have participated in one of my many Sri Lanka tours over the years, and who have shared with me the pleasure of getting enthralled by Obbegoda's magical sense of humour and personal warmth.
2004/12/01 Our life in Oman is slowly falling into a regular pattern. We already feel quite at home at the Radisson Hotel in al-Khuwayr: Early morning, when we have our breakfast in the lushly terraced garden, we are accompanied by mynah birdsong and friendly Indian and Philippine staff lavishly sending us smiles and how are you todays and ahlan wa-sahlans. The temperature is still at a bearable 26C, when at 08:00 we take a taxi to the company offices at al-Athaibah. The days themselves are spent chaotically, rushing about between meetings and deskwork typically close to ever-urging deadlines. For my kind of development work I need some peace and quietness, and I tend to get back to my hotel room at every possible interval. Somehow I feel that work done in solitude is at least twice as good and is being done at least twice as quickly - which makes the transfers up and down between al-Khuwayr and al-Athaibah quite worthwhile.
I work till about 8 pm, after which we have dinner at some Indian restaurant in our neighbourhood. Most of the Indians living and working in the sultanate are originally from Kerala, and our conversations run in a hobson-jobson mix of Arabic, Hindi and Hinglish, turning into an amazingly workable brabble as soon as one gets used to playing around with the lingo.
The evenings are further divided in two parts: another session of desk work till about 10:30 or 11:00, and finally a decompression break at the terrace of al-Fishawi, the Lebanese-Jordanian coffeehouse and hang-out opposite our hotel, where we join ranks with the Omani crowd drinking kahwa (Arabian coffee) and smoking a sheeshay (waterpipe).
Meanwhile, the work itself is steaming ahead on schedule. Our countdown is now at 2. Two more days, and, next Saturday, our training program is in motion. Insha'allah!
2004/11/28 I am really becoming a regular at Abu Dhabi Airport: Yesterday evening, when our BA flight to Masqat stopped over in the UAE and dropped us into Abu Dhabi's duty free hall, I calculated this to be my 5th visit to this Emirate in just under two months. But this time around, of course, it was quite different: This time I was not on my way to or from Delhi our Kathmandu, but on my way to Masqat (Oman), where I am about to work and live for the coming few months.
In due time, we will be 14 colleagues doing this job here - but ours is just the first wave, which means that we were seven to fly in yesterday. In a few days all of us will have an appartment somewhere in one of the many subsets of this incredibly extended Capital Area around Masqat, but for the time being my colleagues Guy and Michaela and I each have a room in the Masqat SAS Radisson Hotel in al-Khuwayr (which is the first urban settlement one comes across having left the airport at Seeb).
Our first day in Oman was spent mostly off-duty: In the afternoon, we took a microbus up to the old harbour town of Muttrah, from where we walked along the Corniche to the walled city of Masqat proper. We found Masqat asleep, locked up and empty - but in the Muttrah souq we chatted with Indian businessmen, befriended a Keralite Juice Corner vendor, and discussed the price of silver with a Jain jeweller and his son. Indeed, small businesses here in Oman seem to be mostly run by Indian expats - the Omani themselves seem rather shy and not very keen on being seen holding hands with European guests or visitors.
We are in Masqat to facilitate the start-up training program of a new telecom business, due to be launched in 2005. Tomorrow will be our first real working day: we have exactly one week to finalise the details of the training program we will be facilitating, and as from next Saturday the first few groups of the 150 staff of the new company will be arriving, keen to know what will be expected of them, and anxious to go ahead with it.
2004/11/20 Having digested our many adventures in Bihar and in Delhi, I have returned to Belgium for a very short few days of intensive preparation work and a train-the-trainer program for the upcoming project in Masqat, Oman.
I am leaving for the Gulf by the end of next week, and I won't be available for any other projects until at least the end of January 2005.
2004/11/11 Back in Delhi... Having taken the Rajdhani Express train for a 15 hour nightride through northern India, Jerry and I were again welcomed to the capital by my good friends Bilal and Sheher Chapri, both of whom leave never nothing undone to make me feel at home with them. Both Bilal and Sheher keep a genuine interest in every one of my running projects, and it is always a real pleasure to exchange views with them. From the moment we meet, the topics of discussion run all over the place: Sufism, the state of the umma, the golden age of the Middle East, the Damascus monuments, current affairs, the American election results, Indian politics, social work in Bihar, Buddhism, ... there really is no time to cover it all, and this is a good thing , because I tend to love to always leave something unfinished, if only to give me a drive to come back as soon as I possibly can.
With Sheher we visited the Sarai Kale Khan colony on the southern outskirts of Old Delhi. Different from its eloquent name, the Sarai Kale Khan is really nothing more than a typical Indian city slum, where a muslim population of a few hundred heads huddle together to find some shelter from the bustling city and its over-demanding economic dynamics. Most of the families are Bihari and Bengali immigrants, having come to Delhi with the typical hopes of getting a better life and an enhanced chance of prosperity. However - once in the city, they find themselves utterly lost and chanceless, ending up in a slum, where the main concern is day-to-day survival and nothing else.
Some of the man have taken to cycle rikshaw repairing in order to make a living, but most can't do much more than beg around in the Chandni Chowk neighbourhood around the Jama Masjid mosque.
Sheher has taken the fate of the Sarai Kale Khan dwellers at heart, and making ample use of her contacts in that part of Delhi's population which has fundraising capabilities, she has set up a training program for the Sarai women, in order to help them establish a basic form of economic independency. The plan is to set up a workshop in the middle of the slum, with a number of Singer sewing machines, and get the women to producing nicely embroidered shalwar-qamiz and kurta-pyjama sets, which then can be sold into both the domestic and foreign markets. In order to come to this, Sheher has first established contacts with the slum elderly women, the amma or "mothers" - and from this, it is hoped that the younger women will follow suit. Another aspect is to get the (albeit silent) support of the local maulvi - for as soon as the maulvi is on track, he will be a key figure to get the men of the Sarai behind the idea of their wives' emancipation.
The scheme is running smoothly. Already a (female) sewing instructor is being trained, and the funds for the sewing machines are raising by the day. It is a real thrill to witness Sheher on the field: her charisma is unheard of, and literally every woman, man and youngster in the Serai is eating her every word and gesture as if they were staple food.
All this reminds us of the evocative story told by Rohinton Mistry in his A Fine Balance classic. Let us hope that Sheher's Sarai Project may run towards a brighter future than what happened to Dina and her companions in Mumbai ... !
Insha'allah !
2004/11/08 The roads plying from Tekari to the Barabar Hills are absolutely horrible - but this didn't get in our way from cruising our bikes through the Bihari landscape, crossing bridgeless riverbeds, enduring sand and countless particles of dust, dirt and cowdung, hovering around potholes and horning endless passers-by out of the way. When we reached the hills it was nearly sunset - but there I was again, at the Barabar Hill Caves, one of Bihar's most exquisite, most famous, but nevertheless almost never visited archaeological sites. Indeed: since Edward Morgan Forster has featured the Barabar Hills (conveniently masqueraded as "Malabar Hills") in his foremost novel A Passage to India, most of the world's reading citizens have been keeping their own private visualisation of the site in their memory. Some of Forster's readers might even have seen the actual site in the Passage to India cinema classic (the Malabar Hill scenes were shot at Barabar) - but of course, nothing beats the real thing, and it is only when one climbs the steps leading to the terrace in front of the caves that one can really feel the thrill which Aziz wanted to convey to Mrs Moore and Miss Quested. The caves were carved out of the marble-and-granite rocks by secluded monks of the Ajivaka Sect (a mendicant order, nihilist in persuasion, and contemporary to the historical Buddha) during the reign of Emperor Ashok (3rd century BC), and then carefully polished and adorned with inscriptions in the Ardha-Magadhi language. Their function is uncertain - but from the outline of the inner chambers I take it that they might have served both as a rain-retreat for the mendicant community and as living quarters, maybe for a small group of Ajivaka supporters. In any case, Ashok himself was a sound ambassador not only of the Buddhist sangha but of whatever non-Vedic philosophical discipline thriving in his immense empire - and the Barabar Hill Caves are proof of his unconditional drive to help establish a new dharma throughout to then-known world.
It goes without saying that our visit brought back memories, not only of the days of my 1,500 km long paidal yatra (walk) in 1992, but also of the rather enigmatic Forster story. Whatever really happened to Miss Quested up there we will probably never know, but the psychology of an unprepared visitor to an entrancing place, hidden away in a foreign culture apparently keeping a completely different set of human, moral and ethical values - has remained an interesting feature of global travelling ever since. As a matter of fact, wherever one goes it isn't so hard to recognize modern instances of what I call "the Miss Quested Syndrome": From my travels this very year I recall at least five intriguing Miss Questedy circumstances experienced by my co-travellers in Damascus, in Palmyra, in Beirut, in Kathmandu and in Lhasa.
Which reminds one that our route to true cross-culturalism remains steep and arduous, even in today's so-called globalised world ...
2004/11/07 Two more days were spent visiting more Jeevan Deep/Anand (http://www.flaleman.atnaharnet.com/photo2.html) centres at Dubragaon, Barki Parariya, Bapunagar, Mahudar, Ilaha and Chotki Parariya. Gradually, Jerry and I shifted our attention to the medical care project, which was initiated by the initiative of the members of my December 2003 Grand Buddhist Tour. It was at Bapunagar most of all that we witnessed how skilled Janardan has become as a freelance doctor. With ease, charisma and elegance he manages to diagnose the situation of mothers and babies - prescribing treatment were needed. Most of the children suffer from scabies and a series of other skin diseases, caused by a chronic vitamin deficiency and a prolonged unbalanced diet. Staple food in the Dalit villages of the Bodhgaya District is restricted to rice and what little vegetables the season provides - and even the famous Indian dal (lentils) remains out of reach, there not being sufficient land for the villagers to grow their own lentil plants. Iron, calcium and vitamin A deficiency further cause many cases of eye diseases, growth problems and premature menopause. Also at Bapunagar we were most impressed by the educational qualities of Mabelle Maria Khalko. Herself a tribal and a Christian (hence her familiar name), she is completely integrated in the Dalit community of her village, and her amazingly persistent influence has made her a real mother figure, not only to the Dalit children, but to the entire village population. And this is quite necessary: With her only daughter Rosalind in her own school class, she shows the other mothers the way to family planning. The Indian Government may have been running the Ham Do Hamare Do ("We are two, of us be two") campaign for years now - many of the families we visited still have over 10 offspring.
At Ilaha, we witnessed one of Jeevan Deep's centres in its embryonic phase. The school has been open for only two years now, and the overall atmosphere in the village is still such that parents need ample encouragment to send their children to the educational program. The school has no fixed location yet: classes are given either in the shade of a large banyan tree near the village pond or in an empty wing of a private mud-and-dung house. Moreover, this was the first and only village where elder women stealthily approached Jerry and me on a private begging mission.
To conclude our Jeevan Deep visit, on the evening of our fourth day we visited Dr Sanjay Mishra in his Bodhgaya mansion. Dr Mishra is a young brahmin doctor who has been working with the Root Institute at Taridih for many years, and who has volunteered to be Jeevan Deep's official president. He is an exceptionally warm-hearted young man, who has a deep and honest interest in improving the fate of Bodhgaya District untouchables, and talking with him was a real pleasure.
For our last day in Bihar, I had planned to travel from Bodhgaya to Kespa and visit an old friend there, whom I had not seen for more than twelve years. On two motorcycles, Kailash, Janardan, Jerry and I took off early morning for a 60 km ride through the rough and often barren Bihari landscape, where roads are almost non-existant and village crowds so disorganised as to provide the traveller with a real-live dip into unearthly chaos. Seen from the back seat of a motorcycle, Bihar is really more hellish than one can imagine. Dust and dirt are one's constant companions, while scenes of human misery and poverty pass by at speed.
In 1992 I have travelled the same roads walking, and I must say the approach of Kespa, that far-off and hidden Bhumari (brahmin landowners) village off Tekari, brought back flashes of unforgettable memories. My friend Arun Kumar recognised me at once, and not half an hour later we were all sitting on his verandah, eating a delicious meal cooked by Arun's mother and wife. The Kespa village is named after Kashyapa (aka Mahakashyapa), one of the foremost disciples of the historical Buddha - and although it is now the settlement of a few Hindu landowner families, the site has a long and important Buddhist history and heritage. The alleys and fields are literally littered with remarkable Buddhist statues, witnessing a glorious past as a vaste monastic settlement from the Gandharan (2nd century BC) to the Kushan (2nd century AD) periods. Most impressive are the Surya Temple (the Sun God - Kashyapa and his family were originally fire-worshippers, before they were converted to Buddhism), the live-size standing Buddha near Arun's house, the Tara Temple (The Mother Goddess Tara pretty soon was considered by the Buddhists a Bodhisattva of Compassion) and the giant Avalokiteshvar (The Bodhisattva of All-Embracing Compassion) image standing a bit forlornly in its compound. Guided by Kashyapa, the villagers of Kespa became ardent Buddhists, and they must have remained so for at least eight centuries. At the decline of Buddhism in India, they came back to the Hindu fold - but since they had been straying from the path of the gods, the brahmin community was hesitant to take them back into their caste. At the risk of being socially undesirable for eternities to come, they then regrouped and set up their own Brahmin subcaste of Bhumihari (Landowners).
A visit to the landowner community of Kespa is an interesting thing to do when one has been touring the landless untouchable communities for a few days, for here one is confronted with exactly the opposite side of Bihar's social spectre. But of the fact that not all landowners have a feudal outlook on their subjects, my friend Arun Kumar is living proof. My arriving at his abode with two Dalit friends posed no difficulties whatsoever, and he didn't even hesitate to share food and his meal with us. Arun is a deeply religious man, but with an amazingly modern outlook - and I have always valued his friendship, whereas he leaves nothing undone to give expression to his appreciation for my involvement with the emancipation of the Dalits.
2004/11/02 Today was the first day of our series of field visits to the Jeevan Deep/Anand projects in Bodhgaya district (see also the Anand Project Page on this website). From early in the morning we bicycled over New Taridih to the main road linking Gaya with the GT Road from Calcutta to Banaras, and from there through the paddy fields to the Dalit (outcaste) communities of Lower Arjunbigha and Upper Arjunbigha. With us were Kailash, the Jeevan Deep head of educational programs, Janardan, who runs the medical subprogram, and Kuleshvar, the teacher-supervisor and instructor. We had specifically asked not to be entertained with a laborious welcome tamasha: we merely wanted to witness the daily routine of the program's work - and this is exactly what we got.
The Dalit communities in Bodhgaya District are landless workers. They cannot claim any rights, but the right to be paid a mere handful of rice for a day's labour on the fields of the Yadav landowners. This means they have never known any kind of economic independence: they are completely devoid of currency, and cannot participate in the market economy thriving along India's highways. Without money, there simply is nothing they can buy. Together with Kailash and his co-workers, Jerry and I believe that education is the key to unlocking this stalemate situation: If the Dalit want to free themselves in the future, they will have to get the means first.
At Upper Arjunbigha, Jeevan Deep is running two school centres, giving daily courses under the roof of the brickbat community hall to a fifty-some children aged 4 to 15. The educational system is along the lines of Anaupacarit Shikshan, viz. non-formal education with ample room for experience-oriented play. The philosophy of this system was outlined by Vinoba during the days of the great Mahatma Gandhi vs Ambedkar controversy, and during the following decades a mild touch of Ambedkarism was added to get a flavour of simple and straightforward humanist drive to development, mixed with the long-term vision of emancipation of India's Dalits and so-called Backward Caste Comunities.
As always, we were simply baffled by the quality, originality and inventiveness of the teachers at work. It is absolutely amazing to witness how these poor and backward villages, with the help of Kailash and his team, have developed into communities where there is again some room for looking ahead, for smiles, for play, for some basic human dignity.
After the class, we participated in a weekly meeting with the village women, mostly young mothers, presided over by Janardan, and aimed at developing a basic feeling for healthcare, childcare, and family planning. A brief discussion on the life-saving opportunities offered by doctors and hospitals, and the availability of Anand funds to pay for any eventual need to go to the same, was followed by Janardan's weekly inspection of sick mothers and children, and the distribution of basic medicine and vitamins. As we watched, I noticed how thrilled the women were with every single one of Janardan's words, and how deeply thankful they looked at him when he treated their ailing babies.
There is but one possible conclusion: Jeevan Deep is doing an amazing bit of work here, and I would like to take this opportunity to express my most sincere thanks, in the name of thousands of Dalit villagers, to all the Belgian donators who are making this possible month by month.
Having toured the dusty roads, I always treasure the experience of arriving back near the Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodhgaya in late afternoon, when the sun turns yellowish and the multitude of monks, nuns and pilgrims circles the main temple in endless clockwise rounds, turning their prayer wheels, fumbling the beads of their rosaries, or simply chanting their Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Samma Sambuddhassa routine. Turning around with the crowd, I allow myself to be embraced by the atmosphere of peace and inward reflection - and I realize that only this drive of Buddhist revival has made it possible for the communities around Bodhgaya to develop and to take their fate in their own hands.
Tomorrow, we will be visiting three more village centers - so you may expect to read more on this topic quite soon.
2004/11/01 A long journey over London, Abu Dhabi, Musqat and Delhi has brought us to Bodhgaya this morning. The last stage of the journey, on the Mahabodhi Express from Delhi to Gaya, was spent mostly sleeping - but as soon as Jerry and I touched the Uruvela soil, we were welcomed by Kailash and Janardan and presented a full program of project visits for the coming days.
It is always a thrill to walk the Bodhgaya streets and meet with the many friends and acquaintances I have here: rikshawvallahs, tea stall owners, my favourite tailor near the plaza, Mr Shahabuddin around the corner. Bodhgaya is one of the few places on our globe where I really feel at home - and the fact that the sun is shining gently over the Mahabodhi Temple complex and easy-going nuns and monks roam around under the trees only adds to this homely touch.
As from tomorrow we will be engaged in visiting the Jeevan Deep projects, on which I will report on these pages very soon.
2004/10/20 It always feels great to get back to Kathmandu, or KMD, as both locals and backpacker enthusiasts love to call the city. Most in particular because the Nepali capital, to me, is a buzzing beehive of friends and long standing relationships, and as soon as I hit its territory my cellphone starts ringing and my agenda loads up with invitations and welcome parties. To a European like me, these outbursts of friendship have become a rarity, and one has to hop over to KMD every once in a while in order to set one's mind back to this basic human value. Take for instance Bharat Regmi and Bhim Khanal, both of whom run the now firmly established Explore Alpine Trekking company at downtown Thamel. I have been friends with them for I guess over 15 years now, and it's been a long chain of shared history and common experiences since we first met alongside a campfire at Sauraha near the Indian border - but still, every time we meet, they literally and instantly drop everything in order to make me comfortable, happy, tended to, and being cared for. For this, I take this occasion to send them my most deeply felt thanks.
On our last morning, Bhim took us to visit the orphanage of PAM (Prisoner Assistance Mission), just near to the Explore headquarters. Bhim has worked with this project prior to his joining Bharat's company, and up to this day he feels closely connected with its staff, its children, and most of all its philosophy, its mission, vision and values. At the PAM house, children are gathered from the 74 Nepali prisons, where their parents have been sent on either political charges or after being sentenced for minor misdemeanours or more serious crimes. Indira Rana Magar, whom the children call amma or 'mother', and a small number of staff then care for the little ones, provide them with the basic necessities of life, shelter, education, and most of all... with love and tenderness and an outlook to the future. If you want to learn more about this fascinating project, you could hit the following link, which is one of the many devoted to Nepal's imprisoned children issue: http://www.volunteer.org.nz/nepal/.
At lunchtime, Bharat invited us to his house, where his wife had prepared us the most fabulous dalbhat (Nepal's classic kitchen experience), and welcomed us with the most exceptional smile and warmth. Bharat's wife happens to be the younger sister of Tikabaldap's wife (see the Ranjana Project page: http://www.flaleman.atnaharnet.com/photo3.html), and she was absolutely thrilled to tell us that thanks to the fund raising efforts of a small but meaningful group of Belgian donators, her sister has regained her full health and the financial threat which had hung over the family for such a long time has at last been dealt with. The Dungana family wants to take this opportunity to send a million thanks and deeply felt recognition to everyone who took part in the Ranjana Project.
Later the same day, I had the opportunity to meet Rachel Kellett and Karl Heinz (better known as Anagarika Sugata) at the Patan Museum, at the occasion of the opening of an exhibition of Sugata's superb black-and-white photographs taken in the Kathmandu and Kaligandaki valleys during the late fifties. Moreover, Rachel and Sugata have co-authored a book on Sugata's extraordinary life story (Bird of Passage, edited by Madhab L. Maharjan of Mandala Book Point Publications, Kantipath, Kathmandu, http://www.mandalabooks.com.np/index.htm), and the gathering at Patan's Durbar Square thus not merely served as the opening of an exhibition, but also as a book launch party. Germany-born Sugata, now 94 years old but full of the energy of a youngster, escaped from the German army during the Hitler years and later became a Theravada monk at Swayambhunath, and his recollections and anecdotes read both as a fascinating escape thriller and a enthralling document of a quest for inner peace and freedom. The launch date book sales, as well as the complete sales of the photo exhibition, are meant to fund the restoration project of Sugata's favourite Kaligandaki monastery at Chhairo (see The Chhairo Gompa Restoration Project, http://www.crtp.net), and since this gompa is now well on its way to be re-established as a meaningful Buddhist centre, I am sure that for this reason Bird of Passage, apart from it's value as a story, a well-written book, and an important piece of human testimony, receives an extra bit of attention and interest (see also http://www.sugata.info, or order through rachelkellet@rediffmail.com or books@mos.com.np).
Today, I am back in Belgium for a short but very intensive series of seminars and training sessions with Minds in Motion. Together with Jerry Meuris, I will be visiting the Jeevan Deep/Anand Projects during the first week of November, and as soon as I am back from India, I will be fully engaged in an upcoming project in Oman, which will keep me in Musqat for the best part of the winter months ahead.
2004/10/09 After a few days at Dingri, just enough to acclimatise our body to the sudden altitude of over 4,000 meters, we have continued our way to Sagya, Xigaze, and Gyantse - and hence, along the borders of the Turquoise Lake (Yamdrok Tso), to Lhasa. A the Tibetan capital we witnessed the celebrations of the 55th birthday of the Chinese revolution: a weird spectacle, viewed in the context of this most hybrid of cities, with its picturesque old Tibetan town (Barkhor), its alluring Muslim Quarter, and its all-too-straightforward new Chinese avenues and shopping centres.
A 5 day trek then brought us over the passes from Ganden Monastery to the valley of Yemalung and Samye, cosily nestled at the banks of the Brahmaputra River - where we were happy to take rest from hailstorms, early snow drifts and heavy rains. After a further day spent at Zhedang, we finally left Tibet and flew back into Kathmandu.
2004/09/22 Over London and Doha we flew into Kathmandu this morning, where we immediately noticed the nearly complete absence of the usual hassle of tourists. I think it is only fair to say that the almost continuous negative media coverage of the current Nepal situation is bringing disaster on its citizens. Shopkeepers, operators, trekking guides, sherpa, restaurant owners and with these almost everyone else in the country is slowly being strangled by the inevitable downfall of the local tourism economy - and the number of street beggars and touts is rising to a staggering degree.
However, most of my Kathmandu friends are still confident about the future, while admitting that the number of small businesses facing bankrupcy has never been as high as today. In the meantime, the dispopulated streets are being maintained, repaired and resurfaced, the military are literally everywhere (with walkers-by hardly admitting to notice them) - and everyone is very much looking forward to a new round of peace negotiations between government and Maobadi, which are said to carry a 50-50 chance of guaranteeing some kind of stable situation in the near future.
In two days from now, we will be heading for the Tibati border town of Zhangmu, and henceforward to Dingri, just north of the Shishapangma and Everest massifs.
2004/08/29 I will be passing through Kathmandu three weeks from now, on my way to Lhasa - and this inevitably brings the Nepal situation back into focus. It goes without saying that when I met with the group last Saturday, a series of questions was put forward with regard to the recent blockade of the Nepali capital and the alleged lack of security and safety for travellers when on the road in the country.
Whichever way we look at the Nepali situation, I think the first duty of anyone with a sympathetic mind towards the Nepali people should come to grips with reality - and, in the first place, this means that the kind of reality which many of us foreigners, along with the Nepali themselves, have taken for granted over the last few decades, is not necessarily portraying the underlying realities of Nepali society. Along with Edward Said, in his widely acclaimed masterpiece Orientalism, I would argue that the way we have been looking at the East in general is predominantly based on our post-colonial misconceptions and our unrelenting wish to copy/paste our Western concepts and values into foreign soil, and that, most unfortunately, those holding power in the East have merely been following this trend.
As to Nepal, I think that today's situation is showing us that the dynamics driving a group of peoples towards its destiny is answering its own set of rules, and that processes of change are bound to surface whenever this set of rules is being neglected (or simply being denied) by the superstructure of the power base.
From Kantipur Online, I take some excerpts of an article by Suman Pradhan, which summarize this line of thought: (...) If you go by the school text books, at least the ones of the 1970s and 80s, Nepal was a beautiful, peaceful and large country where everyone lived in harmony. It was a fairy tale kingdom where differences based on politics, religion, region, language and culture did not exist. Hinduism enmeshed beautifully with Buddhism (other religions didn't count), and the entire country was seen as a happy nation state in which "one language, one dress" was supposedly embraced by all and sundry. (...) How the times have changed. Today, only a miniscule minority still cling to that vision of Nepal. Say what you will, but eight years of Maoist conflict has exposed the fault lines in Nepali society to such an extent that the idea we ever were a nation state as propounded in the text books and official mass media sounds shaky at best. Ours was never a homogenous society to begin with, nor was it a melting pot of different cultures and ethnicity. We tried to forge unity in diversity without sincerely acknowledging the diversity. Result: Simmering of individual and communal identities beneath the facade of Nepali-ness. (...) Some modern historians have noted that the singular characterization of Nepal in our text books and mass media was actively promoted by the ruling elite to, yes, continue their grip on power. The loosening of that grip, thanks largely to the 1990 People's Movement and the subsequent Maoist rebellion, is what is causing today's turmoil. The monarchy, the Maoists and the political parties who are engaged in a three-way struggle today are all trying to either retain their traditional influence or are rushing to fill the power vacuum. I like to think that such stages occur in each nation's life. As countries develop and education is accessible to large sections of the population, age-old conceptions are gradually challenged. Crucial moments in a nation's history occur when these challenges arise. Looking through this prism, it can be said that the present times is one such moment in our nation's life. Whichever way the Maoist conflict eventually ends, it is a given that Nepal is not going to remain the same. The country will have to adapt to new realities, whether the powers that be like it or not.
2004/08/26 I have updated the http://www.flaleman.atnaharnet.com/photo.html Tour Images Page (hence called Travels 2003-2004) with new snapshots, showing a selection of pictures from my travels over the last 12 months - featuring Syria (with the Hauran, the Golan Heights, Damascus, the Syrian Desert and Abu Kamal on the Iraqi border), Nepal (Chitwan National Park), India (with scenes from Kerala and from Bihar) and Romania.
2004/08/12 Prague was hot and mesmerizingly inviting, but of course it wouldn't last. I am now back in Belgium, preparing for a promising autumn season of training and coaching projects both at home and abroad.
Meanwhile, the upcoming Tibet project is going ahead: Participants are invited to attend an introductory meeting at the Anders Reizen offices in Diest on August 28th. I am anxiously looking forward to meeting all of you.
2004/08/07 Having toured through Transylvania and Moldavia, all the way up from Bucharest to the Ukrainian border, I have taken just two days off in Belgium, only to leave for Vienna almost straight away. From the Austrian capital, a next tour brought us lots of sunshine and brilliant hiking weather in South Moravia and South Bohemia. Having spent rather brief interludes in Znojmo, Telc, Trebon and Cesky Krumlov, we have finally reached Prague - where the hot summer evenings are luring thousands of tourists to the charming pavements of Starimestske Namesti, and Karluv Most (Ponte Carlo) is more crowded than it has ever been.
2004/07/12 The spring season of training and consultancy having passed quickly and with a heavy workload in both communication skills trainings and business language workshops, my summer months are traditionally devoted to travel projects. This time, my summer season will be spent mainly in Eastern Europe and the Balkans: Romania, Austria and the Czech Republic. The first upcoming project is a cultural tour with Anders Reizen, through Wallachia and Transylvania, where we hope to get some revealing insights into that particular blend of Ottoman and Central- and Western-European historical, ethnical and cultural influences, which has created the typical Balkan atmosphere of the our days.In the meantime, Michaela has returned from Damascus: She is joining me on the Romanian tour and will be enjoying a well-deserved rest afterwards, before making a definitive choice as to which challenge she wants to look in the face hence.
2004/04/22 Whereas my agenda is fully scheduled these days, without any room for partying whatsoever - with Holi coming up next week and the first day of the 2004 India Elections just behind us, India seems to be engaged in an unprecedented festival-craze. Anyone who has ever had the opportunity to witness a political rally in India will certainly agree with the fact that all too often politics in India are being experienced as one big tamasha (festival) before anything else - which is why, according to a cartoon published this week in an Indian magazine, politicians are gathered in "a party", just like whenever an occasion arrises ordinary beings tend to attend "a party" to celebrate.
But it isn't always merely fun, of course, where politics are concerned. Here are some of India's latest election stories:
* Islamic militants opposed to India's control over portions of Kashmir were blamed for fatally shooting a paramilitary soldier guarding a polling station and a separate bomb attack in the region that wounded six civilians, including two poll workers. The militants say the elections legitimize what they see as India's occupation of the Himalayan region, and they have threatened attacks on anyone participating in the polls.
* A car filled with Indian journalists and human rights activists on their way to monitor polling stations exploded when it ran over a land mine in Kashmir. The driver and a human rights activist - Asiya Geelani of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons - were killed and four others were wounded.
* Maoist rebels have ordered an election boycott in the isolated northeastern states of Jharkhand and Bihar. Two suspected Maoist rebels, a national guard reservist, two police officers, a voter, polling agent and a magistrate were killed and four officers and a voter wounded in election-related violence in the two states.
* In Manipur, another restive northeastern state where the outlawed United National Liberation Front threatened voters with "dire consequences" if they went to the polls, rebels took electronic voting machines from polling centers Tuesday. Militants also kidnapped 30 polling officials, according to P. Doungel, a deputy with the Manipur police.
* Four soldiers on poll duty were killed and three others injured when the People's Liberation Army attacked them near the Myanmar border overnight, deputy police chief Joykumar Singh said.
* Just as worrisome as violence in some places was the weather on the first election day, with temperatures running as high as 43 degrees Celcius.
* In Gauhati, capital of northeastern Assam state, flooding in the last 10 days meant officials had to reach polling stations by boat, bullock cart and elephant.
* For the first time, electronic voting machines were being used in India. Election officials transported about 1 million computerized voting machines to 188,975 polling places, some in deserts, remote hilltops or Himalayan valleys.
* Some 1,500 leprosy patients were carried by volunteers into polling booths in Anandvan, 430 miles north of Mumbai, India's financial capital on the western coast. "Many of them have no fingers or toes," said Vikas Amte, whose father founded a home for leprosy patients in 1949. Nevertheless, he said: "They are very cheerful today because they feel they are a part of society because of their voting right."
If this feels like more, and you want to keep yourself well informed of the latest developments, I suggest the official India Elections website: http://www.india-elections.com.
2004/04/15 A very long overland route has taken me all the way from Damascus to Istanbul. A first night spent on a bus brought me to the Syrian-Turkish border crossing at Bab al-Hawa (most appropriately called "The Gate of the Winds"), and then further to Antioch in the Hatay. Upon a short visit to the Habibi Niccar Caves and a series of extremely appealing mosques, I then took another bus to inland Turkey: Via Iskenderun, curving along the Alexandretta Bay to Tarsus, crossing the Taurus Mountain Range through the forbidding Cilician Gates mountain passes, and from there onwards cruising through the vast and empty Central Anatolian steppes, along the great salt lakes, to Ankara. From the Turkish capital, a second riding night finally took me to Istanbul - from where a much belated flight took me back to Belgium.
2004/04/11 The Iraqi border town of Abu Kamal has left us with an unforgettable impression, for its friendliness and it cosy and picturesque atmosphere. From there, we have travelled along the Euphrates River, over Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, and further over Lake Assad towards Aleppo. Today, we have briefly visited Hama on the Orontes River, and we have finally reached Damascus, where I am about to spend a few more days before travelling back to the Hatay, Anatolia and Ankara.
2004/04/02 Near the Syrian coastline, just north of the Lebanon Mountains, we have been exploring a series of impressive archaeological sites going back to 3000 BC, when the Phoenicians ruled over most of the coastal areas of the Eastern Mediterrenean. The tiny island of Arwad, which is reached by a ferryboat launched from Tartus, has some splendid remains of the old Phoenician defensive walls - but most in particular at Amrit, a site way off the more accessible touristically developed regions, we have marvelled at an unusually well preserved Phoenician burial site, including two massive meghazils (burial towers) and a most amazing temple compound, lying somewhat uncherished in the middle of a large stretch of citrus and tomato fields.
From here onwards, we are heading for the desert: over Dumeir, Tadmor, Qasr al-Heir al-Sharki, Deir ez-Zor, Dura Europos, and Mari - all the way to Abu Kamal, the gateway to Iraq and Baghdad.
2004/03/29 I am back in Damascus now, and the city is as peaceful, inspiring and alluring as ever. With Michaela, I am enjoying fresh fruit juices and narguilas on the roof terrace of her house at Afif - and together we have spent a glorious afternoon climbing Mount Qassioun and visiting some of the families living on its slopes.
Tomorrow we are heading for Tartus on the Mediterranean - and from there we will be travelling onwards to Mari and the Iraqi border.
2004/03/27 To travel overland from Ankara to Damascus seems pretty straightforward - until one realises that the Kurd region is not exactly the most peaceful area these days. As a matter of fact just a week ago there have been serious clashes between Kurds and Arabs in and around Qamishli and Hasakah, and reportedly, a wave of Kurd unrest has spread westwards, to reach even the Dead City District just north of Aleppo.
For this reason. I have adjusted my original plan - and I have decided to take the utmost western route instead of the eastern one. By doing so, instead of crossing Anatolia and Cappadocia towards Kurdistan, I am heading straight to the south, from Ankara through Turkey's Lake District to Tarsus, and from there I am bending to the southeast, over Alexandretta (Iskenderun) and Antioch (Antakya) to the Hatay and Syria.
The Hatay, being an Arab enclave in Turkey with a majority of Alawi Muslims, is a disputed border area in its own peculiar way: The region has been part of the Province of Syria since time immemorial, and as recently as 1939 it was given to Turkey by the French, who at that time were mandated to rule over Syria, with the aim of luring the Turks into supporting the goods ones in the event of an outbreak of world war.
By 1941 however, Syria was nominally independent - and since the Hatay present to the Turks had not been theirs in the first place, the Syrians have never been able to "accept" the rather dismal situation of having a piece of Turkey in their own motherland. This means that until today, whenever on Syrian Television a map of the country is shown, one will quickly discover that the Hatay is still considered to be part of good old Syria - no matter what the rest of the world might say or think.
The latest real trouble in the area has been in 1984, when Syria has taken down a Turkish airliner, wich had been taken to be on a spy mission, but appeared to have been unarmed from the start. For the last twenty years a cool but not very friendly status quo is being maintained - and even if the Hatay question has never been settled properly - today, I think, with the Kurds feeling probed by their recent US-supported successes against the Ba'ath regime in Iraq, it is the safer way to travel from Turkey to Syria.
And as an extra bonus, one gets the rare chance to travel in the footsteps of St Paul, from Tarsus (where he was born), over Antioch (one of the very first Christian communities in the history of the church), to Cham (or Dimashq, or Damascus). where Paul was blinded, was healed, and became an apostle and an architect of a new faith.
2004/03/17 Those of you who have joined me on one of my many tours through Bihar (India) will no doubt agree that the social work for the emancipation of the Dalit and Scheduled Castes communities (the so-called "untouchables"), done by my friend Kailash Prasad and his close companions (see page http://www.flaleman.atnaharnet.com/photo2.html), is a valuable and result-driven enterprise, but also an extremely difficult one. Few of us, however, realise the pertifying strain and the constant dangers to which a social worker in Bihar exposes him/herself on a daily basis.
The State of Bihar is really nothing more than a region in which anarchy, gun-point warlord tactics and mafia practices have been thriving for almost a century now - and even today it might be one of the most horrifying examples of India not being the largest democracy in the world, but rather the most ardent demo-crazy. Illustrating this: here is a report taken from the website of the Asian Human Rights Commission with regard to the murder of two social workers in the Bodhgaya area of Bihar in India:
Two land rights activists, Sarita and Mahesh Kant, were brutally killed on 24 January 2004 in Gaya, Bihar State. While the circumstances of this murder remain unclear, the basic facts seem to be the following:
Sarita and Mahesh had been working for several years in Shabdo village, where they were helping the local community to achieve a sustainable and equitable use of land resources. Sarita and Mahesh mobilized the community of Fatehpur (30 kms from Bodhgaya) to revive an old 45-km canal system on the Bihar-Jharkhand border, which changed the face of Shabdo village, bringing Rajputs (landlords) and Dalits ("untouchables")together in the community. They have also helped cure many of their alcohol addiction and helped increase collective farming in the area. However, the local land mafia felt threatened, partly because the work of Sarita and Mahesh involved reclaiming common land that had been encroached upon by powerful gangs. The local mafia, who are patronized by the ruling party of Bihar (the Hindu fundamentalist BJP -Bharatiy Janata Party), threatened them to give up their work which they refused to do.
On 24 January 2004, as they did every evening, Sarita and Mahesh were travelling on a bike from Shabdo to the Fatehpur Block Resource Centre when at around 7 p.m., they were stopped by heavily armed men and shot at point blank range. The assailants were most likely members of a local gang that was threatened by the work of the two activists. Sarita died immediately, and Mahesh subsequently has died from his gun-shot wounds.
After the incident, several protests have been organized by the people. Mr. Apoorvanand, a fellow activist and protest organizer, remembered Sarita and Mahesh as "working among the backward castes and Dalits trying to redeem the pledge we as the people of India had made to ourselves 54 years back, but which was left to rot in the backyards of power by the parties who have been our rulers all these years. Safe water, wholesome food, irrigated land, a smoothly run primary school, a clean and healthy community life - this is the least we expect from a welfare state.
/// older log entries were archived November 1st 2004 ///
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