Traveller's tales

Derbyshire weekends

2011-03-19T02:42:00.000-07:00

Kuala Lumpur

2009-02-01T03:55:00.001-08:00

Beryl's chocolates

2009-01-26T04:10:00.001-08:00

Village life

2009-01-26T04:05:00.000-08:00

On Klias River, Malaysian Borneo

2009-01-26T03:59:00.000-08:00

Orang-utans in Borneo

2009-01-26T03:53:00.001-08:00

A great break in Borneo

2009-01-26T02:28:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who made our winter holiday so memorable in Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur. (15.1.2009 - 26.1.2009) Hello to the folks from Perth, especially to Lukas and his lovely family, and Isabell and Iain from Inverness, and finally not forgetting our great guide, Nick. Thanks to all at the Tarjung-Aru Hotel.
Robert and Nazan Fielding

Air travel 1

2008-08-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

What have the Carpathian Mountains, chicken biriyani and gin and tonic got in common? Here’s a clue , the time is 4 in the afternoon or 10 at night, and I don’t normally drink alcohol at any time – the answer is; they all figure prominently in one particular day in my life – the day I fly from Manchester to Dubai – along with three hundred and odd people, who, like me have spent the last three hours watching that funny little plane crossing Europe at a snail’s pace (500 mph +) and being given continual updates on our ground speed, altitude, outside air temperature and estimated time of arrival in Dubai.

As I intimated earlier, I wouldn’t normally consider a G & T at any time, but hurtling across the Alps, 30,000 feet below, time – earthly time, seems somehow – well, timeless – irrelevant. It’s the time right now sitting on this plane that matters – the time ticking down on all the TVs – one for each of us (don’t get me started on lowering our carbon footprints just now, please).

We had already watched people bolting down overpriced burgers and fries at 11 am in the departure lounge in rainy Manchester, wondered at the constitutions of men gulping down pints of lager prior to boarding, and half-anticipated bouts of air-rage an hour later.

Reading about how to diminish my own carbon footprint – 9.99 from Waterstone’s in the departure lounge, does little to increase my desire not to fly – my main concern is pacing myself so that I don’t land in Dubai with either stomach cramp or gin on my breath at passport control.

After all, I wouldn’t want to insult my hosts, the Customs officials courteously and patiently waiting for me to produce my passport. Prolonging my journey is not an option I want to even consider. All I want to do is fight my way through the throngs of relatives impatient to meet their loved ones from the sub-continent, spot my main man and leave the building.

A full hour stuck in the car park with the engine running – with everybody’s engine running hasn’t exactly made us environmentally conscious travelers, but all anybody wants to do after modern, high speed travel is to get home and sleep – Earth’s problems will have to be put on hold until tomorrow, I fear.

The trouble with that is that every busy airport from Dubai to Dublin is a’ city that never sleeps’, each and every minute of every day (notice I avoid the cliché 24/7) tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably, are doing just that – letting the environment go hang until they get some shut-eye.

The sun, it used to be said, never set on the British Empire – now it never sets on us churning out more and more pollution - our final destination seems to be getting close.
Robert L. Fielding

Air travel

2008-08-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

Sitting comfortably in a most unnatural, yet latterly very natural environment, the crowded cabin of a 777 at 35,000 feet above sea level, which, at this precise moment happens to be the Black Sea, I marvel at how easily we frequent fliers take to jet propulsion hurtling us at 584 mph through an virtually oxygen free atmosphere at an icy -50C, halfway between our comfort zone and the stratosphere.

People are watching an in-flight movie, chatting while waiting to use the facilities, sleeping or speaking a Babal of foreign tongues (English and Arabic mainly, and several I couldn’t even guess at). A lot of people are using Dubai airport as a sort of high-tech stepping stone on their way further east and beyond.

The tireless crew are answering questions, putting things in overhead lockers, or chatting to each other in the rare moments when they have nothing pressing them, when everyone is still and contented. Life goes on amid the furious roar of the gigantic engines right and left (or is that port and starboard) of us, burning high octane fuel at the alarming rate of a ‘wing-full’ every three hours, while drawing 5 tonnes of air through each silver portal every minute, to keep us airborne.

The air pressure on the wings and tail, enough to tear down two multi-storey car parks, is happily contained by cast titanium airframe members and passengers and pets are borne aloft, if not in absolute comfort, then relatively so, where for 7 hours or so, the need to drive 7 days on the roads between two climatically different destinations is thankfully removed.

Travelling by air is exhausting and tiresome, but it is much, much safer than starting down the M6 and finishing on Sheikh Zayed Highway.
Robert L. Fielding

New Lanark and the Lanark Medieval Festival

2008-08-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

Where on God's Earth could you find a Viking fighting man, a Roman Centurion, one of King George's foot soldiers, broadswords, and Scots carrying the saltire in one hand and a claymore in the other - all together facing up to each other in one field? Answer - the Lanark Medieval Festival on Sunday, 17th August, 2008. Quite what my friends Tarek, Shu, Dimitry and Ahmed made of it all, I am not sure, but I do know they all enjoyed the spectacle of it all, as we did.

Ealier in the day, we had been round nearby New Lanark, Robert Owen's social experiment cum commercial venture on the banks of the infant but furious Clyde as it rushes down wooded ravines on its way to a more tranquil Clydebank, under the bridges of Glasgow on its way to become the Firth of Clyde flowing out to the Irish Sea and beyond.

We had seen the mills and tied cottages that housed some 1,500 workers, Owen's own house where he penned his wise soliloquies and kept a punctual, orderly working population with everything they could possibly need to start work in the mills at 6 every morning. These included free education, healthcare, subsidised food and cheap housing along the edges of this crowded, teeming part of the valley of the River Clyde.

Robert L. Fielding

Robert Owen
A village boy who hobnobbed with royalty,

A shop assistant who became a factory manager,

An educator with little education,

A rich man who fought for the poor,

A capitalist who became the first "socialist",
An individualist who inspired the Co-operative movement.

Read

Robert L. Fielding and Robert Owen

http://heldtoaccount.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html#2389646365337721214

Weekend on the island of Bute: seals and sun

2008-08-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Hillcroft - Treaslane - a home from home

2008-08-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

A graceful, retired lady: The Royal Yacht Britannia at Leith

2008-08-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

I do recommend you take a trip to visit the Royal Yacht Britannia, now moored permanently at the Ocean Terminal, Leith, on the Firth of Forth. Walking through the magnificent state rooms, you quickly get a sense of the history of our nation.

At the gigantic, elegant dining table have sat such people as Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton, as well as each British Prime Minister since 1953.

More than this, it is a visible part of our Queen's life since she was crowned. It is part of the living history of the British monarchy at work and play, and as such it is well worth seeing.

Robert L. Fielding

Suzani embroideries from Uzbekistan

2008-08-03T00:32:00.000-07:00

The Khanate of Bukhara: a model of a multicultural community

2008-08-03T00:24:00.000-07:00

Pollok House and the Burrell Collection: a great day out

2008-08-03T00:15:00.000-07:00

A day trip for Students and Teachers of ELTD from Strathclyde University.

We all had a lovely day out at Pollok House and the Burrell Collection on Saturday, 2nd August, 2008. Let's do it again somdetime.

Thanks to all who came along - we enjoyed your company.

Ardnamurchan - the most Westerly point on the British mainland

2008-07-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

Peace and her huge invasion to these shores
Puts daily home; innumerable sails
Dawn on the far horizon and draw near;
Innumerable loves, uncounted hopes
To our wild coasts, not darkling now, approach:
Not now obscure, since thou and thine are here.

Extract from the poem “To my Father” by Robert Louis Stephenson

Mull of Kintyre - Oh mist rolling in from the sea

2008-07-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Mull of Kintyre

Oh mist rolling in from the sea,

My desire is always to be here

Oh Mull of Kintyre

Far have I traveled and much have I seen

Dark distant mountains with valleys of green.

Past painted deserts the sunsets on fire

As he carries me home to the Mull of Kintyre.

Mull of Kintyre

Oh mist rolling in from the sea,

My desire is always to be here

Oh Mull of Kintyre

Sweep through the heather like deer in the glen

Carry me back to the days I knew then.

Nights when we sang like a heavenly choir

Of the life and the time of the Mull of Kintyre.

Mull of Kintyre

Oh mist rolling in from the sea,

My desire is always to be here

Oh Mull of Kintyre

Smiles in the sunshine

And tears in the rain

Still take me back to where my memories remain

Flickering embers growing higher and higher

As they carry me back to the Mull of Kintyre

Mull of Kintyre

Oh mist rolling in from the sea,

My desire is always to be here

Oh Mull of Kintyre

Mull of Kintyre

Oh mist rolling in from the sea,

My desire is always to be here

Oh Mull of Kintyre

The sights of Skye

2008-07-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

Tales by the peat fire

2008-07-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

"The enchanting tongues went on and on beside the fish-oil lamps. Then the grey of morning entered the crofts and called the islanders back once more to their hard work of ploughing and fishing".
George Mackay Brown

The standing stones of Orkney

2008-07-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

Stromness - home of some of our friends

2008-07-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

We had a lovely time at 45, John Street, Stromness, Orkney, thanks to Mrs. Sinclair and her family. Many thanks to all of you from both of us.

Robert L. Fielding

Tam O' Shanter meets Gabriel Oak - crofting in Orkney - storytelling

2008-07-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Still standing tall - the Old Man of Hoy, Orkney

2008-07-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

A small RAF log book in a Tupperware container is buried in a cairn on the summit and serves as an ascensionists' record. of the 450 feet sea-stack of red standstone which stands just off the West coast of the island of Hoy (High Island in Norse).

None other than Chris Bonnington made the first ascent of the pillar in 1966, and an ascent was famously filmed by the BBC a year later.

It is climbed quite regularly, with approximately 20 ascents a year, most of which take the Original Route, pioneered by Bonnington, Rusty Baillie and Tom Patey. On 8 September 2006 the stack was climbed by Sir Ranulph Fiennes (aged 62) in preparation for his proposed climb of the Eiger in the following year. He was accompanied by Sandy Ogilvie and Stephen Venables. And while it is regularly scaled, doing so must seem a terrific feat to those fortunate enough to have their names recorded in the log book in that cairn at the top.

Sailing from Scrabster on the Scottish mainland, close to the Caithness town of Thurso, the MV Hamnavoe, passes close by the imposing rock and draws passengers away from their comfortable chairs inside, out onto the steel terrace at the rear of the boat, on its way to Stromness.

Robert L. Fielding

The beautiful Italian Chapel, Orkney - the power of faith and love and industry

2008-07-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

Probably one of the best indications of whether a nation is civilized is how prisoners of war are treated. The Geneva Convention informs nations of the humanitarian treatment of POWs, but how many countries adhere to those Conventions?

In May, 1940, about 1,300 Italian prisoners of war captured in Libya, were taken to the Orkney islands to ‘sit’ out the war. These prisoners helped to build the Churchill Barriers on the edges of Scapa Flow. Being God-fearing men, they required a place to show their devotion. They were given permission to build a chapel – a place of worship, so the POWs got to work and built one on the soon to be connected island of Lamb Holm.

The new commander of Camp 60, Major T P Buckland, favoured the idea of constructing a chapel, which was put forward by the camp padre, Father Giacombazzi. The chapel was built from two Nissen huts joined together lengthways. The corrugated interior was then covered with plasterboard and the altar and altar rail were constructed from concrete left over from work on the barriers.

Most of the interior decoration was done by Domenico Chiocchetti, a POW from Moena, who stayed behind on the island to finish the chapel even though his fellow prisoners had been released shortly before the end of the war.

What Chioccetti achieved was remarkable. He constructed and painted a pedimented Italianate facade, from scrap and other simple materials and painted a representation of the Madonna and Child above the altar, and he also created a grand statue of St George slaying the dragon outside.

Of course, coming from Italy, the men inevitably suffered from the cold so far North, and being a people given to singing, they missed the opportunity to be musical. Their captors provided facilities for the men to put on shows – to participate in entertainment, and to form an audience to enjoy the shows.

After hostilities, they were repatriated, but many never forgot the kindness showed to them by the people of Orkney. Chiocchetti returned to repair the damage wrought by time and the elements. His widow communicated with the islanders until her death.

Nearer to home, Glenn Mill, on the outskirts of Oldham, housed Italian POWs, many staying behind after the war, marrying local girls and integrating fully into a community they had previously been fighting.

Churchill famously once said, “In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity”. Those sentiments took us through the dark days of war, and helped us maintain our civilized stance towards those who had formerly been our enemies.

Robert L. Fielding

Life back then - Kirbuster Farm Museum

2008-07-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

Life before electricity, before piped, clean water, before mechanization and technology took over our lives, life then would have been much simpler – it would have most probably been much harder too, but life has its difficulties these days, doesn’t it?

What has changed isn’t the existence of difficulty in life but the order, magnitude and shape of it. Food was dug out of the ground, water was carried, heat was made rather than switched on, and family life was organized along functional as well as familial lines.

Comfort most probably didn’t occupy the central place it occupies in all our lives today. One thing that surely would have been very different was the way we fit into the lives of others and into the life of our surroundings; without constant electricity to make night into day; without the tyranny of the clock to dictate our comings and goings, the influences on life would have been much more elemental and more universal too.

Today, the day begins with an alarm ringing and ends with the last watchable thing on TV; before our dependence on the electronic media to entertain, on radio and newspapers to inform, the Internet to connect us to each other, the source of primary energy would have been the sun and the light it shed on our corner of the planet.

A reliance on domesticated animals to feed us would have meant that the working day started earlier and finished earlier. In the Orkneys, natural light still affects life, but in the days when it provided practically the only source of light, summer days would have started at 4.0am and finished at midnight.

Robert L. Fielding

Skara Brae, Orkney - older than the Pyramids

2008-07-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

Britain's 'Pearl Harbour' - Scapa Flow, 1939

2008-07-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

On 14th of October, 1939, the Revenge-class battleship ‘Royal Oak’ was sunk with a huge loss of life, by a German U-boat. Settled in Scapa Flow, the captain and crew must have thought they were safe: Scapa Flow is surrounded by a ring of islands in the Orkneys, and is large and deep enough to hold the entire Grand Fleet, and block-ships and floating booms had been sunk to block the three minor entrances to the harbour.

Korvettenkapitän Günther Prien, one of Germany’s most outstanding U-boat commander and the first to receive the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross. Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes, often simply Ritterkreuz, was Nazi Germany's order and recognized extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership during the Third Reich period. Prien earned it that fateful night.

He successfully negotiated the obstacles in his way and entered Scapa Flow on the surface. It has been said that the U-boat was caught in a passing car’s headlights but was missed, which is entirely understandable; the last thing you expect to see in your main beam is a German U-boat, particularly in that particular location, even during wartime.

The U-boat fired several torpedoes into the side of the battleship and sank it where it was docked, with the loss of 833 men, and then escaped the way it had entered, returning to Germany to give a tremendous confidence boosting propaganda coup to the Nazi regime so early in the war.

Of course, what happened in Pearl Harbour was much more devastating, but those 833 lives should not have been lost that night in Orkney, and surely would not have been, had what are now known as the Churchill Barriers, been erected before, rather than after the audacious attack.
Robert L. Fielding

Youthful wanderings

2008-05-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

Wanderings in my youth

by

Robert L. Fielding

When I was 24, my Dad was 48, and spent his weekends in the garden, while I walked the hills – fresh air blowing the cobwebs away, all that!

The lung bursting climb up Alphin Pike woke me up – no cobwebs up here – backs of legs aching – remnants of last night flushed out in the exertion.

Grouse sprang up from flecked chicks – called out ‘go-back’ to discourage us from coming any nearer - a few more feet to a blackened wall – a hundred years of cotton mill smoke merging with purple heather, the green shoots fed to mewing young – shot later on ‘the glorious 12th’.

Every step up revealed a new level of the hill – an area big enough to play cricket on, unseen ten feet below, and the view back down showed up the foreshortening of looking up.

Ant people at ant bus stops waiting for ant buses to take them into a grey town – gobbled up by old cotton mills - Rome and Cairo, changed now to wallpaper manufacturing or making printed circuit boards for guided missiles – everything’s changed - here almost nothing has.

It was always good to get out of all that – although it never felt like a rat-race – just summat I had to do from first thing to 5, every day until Friday night came.

Writing this, I remember the wanderings in my youth like they were yesterday - sometimes I wish they were!
Robert L. Fielding

Dearly bought tranquility - the Highland Clearances

2007-08-15T00:15:00.000-07:00

Sennacherib's Prism in Hillhead Library

2007-08-15T00:13:00.000-07:00

Ardnamurchan - the most Westerly point on the British mainland

2007-08-10T23:04:00.000-07:00

Loch Lomond evening cruise

2007-08-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

Comparing the red granite of Mull with the granite of Upper Egypt

2007-08-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

Iona

2007-08-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

A brief visit to the Isle of Mull

2007-08-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Trip out to Fingal's Cave, Staffa

2007-08-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

Die einsame Insel,'' or 'The Lonely Island'

Great teas served at Heart Buchanan, Byres Road, Glasgow

2007-08-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

Yerba mate*, Ilex paraguariensis, is a species of holly (family Aquifoliaceae) native to subtropical South America in Argentina, southern Paraguay, western Uruguay and southern Brazil. [1]
The yerba mate plant is a shrub or small tree growing up to 15 meters tall. The leaves are evergreen, 7–11 cm long and 3–5.5 cm wide, with a serrated margin. The flowers are small, greenish-white, with four petals. The fruit is a red berry 4–6 mm diameter. [2]
The infusion called mate is prepared by steeping dry leaves (and twigs) of yerba mate in hot water, rather than boiling water like black tea or coffee. It is slightly less potent stimulant than coffee and much gentler on the stomach. Drinking mate with friends from a shared hollow gourd (also called a mate in Spanish, or cabaça or cuia in Portuguese) with a metal straw (a bombilla in Spanish, bomba or canudo in Portuguese) is an extremely common social practice in Argentina, [3][4] Uruguay, Paraguay, southern Chile, eastern Bolivia and Brazil [5] and also Syria and Lebanon.
The flavor of brewed yerba mate is strongly vegetal, herbal, and grassy, reminiscent of some varieties of green tea. Many consider the flavor to be very agreeable, but it is generally bitter if steeped in boiling water, so is made using hot but not boiling water. Unlike most teas, it does not become bitter and astringent when steeped for extended periods, and the leaves may be infused several times. Additionally, one can purchase flavored mate in many varieties.
In Brazil, a toasted version of mate, known as chá mate or "mate tea", is sold in teabag and loose form, and served, sweetened, in specialized shops, either hot or iced with fruit juice or milk. An iced, sweetened version of toasted mate is sold as an uncarbonated soft drink, with or without fruit flavoring. The toasted variety of mate has less of a bitter flavor and more of a spicy fragrance. It is more popular in the coastal cities of Brazil, as opposed to the far southern states where it is consumed in the traditional way (green, drunk with a silver straw from a shared gourd).
Similarly, a form of mate is sold in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay in tea bags to be drunk in a similar way to tea. This is known in Spanish as mate cocido or cocido. In Argentina this is commonly drunk with breakfast or as part of merienda (roughly, afternoon tea), often with a selection of facturas (sweet pastries). It is also made by heating yerba in water and straining it as it cools.
-----------------------------------------------
Rooibos, (IPA: [ˈrɔɪbɔs], Afrikaans for "red bush"; scientific name Aspalathus linearis) is a member of the legume family of plants and is used to make a tisane (herbal tea). Commonly called South African red tea, the product has been popular in South Africa for generations and is now consumed in many countries.
Rooibos is only grown in a small area in the Cederberg region of the Western Cape province. Generally, the leaves are oxidized, or often inaccurately referred to as fermented, to produce the distinctive reddish-brown color, but unoxidized "green" rooibos is also produced.

wikipedia.com

The Glasgow of former days

2007-08-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow

2007-08-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

Charing Cross, Glasgow

2007-08-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

The Stewart Memorial Fountain, Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow

2007-08-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

The 'steamie'

2007-07-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

66A - Polmadie - home of the Firths

2007-07-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

Templeton Carpet factory, Glasgow Green

2007-07-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

The 'drying green', Glasgow

2007-07-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Great Scottish paintings

2007-07-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

Aberfoyle and the Duke's Pass

2007-07-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Falls of Dochart and the Breadalbane Folk Centre

2007-07-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

Rob Roy's grave at Balquhiddar

2007-07-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

Bellahouston Park

2007-07-29T01:38:00.000-07:00

Brig o' Turk (wild boars - 'tuiric')

2007-07-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

John Logie Baird and Helensburgh

2007-07-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Four - 'Gasgow style'

2007-07-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

Rennie Macintosh and the 'Glasgow style'

2007-07-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

Keeble Palace, Botanical Gardens, Glasgow

2007-07-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

Rennie Macintosh

2007-07-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

Bold bin raiders at the beautiful Botanical Gardens

2007-07-25T09:55:00.000-07:00

Princes Square, Glasgow

2007-07-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

George Leslie Hunter and the Scottish Colourists

2007-07-21T08:38:00.000-07:00

George Leslie Hunter (1979 – 1931) was a Scottish painter, one of the Scottish Colourists school. Born on the island of Bute, Hunter emigrated to California when only 13 years of age.

Unfortunately, most of his early work was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. He returned to Scotland soon afterwards, settling in Glasgow.

The so-called Scottish Colourists, of which Hunter was a prominent member, believed in colour above all else, and were influenced by the French Impressionists; some of Hunter’s work bears a striking similarity to those works.

Robert L. Fielding

The spirit of Glasgow – daring, fearless, generous

2007-07-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

This week saw the city of Glasgow at its best. Home to 2.3 million people, the city of Glasgow, is known to the world for its shipbuilding, its football and the friendliness of its people and its dialect – Glaswegian. And now it is known to the world for its daring – in metal and in flesh, as well as its fearlessness and its generosity.

HMS Daring, weighing in at 7,350 tonnes, with 14 decks and bristling with all the latest military technology, thundered down the slipway this week. Sophie, the Countess of Wessex launched her, with Defence Secretary, John Reid, looking on.

The ship is the first of the six Type 45 destroyers which will cost the RN a staggering 6 billion pounds. It was built in the shipyard in Scotstoun, and was covered in red, white and blue confetti – an icon of the spirit of Glasgow.

After a display of fearlessness in tackling one of the bombers at Glasgow Airport in the recent attack, baggage handler John Smeaton announced yesterday that he was sending donations given to him to charity. Outlining the spirit of his city, he said that anyone coming here to do their mischief could expect locals to ‘set about yer’! Any Glaswegian would have done the same.

The Erskine charity for veterans received more than two thousand pounds from John Smeaton. The charity’s chief executive, Col. Martin Gibson, said that John’s courage reflected the courage shown by members of our armed forces, as well as the veterans who defended our island home in two world wars.
Robert L. Fielding

Let Glasgow flourish - the Doulton Fountain, Glasgow Green

2007-07-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Glasgow Green, home to the annual Pipe Band Festival, a wonderful event, is overlooked by the Doultain Fountain, the largest terracotta fountain in the world. The former four dominions of the Empire: Canada, India, Australia and South Africa are depicted on each of its four sides.

An ostrich overlooks a staunch fellow on the side depicting South Africa - Queen Victoria looks over all majestically, as her soldiers stand guard.

Robert L. Fielding

Glasgow - city of sculpture

2007-07-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

Glasgow is full of interesting monuments and statues. Don't take my word for it, go to

http://www.glasgowsculpture.com/

or better still, visit this 2nd city of the Empire, as it used to be known in a more prosperous era. Civic and mercantile grandeur stands next to modernity, but is not phased by motorway flyovers and glass towers.

Robert L. Fielding

The timber ponds at Langbank, Firth of Clyde

2007-07-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

Looking like so many underwater fence posts surrounding watery fields, the timber ponds at Langbank in Renfrewshire, along the edge of the Firth of Clyde stand lonely in the setting sun.

Made redundant once ships began to be built from steel instead of wood, the posts of the timber ponds now fulfill a somewhat less demanding function as perches for herring gulls.

Robert L. Fielding

Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow

2007-07-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

There really is something for everybody at the Kelvingrove Museum. Ancient Egypt attracted my eye, but I was delayed, passing though the various halls with exhibits ranging from elephant to great auk, from cheetah to dinosaur, and from geology of the planet through to the colourful history of Glasgow.

Robert L. Fielding

Bridge over the River Clyde

2007-07-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

Glasgow River Festival

2007-07-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

Glasgow River Festival, July 2007

Ismail from Libya, Krit from Thailand, and a good friend from Taywan, and I spent an enjoyable couple of hours at the Glasgow River Festival this morning.

If you missed it today, don't miss it tomorrow - it is wonderful, with lots to see and do. It shows different sides of this busy city.

Robert L. Fielding

Islay and Jura

2007-07-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

A day full of numbers and times – Glasgow to Jura and back

The Scottish Tourist Information Office guide, Christina, said it couldn’t be done – thought it would be tough, and then said it was possible after looking through ferry and bus timetables for us.

Back when George Orwell was writing his classic, ‘1984’, he said Jura (Island of Deer) was ‘un-get-ata-able’ one of the least inhabited, remote islands of Scotland’s West coast. He got there in 1948 to write his famous novel. We went there and got lots of memories of the beautiful island, visiting her southerly neighbour, Islay on the way.

The numbers – Jura is only 30 miles by 7, home to 200 people, and between 5 and 6,000 red deer. It is said to be home to one pair of otters for every three miles of its long coastline, and has hundreds of lochs – one for every day of the fishing year.

The times – the first ferry from Kennacraig to Port Ellen on Islay sails at 7.0am, and takes two and a half hours, the drive from Glasgow to the ferry at Kennacraig near the Mull of Kintyre took us 2hours 50 minutes, and the same back.

Islay is one of the largest islands in the Hebrides, with a history to match any: it was from Islay that the Lords of the Isles ruled much of Argyle and the islands; Robert The Bruce’s grand daughter is buried here, and at Kildaton Cross, close to Port Ellen, stands the oldest, unbroken, Celtic cross in existence.

More relevant to today’s visitors, Islay boasts a number of attractions: the famous golf links at Machrie tempt the golfer and his widow, at Bowmore, the MacTaggart Centre provides facilities for sports enthusiasts and for everyone on wet days – there is a swimming pool, a sauna and a fitness gym. Islay boasts no less than 8 distilleries, which export their produce to all corners of the world.

However, it was Jura we were aiming for, and so a 45 minute drive brought us to Port Askaig and the small ferry to Jura. The large island is one of the last wilderness areas in Europe, and has just a single track road from the ferry to the largest collection of houses at Craighouse.

Orwell lived and worked at Barnhill in the wilder, north of the island. It is a tribute to the power of Orwell’s creativity and drive that here, in this most isolated of places, uninhabited but for himself, he wrote the definitive dystopian novel, ‘1984’ which famously deals with a society constantly under surveillance and control.

To get there by ferry, contact Caledonian MacBrayne at www. calmac.co.uk or by air from Glasgow to Islay, go to http://www.ba.com/ Can it be done in one day? Yes, but one day, of course, does not do the place justice - we took several and we'll definitely go back for more. Islay and Jura are well worth the effort.
Robert L. Fielding

Hurricane Gonu wreaks havoc in Oman

2007-06-16T07:04:00.000-07:00

Fossil fuels - who needs them?

2007-04-23T01:34:00.000-07:00

Amazing, wonderful, terrific, thrilling, exhilarating - all adjectives used to describe the experience of sailing in the clear blue waters off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

I can add one or two more - clean, non-polluting, environmentally friendly. How's that for good clean fun!!

Robert L. Fielding www.rlfielding.com

Glencoe - treachery and massacre

2007-03-03T02:28:00.000-08:00

Ospreys at the Boat of Garten and other birds of a feather

2007-03-02T22:52:00.000-08:00

Living with flaws

2007-02-20T00:41:00.000-08:00

Listening to a favourite piece of music that I recorded years ago, I hardly notice the jump in the middle. I had meant to turn the CD player off while someone said something, and instead hit the record button.

I now have a unique recording of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony that has a baby crying in the middle of it. I play the music regularly, and have actually come to enjoy the brief exclamation in mid-symphony. I even know when it arrives – I have built it in to my own memory of the piece.

Life is full of imperfections – and not just ones that are forgotten or even revered in someway. I live above a supermarket and can often hear the public address system minutes before I fall asleep.

Like the baby in the symphony though, I have learned to live with it – I do not allow it to disturb my peace of mind. I rail against hooting horns – another feature of the square in front of my window, but don’t mind the pa announcements from the shop.

Asking myself why, I come up with the answer that whereas one is necessary, the other isn’t. That doesn’t explain my accepting the child in my symphony though, does it?

That probably has something to do with my ability, and indeed my willingness, to put up with less than perfect conditions. It may also be connected to my laziness; an unwillingness to do anything that is not absolutely vital.

As a teacher, I have found that this ability is an important part of coping with things that might be more annoying at home. The electricity outages I frequently had to put up with in Sudan were a source of irritation and annoyance at first, but like the dripping of a tap, you quickly learn to ignore it – particularly if you are powerless to do anything about it.

The ability to ignore some kinds of problems – a certain amount of resignation to them, is most probably one of the most important of our abilities. Assimilating the hiccup into part of the enjoyment of the event – learning to love it, seems to be the poor man’s lot, I’m afraid.
Robert L. Fielding

Memories and lasting impressions - mixed feelings about Egypt

2007-02-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

Lasting impressions of Egypt

It is difficult to form any real impression of a people after spending ten days in a hotel. Some things are readily recognizable – the formal welcome of the check in, the helpfulness of the concierge, the politeness of staff in and around the lobby. All that can be found anywhere. It is when you step outside that you get closer to reactions that are more authentic and slightly more indicative of what the indigenous people are like, but even then, you don’t get that close – not really.

For here you are – an obvious tourist; your camera around your neck, florid shorts and tee-shirt, carrying a small backpack, wearing a baseball cap to keep the sun off – you are instantly recognizable – if you dress like that. I don’t, though I do carry a camera and a small bag with my things in it.

Walking along the corniche in Alexandria, from the less crowded end at Montazah, we head for a man selling something he has cooked on a charcoal stove – it is sweet potato and very delicious. Whether he slightly overcharged us because of who we are, who we appear to be, we cannot tell. The price seemed reasonable so we partook of what was on offer.

What if the sweet potato seller had charged us a little over the odds – more than he would have charged an Egyptian passer-by, would we be upset and feel cheated? I doubt it for something as negligible as a snack. It is only when you want something either more expensive or something you have the equivalent of where you come from that you feel you have been ‘done’.

If you sit down in a café and drink a cup of tea, you often don’t ask the price of it – it seems churlish, almost rude. A cup of tea costs about the same all over the world – it will certainly be more expensive in central London or Berne or Stockholm, but in Egypt, you reason, it will be cheap, and it is. Whether it is the same price to a local doesn’t really enter your head.

Now let’s try buying something more expensive – a leather jacket, for instance. Now you want two things, a reasonable price and good quality. You get both and you are happy. If one is wrong – the price is too high, or worse, the quality is poor, you are more dismayed – you leave the shop without buying anything – you tar all the jackets and their owner with the same brush. Outside the shop you shake your head and move down the street on the look out for another shop selling leather jackets – a better quality of shop.

It’s a nice surprise then when you find a place that sells good quality jackets at a price that you think is reasonable. It is even nicer to be sold it by a gentleman – a former sailor – a captain, who, having sailed the seven seas, broke ice in the Artic, crossed the equator countless times, stayed ashore in Lisbon and Valetta, and who now looks after the shop for his ailing father, Ibrahim – well known around these parts, who has his own leather factory behind the shop. You feel you have been treated fairly – you saw the photo album of the slightly younger, fitter looking man who now sits before you offering tea, you inspect the jacket, look at each other as if to say, “This looks OK, doesn’t it?” and you cough up.

Later in the hotel room, you try it on and it looks better than it did in the shop – it’s a nice fit, a good colour and you are pleased with yourself. All is as it should be. Buying something should be like that, not traumatic or stressful. When it is the other way – stressful and traumatic, you are right in not opening your wallet or purse to the prevailing winds.

Walking around Cairo, looking for the Egyptian Museum, thinking happily that at last you will get to see the golden mask of the boy Pharoah, Tut-ankh-amon, the last thing you want is to be told that the somewhat drab, pinkish building down the street is closed, that it doesn’t open for another half hour or more. The man who lets you into this says he is a teacher, that he can show you a nice little museum to pass your time until 12.30 when the bigger one opens its celebrated doors.

The other, smaller museum, is always just around the corner. This one is a ‘papyrus museum’ it has the word ‘government’ painted in garish blue above the door. We know this is a sham, and we know we have been had, and turn in and quickly out of the place. The man who gave us the information is, of course, nowhere to be seen, though we do see him again later as we near the museum housing Tut’s death-mask; he is giving another couple of tourists the once over. We can almost hear him telling them that he is a teacher.

The Egyptian Museum turns out to be everything that is said it is, and more. It has a small bookshop on the way out in which the staff are almost invisible – helpful when asked but not pushy or insistent. After all, it’s not their business. They don’t get paid commission on anything bought, so they leave you alone.

In the small but well appointed Museum in Luxor things are different; the man selling a quite nice selection of books about the Pharoahs, Luxor Temple and Egypt in general seems to be on commission – but he doesn’t know his customer, at least he doesn’t know me. When I browse around this kind of shop, I don’t want to be continually offered knock-down prices, and I don’t want to be continually harangued to buy something, however reasonably priced it is. What I want is service, when I want it. I want some knowledge imparted to me when I ask for it.
“Does this book really tell the story of Hatshepsut’s ascendancy to the throne of Egypt – or not? Its price, I can get from inside the back cover or somewhere equally prominent.

I am only concerned that it is the right book for me in terms of content first – if that is not right, I won’t buy it no matter how much the price has been reduced. If it is, I will be happy to pay what I think is a fair price for it and I will consider myself fortunate to have found the very book I have been looking for and will consequently be happy with the man for pointing it out to me. But I will not be happy to be pushed into buying a book I don’t want, or can’t afford, no matter how good the sales pitch is. I do not want patter in a bookshop, I want intelligible, informative, accurate advice.

Checking out of the Sheraton Cairo on our last morning, I do not expect to find a car parking fee on my bill, and nor do I expect to be billed for 18 – yes 18 telephone calls I haven’t made. I can, however, appreciate that this might be a genuine mix up, I am getting 902’s bill instead of my own from 901.

What I find harder to take is charging me for the little sachets of tea and coffee left for our convenience in a saucer at the side of two cups and an electric kettle. I take it that those are included in the 100 USD I am paying per night in this magnificent hotel. It’s not the money – well, actually it is, but it’s the principle – the fact that I am being charged for something I get for free in four and five star hotels in Kuala Lumpur, Abu Dhabi, Bangkok and Singapore.

Before we leave Cairo, let’s eat; there is probably nowhere nicer than Felfela Restaurant in downtown Cairo – actually on Talaat Harb Street. Here the ambience is wonderful – one can feel the elegance of people who eat here. The lady sipping water at a table near the entrance does so every day of her elderly life – she is the owner’s mother and is justifiably proud of her daughter’s business acumen and her cooking.

The head waiter, an elderly gentleman in immaculate livery, is patient, helpful, alert to his customer’s requirements, and solicitous of their need to eat well cooked, hot food. When the food promptly appears, it is well delivered and well cooked – it is lovely, delicious – everything that food should be.

The one man who left a lasting impression on me, but who I had the good fortune not to meet face to face, was the young man who imagined he could steal something small and made of gold and of course very ancient and precious from the very room in the Egyptian Museum we had been dying to visit.

This young man, I read yesterday on the Internet, stayed behind in the museum when all the doors were locked for the night. He hid himself in the toilets until it was safe to come out. He then prized open a glass display case, took several things, a golden dagger amongst them, and waited for the morning to come. He planned to just walk out with the other visitors when he would melt into the background as just one more of the hundreds visiting the museum that day.
He was caught, I am pleased to say, before he could abscond with his ill gotten gains. The missing items had been missed, and he was caught with them. Apparently, he looked as if he had spent the night awake, which of course he had. He was taken away, as they say.

I have two questions here; the first is to the young thief – where did he expect to sell his ‘finds’, undoubtedly worth a small fortune; the second question being to the authorities charged with keeping the museum and its priceless exhibits secure – how was this allowed to happen?

This last event sort of sums up my feelings about Egypt; it is a country with a wonderfully rich past, a legacy from 40 centuries, and yet it is held secure in a sort of cavalier attitude as if it the exhibits were no more than poor farm implements from the last century.

Perhaps that too is the appeal of Egypt; that they do not take themselves or anything too seriously. That is not quite true; they take money a little too seriously for my liking. This is not to say that I don’t care for Egypt and its people – I do, but I take what they say with the pinch of salt it deserves and with which they most probably intend it to be taken.
Robert L. Fielding

Egyptians - then and now

2007-02-04T04:41:00.000-08:00

Egyptians then and now

Think of Egypt and you think of the pharaohs, the Muslim brotherhood, Presidents Nasser and Mubarak, President Anwar Sadat who was assassinated by one of his own, you might think of all of these or none of them.

I remember President Nasser giving the world a shock or a reality check by nationalizing the Suez Canal in the late 50s. His actions brought the world to the brink of a world war, and led the then British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden’s wife to relate that during the Suez Crisis, she felt as if the whole of the canal was flowing through her living room. Nasser was an immensely popular figure in the Egyptian politics of the day; he stood up to the Western powers and probably gave his people some pride back.

The world pulled back from a conflict that would have involved the world’s major powers, and since that time the canal has fallen into a decline of sorts with the bigger oil tankers and merchant ships unable to sail between its banks.

President Anwar Sadat paid the ultimate price for brokering a peace treaty in the tormented region – he was assassinated. President Mubarak, the present incumbent, is still alive and well and steering his country between the opposing forces that occasionally threaten the peace of his nation.

When I think of Egypt, I immediately think of my own father who passed away a few years ago. As a young conscript, a sailor in the Royal Navy, he sailed to Port Said and then guarded the canal for the next two years. He did not enjoy the experience generally. Who would? Although ostensibly neutral, or at any rate, not hostile, my father spoke of crowds of irate Egyptians pushing against bulging wooden doors while he stood bayoneted rifle in hand in the event that the door gave way.

He didn’t have many good words for the people he had come to guard from the threat of Hitler’s armies, but his stories were mostly of young lads from British shores and their never ending ‘battle’ with their commanding officers – petty officers, captains and the like, and extended from Queen Street Barracks in Pompey to the shores of the Med and the Red Sea.

Our recollections of the people of Egypt mostly centre around our recent visit there. We met hoteliers, waiters, couriers, shopkeepers, museum curators and Luxor guides, and that other species of people, the chisellers of the street of Cairo.

Like the cockney born in the sound of the bells of Bow Church, Cairenes are not to be taken as being represented by used car salesmen in the case of London, or ‘street con-men’ in the case of Cairo. Guide books quick to relate the ‘hotel scam’ perpetrated by taxi drivers meeting you at the airport, are equally rapid in their assertion that normal, decent people from this enormous city would not dream of frustrating your movements for their own gain.

Said, our guide around the tombs of the valley of the kings on the West bank of the Nile at Luxor, contributed to what I said was one of the most interesting days I have ever spent in my life. Said constantly punctuated his narrative with searching questions to check if we understood. Feeling like a student again is no bad thing for a teacher to experience occasionally; it reminds you what the people sitting at their desks in your classroom feel like, hour after interminable hour.

I enjoyed the company of his friend, another guide, Mohammed. That is all I know of him, though I am sure he will recognize himself from this description. Mohammed took us down the Nile on a skiff to a small hamlet to drink tea and look around the menial dwellings there. He guided us around a crowded Luxor Temple, mouthfuls of information at every pylon and pillar.

When another tourist tried to latch on to his narrative without paying, though we hadn’t paid for this part of our day, he dismissed him briskly, shaking his head in disbelief. When the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, Mohammed begged us pause while he moved his lips and hands in some abbreviated form of prayer.

When we handed him what we though was a suitable sum of money for all the words he had spoken to us, he almost blushed, telling us that he was embarrassing him. He took the money, but at least he had the grace to help us think it was not necessary.

My wife and I both felt that my father should have visited Egypt again after his less than pleasant experiences of wartime Cairo, Port Said, Suez and Alexandria. We felt he had a sort of unfinished business with the country that took two years from his young life at a time when otherwise he would have been learning a trade in the engineering industry.

Instead, he was demobilised in 1945 without a trade, and too old to start one. The rest, as they say, is history; he met the love of his life, a young woman from Greenfield, fell in love with her and married her in 1949, some good few months before I came along.

My mother fell for a lad who had been overseas, fought in the War, been to places she could only point at in an atlas. That he knew his way around Cairo and Alexandria must have impressed a young lass who had barely been out of her valley.

Together, they have visited many foreign capitals: Valetta, Tangiers, Rome, Paris, Ankara, Nicosia, but never Cairo. His only ever tour of Egypt was courtesy of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. He often rued the day he ever set foot in Egypt, but to the day he died, he never stopped talking about it – it was part of his life, as it has become a part of mine – fascinated by a country that was home to pharaohs, generals and kings, and to the urchins who eke out a living in its sordid slums before making their pile in the industries that serve the Gulf states.
Robert L. Fielding

Mohammed Ali - tobacco trader turned king - the Citadel

2007-02-04T04:25:00.000-08:00

The pyramids at Giza - when awesome really does mean awesome!

2007-02-04T04:12:00.000-08:00

The pyramids of Giza

Pliny the elder, writing around the year 50AD called the pyramids at Giza, an ‘idle and foolish exhibition of royal wealth. For the cause by most assigned for their construction is an intention on the part of those kings to exhaust their treasures, rather than leave them to successors or plotting rivals, or to keep the people from idleness.’

Florence Nightingale said that the pyramids ‘ looked as if they would wear out the air, boring holes in it all day.’ Napoleon famously said of them as he passed with his armies, ‘forty centuries of history look down upon you from these pyramids.’

The pyramids have been impressing since they were built to house the tombs of the Pharaohs. To gaze upon them, the novelist, Evelyn Waugh wrote, was like being at close quarters to someone famous – like sitting at a table near to the Prince of Wales, you keep glancing at them to see if they are still there.

The pyramids and the Sphinx below them irresistibly draw the eye. Approaching Giza from the centre of Cairo, a drive of about twenty minutes, they are not visible until quite close. The tenements, tower blocks and slums of that part of the city obscure their view until the taxi draws up in front of them.

By the illusion of foreshortening (something familiar to steeplejacks and mountaineers) they appear nearer than they are and much lower in height than they would standing atop the biggest one – the Pyramid of Cheops. They were already more than 2000 years old when the historian Herodotus visited them – what he would say now, looking at them from the Pizza Hut opposite we can only guess.

Cecil Beaton said that they had been degraded into commodities of an enormous tourist trade, and while that is undoubtedly true, it is impossible for anything to detract from their grandeur and scale. Standing right up against them really does make you aware of how very colossal they are.

In the wonderful Light and Sound Show later, we are informed of the number of blocks of stone that were used in their construction and we can only marvel at the feats of strength and engineering skills that were used to build them.

Without the aid of machinery save that which was manually operated, the 2.5 million blocks weighing 6 million tonnes were manipulated into position, after the Herculean task of getting them to the site in the first place. The organization of labour needed to achieve such a huge undertaking would impress even F.W. Taylor with his Scientific Management utilized so successfully by Henry Ford in his automobile factories in Detroit.

The power, the will and the ability to construct these mausoleums for the dead Pharaohs display all the greatness of the age of these kings of Egypt. They surely kept the people from idleness, as Pliny suggests, and in their building, the subjects would have continually been aware of their rulers’ hegemony.

Other, more recent rulers have had mausoleums constructed, and while they are admittedly much less impressive and smaller in scale, they nevertheless do have what it takes to inform present and future generations of the greatness of those interred within.
Robert L. Fielding

The treasures of all Egypt - 40 centuries look up

2007-02-04T03:49:00.000-08:00

The treasures of all Egypt – 40 centuries look up

Walking into this treasure house of a museum, and knowing that it houses what is arguably the most spectacular exhibit in any museum in the world – the golden mask of the boy king; the Pharaoh Tutankhamen, one is constantly distracted, even whilst looking over the other magnificent trove of Upper and Lower Egypt contained within the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

What would probably pass for major exhibits in another museum, here pale into insignificance compared to the granite statues of the great and the godly. The stela of different events in ancient Egypt portray a world that predates almost everything. Alchemy – from the Arabic Al Kheme, meaning ‘of Egypt’, was born here as Pharaohs believed that base metal could be turned into gold. The science of geometry and al-gebra were certainly used to construct the pyramids, and the means - mechanical, to move blocks weighing tons, or, as some now think, to cast the blocks of which the pyramids are built, was certainly known and expertly carried out in those early days of the Old Kingdom.

Realising that these pyramids, though magnificently colossal, were in fact useless at their main task – preventing the treasures and bodies of dead Pharaohs seeking the way to the afterlife, from being robbed, the kings of the New Kingdom went up the Nile to Thebes, now Luxor, to inter their great kings with their booty in what they imagined to be sufficiently remote locations to be safe for all eternity.

Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamen at the very end of two years of fruitless, backbreaking effort. His sponsor and provider, Lord Caernarvon, had all but given up and was ready to recall Carter before he looked in one last place, below the huts of excavation workers, ironically, to arrive at his ‘day of days’ when he went into the tomb and saw its magnificent contents.

That trove is here for all to see, in a temperature controlled, guarded room where everything is behind glass and guards stand by to protect these last accompanying artifacts to the Pharaoh. I could only wonder what has been lost from the other tombs in the Valley of the Kings, as well as from the pyramids at Giza. Here are the things the young king had to accompany him to the afterlife, entombed with him in what was one of the smaller tombs. What did the fabulous tombs of the mightiest contain?
Robert L. Fielding

Cairo pell-mell

2007-02-04T03:24:00.000-08:00

Cairo pell-mell

Like any large city, Cairo has its problems. With around 15 million people living within its city boundaries, it is no wonder. Visiting the city for the briefest of moments, the main problem one encounters is the volume of traffic. This is nowhere near the problems that a city like Bangkok faces, but it is still a problem.

The other problem for the visitor – an obvious foreigner carrying a camera and wearing casual clothes, is the touts that continually touch your elbow, ask you where you come from, say they are your friend and ‘offer’ to take you somewhere more interesting than the place you had intended visiting.

Not being used to such behaviour, you might take this ‘offer’ to be a kind one, given by someone who actually wants to help you as you struggle to find your way round this enormous city. If you were walking around Glasgow, for instance, nobody would approach you or offer anything unless you spoke to them first. Here it is different.

To begin with, there is a huge difference in cost and standard of living between Egypt and the tourist’s country; particularly if the visitor is from a European or North American country. Second, tourism is one of the country’s biggest earners of foreign currency; “they're just out to capture your dime”, as Americans would say.

Wandering around trying to find the Egyptian Museum, you quickly become the tout’s prey. In the crowded streets of the capital’s downtown shopping area, there is no such problem. If you step into a shop, the assistant will do all in his power to ensure that you don’t step out again without buying something first, but even this is done in a Western manner.

Taxi drivers in Cairo are no different from taxi drivers anywhere – they want to take you further than you want to go for more than you want to pay. Agreeing on the price for our chosen destination seemed to work, with help from people who know about such things – hotel commissionaires and the like.

Really, the hassle and the traffic urge you to leave, or at least want to leave. There is plenty to see in Cairo, but it is sometimes difficult to not see the wood for the trees.
Robert L. Fielding

Night train to Cairo

2007-02-04T03:12:00.000-08:00

Night train to Cairo

A 15-hour train journey from Alexandria up to Luxor, although very tiring, didn’t put us off taking the sleeper back down the Nile valley at the capital. We had booked the all night- sleeper at 94LE. We would be able to sleep, have breakfast and wake up refreshed in Cairo ready to continue our tour of this interesting country.

And it worked out that way too – well almost. We boarded the train after being harangued by porters at Luxor Station. The platform was full of passengers – mostly Egyptians with a few tourists like ourselves. Back in the bad old days – the late 90s, the treat of terrorist attacks meant that the army or militia were on board, but tonight there were just ordinary looking railway officials.

Show to our berths by the helpful young man whose job it is to look after the passengers, we were pleasantly surprised how much room we had and how comfortable it looked. Initially though, the complexities of how each bunk bed folded down had us beat. Deah, the attendant, fluent in five languages as well as his own native Arabic, helped us down with the beds – actually, he bade us step outside while he expertly and quickly pulled each bed down from its vertical place above our heads.

The food tasted and looked a bit like the stuff you get on a plane, but it was reasonable and we enjoyed it. With full stomachs and visits the small but quite clean bathroom over, we settled down to sleep. The roll of the train disturbed us both and at one time we felt like we were at sea, but we soon settled in to it and slept until a soft bell woke us at 4.30am for tea or coffee.

Arriving at around six in the morning in Cairo, we did feel a little sleepy, which is hardly surprising after only about four hours sleep. At times like that, the last thing you want to have to cope with are the taxi drivers of Cairo. I had read about the ‘hotel scam’ in the good ‘Lonely Planet Guide’ just earlier. Even so, I wasn’t ready for it, not really, maybe because I didn’t expect it to happen to us. You read about these things in guide books, little imagining that you will be their next victim.

We were taken to a sort of building site instead of Sheraton Cairo, and were told this was it. Not dismayed, we leant into the driver and told him that if we weren’t taken to our hotel there would be no money. Like that:
“No hotel, no money!”

With check in at 3.0pm, we were mighty grateful when the receptionist upgraded us to deluxe for the same tariff. If we’d had to find a hotel after that trip, I think we would gladly have been taken anywhere; prebooking is advisable.
Robert L. Fielding

Leaving Luxor

2007-02-04T02:58:00.000-08:00

There are many ways to leave Luxor, and there are many directions in which to leave. The overnight train to Cairo leaves at 8.10pm from Platform 2; the train up the Nile to Aswan leaves in the afternoon as tired passengers alight after the 12-15 hour journey from Alexandria through Cairo and on up the Nile valley past field after field of sugar cane.

You can leave Luxor for some few days on one of the many boats/ships/barges, I know not what to call them, up the Nile to Aswan. There you can visit Abu Symbel temple and look south into Sudan.

Thousand upon thousands of years ago, the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom, Hatshepsut, Tut-ankh-amon and the others, whose defiled toms lie in the Valley of the Kings on the West bank of the Nile, left Thebes and this life for the afterlife they believed was theirs to live anew.

If their heart did not outweigh the two feathers of Truth and Justice, they were allowed to pass. Their mortal remains were either mummified, or else contained in the Canopic Jars used to hold their internal organs – liver and lungs but not the heart – that had to be weighed by the gods. Holy barques were prepared for the journey and they left Luxor - forever – who knows?
Robert L. Fielding

Queen/King Hatshepsut - honorary male

2007-02-04T02:47:00.000-08:00

The Valley of the Kings - Thebes and the Nile

2007-02-04T02:32:00.000-08:00

Karnak Temple

2007-02-04T02:15:00.000-08:00

Alexandria - city of cross references

2007-02-04T01:52:00.000-08:00

It has been said of Alexandria, that despite its illustrious past, it has nothing left to recall it. That is not true – well, not quite. Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great himself, before he went on to found many other, less notable, less notorious towns named after him, has seen different ages, peoples’, kingdoms and empires come and go.

Its past is signposted almost immediately you start to walk around ‘Nice with acne’ as Michael Palin once rudely called it; its street names reflect the different nations that established one kind of foothold or another in this city of 7 million people.

The Greek Alexandrian poet, Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933) once lived in Rue Lepsius, named after a French engineer, now Sharia Sharm el Sheikh, after the resort on the Gulf of Aqaba. ‘Alex’ has streets, rues, and the plural form of ‘sharia’ meaning street in Arabic, reflecting its past – British, French, Hellenic, and of course, Pharaonic.

Cavafy sold not one word of his poetry while he lived and worked as a civil servant; his former house stood between the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Saba and the Greek Hospital; above a bordello; he described these variously as the ‘temple of the soul’, temple of the Body’, and the ‘temple of the flesh’.

Today, the house is a memorial to his life and his work; after climbing the dark stairs, you are met by a curator who is eager to relate the history of Cavafy’s life, though his Cairene English is a little heavy and difficult to understand. Cavafy’s writing desk is there in one shady corner, his death mask in another, together with all manner of manuscripts, all in Greek. Cavafy was a Greek born in Alexandria, living much of his life there as well as in Constantinople, modern day Istanbul.

Returning to the daylight and the narrow streets leading to the corniche, the Cecil Hotel stands firm against the noise and the bustle of the traffic that would not have been half so bad in the poet’s later life. The interior of the hotel betrays its past. Winston Churchill and W. Somerset Maugham are said to have watered here, though most likely not at the same time.

The buildings in the narrow streets around this area appear something akin to a Greek suburb, which of course, this part of town is. Further along, in the sweep of promenade leading to the Citadel of Quait Bey, huge mosques stand back from the front, loud hailers of Islam five times a day.

If Alexander is anywhere, he is below the surface, hidden from public view and diesel fumes. The new library, the magnificent new library has his bust in granite and a plaque to commemorate his greatness, but the new library, great as it is, impressive as it undoubtedly looks to all who walk into its quiet halls, is no substitute for the one that burned to the ground – it was said of that loss, that today it would be equal in scale and disaster to our losing all of the world wide web at the flick of a switch or the click of a Messianic mouse, if you prefer.

The inhabitants of Egypt’s second city, with its teeming waterfront cafes, roaring traffic day and night, its slums and its markets, its shoe shops selling the latest Italian mode, probably care not one jot for its history, busy as they are making a living. I am sure though, that if they had the time, they would all tell you how proud they are of their city by the sea, their end of the line from Aswan in the south, the northernmost place in a country dominated by its swarming capital at the southern end of the delta of this longest of the world’s rivers. The Nile is Egypt – Egypt is the Nile. Alexandria is not on the Nile, and its many associations show a side of Egypt that is something other than a fertile plain surrounded on three sides by desert, and on the other by the sea.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 1

2007-02-04T01:46:00.000-08:00

Letter from Sudan # 1 : Going to a wedding

I went to a party last weekend in the city of Wad Medani with some teacher friends of mine. It was a very grand affair with music and dancing and lots of food and a little drink. It went on into the small hours and we all came away very happy indeed.

Similarly, last night, I went to another party with my friends, Adrian and Mary from Hasaheisa, which is about thirty minutes from Messelemiya by car on dirt tracks through the fields of cotton and round and over the irrigation canals.

This party though was a different kind of party, it was a Sudanese party for a couple who had just become engaged to be married. I was lucky enough to be in just the right place at just the right time, turning up unannounced in the afternoon as I sometimes do from time to time.

My friends are always very welcoming and we enjoy one another’s company very much. Anyway, some of their neighbours called to invite them in the evening, and as I also knew the family from my frequent visits to Hasaheisa, I was invited too.

The Sudanese say, ‘faddel’ which means welcome and are always saying it to me in Messelemiya. We were among the first to arrive and were cordially welcomed and sat down in the most comfortable chairs in the place. All this was out of doors, you understand, in the courtyard or ‘hosh‘ as the Sudanese call it. After a short time, all the other guests started to arrive and each one of them came over to shake hands and greet us.

Then the most important people – the happy couple, arrived and things got underway. The couple sat in the place reserved for them, where they could be seen by everyone. Next, a large tray was placed on a stand in front of the couple and the proceedings began. This tray contained all the things needed to put ‘henna’ on the hands of both as a sign to others that they were betrothed. Henna is some sort of wood dust and oil, I think.

A bowl of the brown stuff was placed where they could reach it and then some of the young women took the couple’s hands and dipped their fingers and thumbs into it. I can only say that it looked like some kind of khaki coloured jelly. At the back of the tray there were tall, silver stands burning incense and sandalwood – it smelt lovely.

After the couple had had their hands anointed with the henna, others came up and did the same. I politely declined, but Mary and Adrian went up to have their fingers dipped into the henna. Thry sat there with it on their hands for two hours and then washed it off their hands to reveal an orange covered stain covering the parts that had been dipped. Mary and Adrian were then told that if they wanted the henna to turn a darker shade, they would have to expose their hands to the smoke from the incense some time later.

When all this rather grand thing had been completed, all accompanied by singing by some of the young girls, the party began, or at any rate, the more conventional, recognizable part of the party. There was music and dancing, although at first not many people got up to dance.

As the evening wore on, more and more of the guests got up to dance. All of this time, I found myself continually being stared at by young girls sitting nearby, and I stared back at them and smiled a lot. Sudanese women are very beautiful, elegantly though simply dressed, and for that reason are utterly charming to look at.

I had unconsciously taken a shine to one in particular; a very beautiful woman of about twenty years of age and when some Western style music was played, I was invited to dance. At this time there was nobody else on the dance floor so I declined the offer, saying that I might dance when a few others were dancing.

A short time later almost everyone got up to myself, and Adrian did likewise, to great cheering from the people surrounding us, showing us how to dance to Sudanese music, which is quite strange to Western ears. Luckily for me, I was able to dance with the young woman who I had previously been admiring, so I went home very happy that I had plucked up the courage to get up and dance. The whole evening was absolutely wonderful and something I will remember for a long time to come.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 1:1

2007-02-04T01:44:00.000-08:00

- 1:1 -
This morning I was woken with a nice cup of tea at about 7.30am. Later, we strolled down to the suq and had a lovely breakfast of adis (lentils), a sort of meaty water and the meat cooked in it, with hot, sweet tea to swill it all down.

Afterwards, we set off for the big vegetable market. It’s much bigger than the one in my own town and so I took full advantage of it and bought some nice, new potatoes, some spring onions, and some carrots. Carrots are not very common in markets so I wad glad we had walked down to take a look.

I also bought myself a big stick while in town – I’ve recently been having trouble with next door’s dog, a savage looking beast. It jumps out at me as I walk home in the evenings and scares me half to death. It bares its teeth and all that. This stick will sort it out, I reckon. We’ll see.

I am better now, but last week I went down with a touch of malaria for the second time since I’ve been out here. It’s not very pleasant, something like flu and lasts for a few days. I’ve been having injections at a local hospital in the afternoons and now I’m fine again.

When I turn up on your doorstep, you may not recognize me at first; I’m very brown and have lost quite a lot of weight, which is quite normal and happens to everybody who comes out here.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 2

2007-02-04T01:43:00.000-08:00

- 2 -

I had a lovely time in Khartoum this Christmas with Mary and Adrian, we spent most of our time in the Sudan Club, which is run by English people for the Brits in Sudan. It has a full size snooker table, a swimming pool, video, TV and a nice restaurant with several nicely furnished bars, but unfortunately, no alcoholic beverages.

We spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day lounging by the pool, drinking ice cold Pepsi Cola, which made it as different a Christmas as I’ve ever spent in my life. I think you’ll agree, won’t you?

We didn’t have the Christmas dinner at 75 Sudanese pounds a head, firstly because we couldn’t really afford it and secondly because we were just too late to book it beforehand anyway. Instead, we had steak and kidney pie, green beans, and boiled potatoes, which for us was every bit as good and very well cooked.

After our few days in Khartoum, which, incidentally, had come to look more like a Western capital to us after spending months in our small, provincial towns and villages. When we first arrived, I think we all felt disappointed with the capital, but on our second visit, we were more impressed. I think it showed just how much we had acclimatized to our surroundings.

After we left the capital and returned to Wad Medani, a hundred and odd miles south, I set out for the village of Soriba, the home of my good friend and colleague, Salah. While he is teaching at school, he lives with the other Sudanese teachers in the big house next to my little one-roomed house. I was made welcome in Soriba and met all Salah’s family and friends, and stayed there two days before returning home to Messelemiya.

Next weekend, I am expecting Jennie and Michael from El Hosh. It’s their turn to come to me, and I always look forward to their visits as well as to visiting them at their home. We always laugh a lot and tell each other funny stories about the things that have happened to us since our last meeting.

I always enjoy writing to you as it crystallizes my thoughts regarding my time here, and that makes me put a lot of things into perspective. I’ll say cheerio for now. Take care of yourself and keep warm by the fire.
Robert

Letter from Sudan # 3

2007-02-04T01:41:00.000-08:00

- 3-

Schooldays, so they tell us, are the best days of our lives; they are undoubtedly that for the boys of El Messelemiya and its surrounding hamlets and villages. Two hundred and odd lively boys line up when the bell is rung at 7.30am by Abdul Hafiz, the retired soldier. School uniforms are inspected by the duty master for the day and the boys stand smartly to attention in the manner of the British who left in 1956.

The school yard is dry and dusty with a flagpole in the middle surrounded by sunflowers bending in the morning breeze. It is winter, the middle of February and the wind is cold and dry like a knife. Some of the boys wear scarves wrapped around their heads while others shiver under the bright sun that gives little heat or comfort at this time in the morning.

The bell, a piece of steel girder hanging from the branch of an acacia tree, is rung again and the boys troop off to their classrooms on either side of the square of brown earth. The ustaz enters the classroom and all the boys quickly stand up to greet their teacher and show him the respect he is due. Just as quickly, they sit down on the steel chairs covered in strands of plastic vinyl. The lessons begin and the school day has begun.

After three lessons, at 9.55am, the boys run to the Mess Hall for their breakfast. Some wash their hands and face at the tap at the foot of the flagpole. Breakfast is cooked on charcoal stoves in the kitchen that adjoins the dining area, although there are no chairs, or knives and forks – only long tin benches with brightly coloured plastic bowls full of beans and long, thin loaves that the hungry boys grab to scoop the food from the bowls.

Each bowl holds enough for three or four boys so they quickly and noisily devour the food. Some boys break their bread and throw pieces of it into the middle of the bowl, then one of the others mixes the beans and the bread until each piece of bread is thoroughly moistened with the water and gravy from the beans, the beans are mashed with the bottom of an empty Pepsi bottle until the whole lot resembles a brown pulp. It looks a bit offputting at first, until you taste it – it’s absolutely delicious.

Afterwards, the boys laugh and joke with each other and then wash their hands again before standing in turn to drink cool water from one of the six earthenware vessels (zia) that had earlier been filled with water. Tin cups are tied to the frames supporting the weight of each zia, the cups being made out of old tins that once held powdered milk, their jagged edges only smoothed down.

The boys who live in the village have gone to their homes for their breakfast, and for once the school is half empty. Only the asatiza (teachers) chatting away in Arabic, and the boarders remain. The workers, dinner ladies and the old soldier are still eating in the kitchen.

Mjuktar, one of the workers, arrives in the staffroom with a tray full of glasses half filled with sugar, holding a kettle full of tea without milk. At 9.45am, the bell rings again and the day boys troop back through the bright gates of the schoolyard. Five minutes later another bell rings and lessons begin again.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 4

2007-02-04T01:40:00.000-08:00

- 4-

There are three years in El Messelemiya Higher Secondary School for Boys; each year having two classes, making six classes in all, with rousing names like Mahadi and Awad, Science and Art. The third year classes – Art and Science are full of tall, nineteen year-olds. Some of these will go to the University of Khartoum where all the lectures are given in English. Others, whose English is maybe not quite so good may be heading for the Islamic University in Omdurman where the language of instruction is Arabic.

Their aspirations are many; some want to study agriculture to return to the fields of Gezira which surround them and have fed them for the whole of their lives. Others want to study engineering or Medicine – all want to be involved in the development of their beloved Sudan.

Passing the High School certificate (the Shahida) is a must and all the boys are keen to do well. Of course, not all will be successful and perhaps only a few will go to the hallowed halls of Sudan’s four universities. Some will inevitably help their fathers on the farms, some will go into the Army to fight the SPLA in the south of the country. Some will leave for lucrative jobs in the rich Gulf states, and some will spend their lives in the backbreaking job of picking cotton, one of Sudan’s main exports, going, in former times, to the mills of Lancashire.

At two, lessons thankfully end, ustaz and student alike are beginning to feel unbearably hot, attention wilts and the last bell of the day is rung by Abdul Hafiz. Schooldays might well be the best days of our lives but that last bell is always greeted with high glee, and with shouting, laughing and furious running to the green gates of the schoolyard.

Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 5

2007-02-04T01:38:00.000-08:00

- 5 -
Today, Tuesday 25th August, is a national holiday – it is the anniversary of the prophet Mohammed’s (PBUH) pilgrimage from Meccah to Medina, over 1,000 years ago. This day is also the beginning of the year 1407 and so the people of Sudan take their rest.

The heavy rains of the night before all but prevent movement on any but the major roads. People will celebrate in the villages although some will try to get through the mud to their wives in nearby villages and towns. Equally, some will be destined to be disappointed and will have to stay in their temporary homes.

In Sudan the migration to towns and cities from poorer, rural areas is popular with the better paying jobs going to those who have attended the nation’s universities. The wives and children stay in the village while the menfolk go off to earn the higher wages in the city, saving money to send to their families, returning home at such times as these. Education here is a passport to these better paying jobs with those that fail to attain these standards staying to live and work in the place they were born.

The may sound all right and proper to Western ears and one can hardly criticize those who avail themselves of the advantages that an education can bring. However, in the larger scheme of things and disregarding individual motives for a moment, this migration to the towns and cities by the more talented and differently able of the male population in not necessarily in the best interests of the Sudan and its drive to relative prosperity.

In a country that is mainly agricultural, an increase in non-producers in terms of food produced is, in the long run, bound to produce a top heavy layer of bureaucrats and service workers who will ultimately depend for their existence on the people who till the soil, and any attempt to imitate the course of development of a former colonial power such as Britain is destined to end in the misappropriation of resources.

In thinking about our own development as a trading nation, it is vital to remember that the act of colonialisation of countries like Sudan represented a vital ingredient in this development, and it is surely folly to suppose otherwise.

Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 6

2007-02-04T01:37:00.000-08:00

-6-

It is wrong to think of these invasions of other countries as wholly evil or detrimental to the ‘host’ nation; the schools of El Messelemiya were all built by the British, albeit using local labour, and the same applies to the massive irrigation schemes in the vicinity and all across Gezira Province.

In the cities, the presence of the colonial power is still felt in some of the administrative buildings with the main placebo to Victorian jingoism being the pattern of streets and squares in the nation’s sprawling capital, Khartoum. After the defeat of the Mahdist forces by Kitchener at the Battle of Omdurman, the city of Khartoum was planned, laid out and built in the configuration of the Union flag. This architectural imposition at the hands of representatives of an outraged Britain after the death of General Gordon has its advantages; particularly if like me you find yourself in a city that has few signposts or street names that are intelligible.

In a city that is arranged in the pattern of something as boringly regular as the Union flag, finding my way back to the hotel in a street on the other side of town is simply a matter of counting and remembering. Kitchener’s idiosyncrasies had some advantages after all, and so, it could be argued, did the colonalisation of Sudan: some for the Sudanese and a lot for the British in the way of raw materials extracted by a cheap and plentiful supply of labour.

In the case of Sudan, this was its high quality cotton and some of its other crops. But good or bad, right or wrong, what’s done is done. The point is surely that Britain’s development as a world power and at one time, the most wealthy nation in the world, was aided immeasurably by Sudan, as well as other countries such as India.

In this, Britain was not alone. The French, Germans, Spaniards, Belgians and the Portugese have all had their day as former colonial powers – with varying amounts of success. In 1987, all that remains of this country’s former ‘glory’ is the English language and various constructions to its memory. Colonialism in that form is dead, without recourse to vast amounts of force; the Russians’ experience in Afghanistan is stark testimony to that. Colonialism is dead and the developing countries will have to make their way in this brave new world of ours without the luxury of an annexed, satellite country to provide them with the goods they lack.

Any parallel between the developed nation’s historical progress and that or so called ‘Third World’ nations is likely to be a hindrance rather than a blueprint for economic or social success. Sudan and countries in a similar position will have to look to their own resources to get them on the path to the destiny they so earnestly seek. This may sound like the beginning of an argument in favour of stopping aid to them, it is not.

Foreign aid, whether it is in the form of interest free loans, farm machinery, or food for the hungry, is vital and should be continued. But donor countries should avoid the mistake of projecting a Western view of the way things ought to be in such countries as Sudan. The large scale introduction, for instance, of cash crops, high yield varieties that depend upon expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides from the West can and does have far reaching effects that are both physical and economic in their implications.

Poorly thought out land use in the tropics can lead to a land that is permanently devoid of fertile topsoil and is no longer of any agricultural use.

To return to the well-educated minority; the main people to benefit from them are often neighbouring countries – the oil rich states of further north, who are able to tempt the more adventurous among them to its schools, universities and commercial enterprises. There is nothing individually reprehensible in this; a man has to look has to look after his best interests as he perceives them. In the interests of the nation at large, however, this is not much help, and while I am not advocating the suspension of such opportunities for personal, financial improvement, I am suggesting that the implications of such a ‘brain drain’ should be considered, particularly when such opportunities have cost the nation so high a price particularly when that country ca n ill-afford the expense in the first place.

The problems remain. Are they without a solution that would not impinge on civil liberties, or not? My main plea for these countries is that we in the West do not inhibit the finding of such a solution by imposing too narrow a view of what constitutes the good life. After all, if we are the model which others seek to emulate, they are in a poor way indeed and the un wanted byproducts of affluence might be come to be eternally regretted by countries whose crime rates and societal problems are a fraction of our own.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 7

2007-02-04T01:35:00.000-08:00

-7-

The month of September is right in the middle of the rainy season. It ends in October, when winter begins. This afternoon there was an uncharacteristic downpour (it normally rains at night here) that would have done credit to any self-respecting cloudburst in England.

It lasted about twenty minutes, during which time the Heavens opened, mostly, it seemed to me, onto my leaky roof. The rain fell and my roof seemed more like a sieve. Muddy water poured in on my newly washed shirts. Those shirts were washed by hand in cold water, and I was the launderer, so the air was as blue as the ‘zahara’ (dolly blue) that I had soaked them in after scrubbing.

A leaking roof is nothing to write home about for the Sudanese teachers who live next door. Rain is accepted as the will of God, along with the baking sun that returns minutes after the deluge has ended. Leaking roofs don’t matter so much when there is nothing to get wet. In my house, things are different; I have the trappings of a life in England to protect and keep dry.

The teachers from Messelemiya are uncomplaining – they have little to get wet. The entire contents of the average Sudanese home wouldn’t fill a teenager’s bedroom in England. The meager furniture usually consists of several upright, and very uncomfortable steel chairs, a small table for visitors, and of course, beds, usually wooden with a colourful bant for a spring mattress. Sundry pots and pans and a small charcoal stove complete the inventory.

As I said, there is nothing much to get wet if the roof does happen to leak. Personnel possessions are few and men are not measured by them. That man might have seven goats, that man a bicycle, but that doesn’t single him out as being any different to anyone else.

It used to be said of Sudan that you could leave a suitcase at the side of the road and return a year later to find it exactly where you left it. Whether that is still the case would be difficult to tell without the acid test, and as I have neither twelve months, or a suitcase to spare I will probably never know.

The fact is this though; crime here is but a fraction of the level that it is in Britain or America. The punishments are severe; under the now deposed Nimeiri, cross-amputation was the punishment short of capital punishment. The right hand and the left foot were amputated leaving the criminal a social outcast for the rest of his life.

Eating is a thing to be done with others here, using the right hand only, the removal of which renders the amputee a social pariah for all time, however much reformed he may become. Cross-amputation is a thing of the past although the amputation of the hand is still reserved for the Sudanese equivalent of the highwayman when he is found guilty and sentenced in a court of law.

Such harsh punishment, however, should not be looked upon merely as a deterrent, but rather as the wrath of God that is being transmitted to the wrongdoer in much the same way that a crime was once considered as being a crime against the body of the king in medieval times in England, where the criminal had the offence to the king’s body inscribed on his own in the form of torture and ultimately death and the hanging, drawing and quartering of his body to show the people that the king had rightly and properly been avenged.

In Sudan, civil law is supplemented by Islamic law or rather that civil law is the supplement to Shariah Law, which is the law of God. The deterrent then is not amputation but the transgression the will of God. In a country with a population of more than 22 million people, the vast majority of which are Muslim, and whose devotion to God is absolute, any act of this kind is anathema and is punishment itself. The subsequent amputation then, seen in this light, is the judgment of wronged God as much as God’s revenge.

The act itself, rather than the punishment, is the deterrent and the fact that this might be all but incomprehensible to Western ears is testimony to the difference between us and the people of Sudan.

In Britain, it is presumed that the punishment is the deterrent. There is little or no mention of the act itself being the deterrent. The criminal, in our society, is motivated by those very same motives that everybody is moved by: material acquisition and selfishness. In the case of criminal behaviour, it is the means rather than the motive that is being punished. The breach has to be filled although the motives remain untouched. The very same motives – material acquisition and selfishness are lauded, wholly approved of and rewarded where the means are seen as appropriate and sanctioned by the state’s judicial system.

Little wonder that crime flourishes when the only vigilance exerted is taken by the forces of the status quo. Vigilance is external in Britain. In Sudan, it is both external and internal, and in that lies a world of difference.

Where vigilance is external, the forces of law and order become increasingly strained and stretched in the same proportion as internalized vigilance decreases in the public. In those countries where the opposite is more usually the case, the forces of law and order have to exert much less control and expend much less energy.

Paradoxically, in countries where there is a decline in respect for the rule of law, there are less severe punishments, with the reverse being the case in countries where standards are nearer honesty.

Here, you would be in error if you imagined that I was advocating the return of capital punishment. To m y mind, the act of bringing back capital punishment would be similar to shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. Remember that the use of amputation and execution in Sudan is not used purely as a deterrent to criminals. That is provided by moral and public censure and, more effectively, by an internalized system of beliefs by which the individual is directed to act and behave, even when not in sight of others – especially then .

In those nations where material acquisition has become a way of life, we can surely expect criminal acts to increase if we deny individuals the same chances to acquire, particularly when such denial is viewed as entirely arbitrary by those so denied.

Only education and faith show Western democracies ways out of this dilemma. Both show us that money isn’t everything.
Robert L. Fielding
.

Letter from Sudan # 8

2007-02-04T01:33:00.000-08:00

-8-

An evening spent listening to the Rolling Stones or the London Symphony Orchestra, an hour or two in the company of my good friends, the Sudanese teachers, or fifty pages of the most enthralling best seller are no substitute for the company of another native speaker.

After eight weeks of pidgin English punctuated by Arabic to fill the gaps, after eight weeks of struggling to say something intelligible in Sudanese Arabic, after eight weeks of broken conversation, the sound of an English voice has become something I yearn for.

I have spent my hot evenings wondering if anybody out there has written me a letter, if anybody still loves me or even cares where I am and how I am. Then suddenly, as if to emulate Oldham buses (none for ages then three at once) the mail magically arrives and I receive not one but four letters, and overnight the total En glish population of El Messelemiya trebles.

An organization called ‘Project Trust’ has sent not one but two English teachers to the higher Secondary School for Girls. Speaking English to English people is something that has to be almost re-learnt; it takes a real effort to speak at a normal pace again, to remember that your words can be fully understood without constant backtracking to explain the meaning.

It s a real luxury to be free to use less formal English, to relax into the easy talk of the coffee bar. I had almost forgotten the knack, but like swimming or riding a bicycle, it soon returns.

Now, just knowing that there are some other English people to speak to makes the Rolling Stones sound fresh, even after the third rewind today. The next fifty odd pages of my bestseller will fly by and Arabic won’t sound all that difficult. The knowledge that I can pop round and talk to somebody who is able to understand and respond is enough. The well that had run dry is full of water again.

All the things that are in short supply in Sudan, and it is no short list, can make life so much easier when they can be found. Water, electricity, or an English voice are all sorely missed when absent and all too quickly taken for granted when there is a surplus. This never missing the water until the well runs dry seems to apply to all sorts of things: money, jobs, peaceful streets, good friends, all sorts of things. Perhaps I swill stop taking things for granted from now on.

In the quiet of a warm Sudanese night, staring up at the stars, my thoughts dwell on such things; maybe the heat is getting to me, maybe not. With time enough to see the world turning, to see Orion move from right to left across my field of vision, to see the Moon rise in the sky and fall again, gives me ample time to ponder on life’s mysteries.

I think that is the one aspect of my life in Sudan that I will remember and cherish. In England, time has to be made for the quiet times when old and thorny problems can be thought out and possibly solved – in Sudan, that quiet time just comes along. The afternoon siesta or the nights spent under the stars and a mosquito net provide this time for reflection that can be so elusive back in England.

There seems to be a tendency to try to fill our days and nights with noise and activity, to remove those quiet minutes that reflection needs. Do we miss them, these quiet times? If we have never known their value, the answer will probably be that we don’t. Perhaps reflecting is too painful and we would rather not have the opportunity or the time. Perhaps the mirror is cracked or the reflection too horrible for us to contemplate.

I have no answers, only questions, lots of them. What I also have is the peace and quiet of a Sudanese night in which to think things through, and this, thankfully, is not in short supply. If it was, then I might find the shortages unbearable – they only impinge on physical, bodily comfort. It seems after all, doesn’t it, that besides the enormous gains to our lives that science and technology have undoubtedly provided, that something more important has been removed, made scarcer; time.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 9

2007-02-04T01:32:00.000-08:00

-9-

Enjoying one’s stay here, or at least making the most of it, is entirely in your own hands. Perception is reality – good, bad or indifferent, it is all in the head of the person experiencing the sensation. The same event, the same non-event, is coloured by prior expectations.

Expect too much and you are setting yourself up for disappointment, lower your expectations to fall more into line with the Sudanese way of life and you may well be in for a pleasant surprise; a resignation and acceptance of the dead switch or the empty water pipe will help you to keep your cool, a vital attribute in scorching temperatures. Rather than getting hot under the collar about the foibles of the Sudanese water supply, the foresight to fill the zia (water barrel) beforehand would remove a great deal of the source of your annoyance.

When the electricity goes off, there is very little that can be done but wait, relax, read if you can, or sit and count the stars if you can’t, until the lights come back on and the slow whirl of a fan tells you that normal service has been resumed. If you were clever enough to remember to bring some batteries for the radio, the temporary halt in the supply of electricity can actually be beneficial.

Next door’s television will be silent, and you will be able to listen to the BBC World Service in peace for a change. Every cloud has a silver lining if you look hard enough for it, and in Sudan, looking for silver linings is the best way I know of putting up with the differences in living standards. I just hope I can always remain the same calm, accepting person that I seem to have become in Africa.

The inconveniences that can frequently disrupt the even tenor of life in Britain might pale into insignificance if I adopt the same view that has been the basis of my thinking about life out here. It struck me that if we were a little bit more tolerant in our dealings with one another, if we stopped being bloody-minded and cooperated more with each other then life in modern Britain might yet become comparable with life in poor, underdeveloped Sudan.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 10

2007-02-04T01:30:00.000-08:00

-10-

“Tea up,” my colleague wakes me with an early morning cuppa, although I have only been dozing since the kenoon (clay stove) began to crackle, the lumps of charcoal finally staying alight after much wafting and just a few colourful adjectives.

Today is nothing special, is it? The schools have been closed for three weeks, we’ve been here eight weeks now and…..I almost forgot, today is the 25th of September, my birthday. I’m, oh never mind how old I am. The fact is that it is my birthday and somebody has made me a card that reads, ‘Happy Birthday, Ernest!’ which is a not so oblique reference to my newly grown beard that has more white in it than I remember the last time I grew one., and resembles the whiskers of Papa Hemingway – Ernest, to you!

When the ribbing and the wisecracks have died down; “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” “Did you ever see the dear old Queen….and what about Albert?” sort of stuff, we set out for the Freindship Restaurant (their spelling) in the middle of town.

Today’s special; it’s the 25th. Kibda (liver) and baird (omelet) followed by zabadi (yoghurt), washed down with moya (water) is my treat to myself. On other, less auspicious days, I might plump for one of these dishes – today it’s all three.

It doesn’t take me long. The man sitting at the back of the room is paid and the daily ritual begins; a hot trudge down to the suq to buy some vegetables, a visit to our favourite drink stand for a freshly made, tall and cold glass of grapefruit juice, iced water and sugar from our friendly Ethiopian drink seller who has spotted us buying batatis (potatoes) at a nearby stall. He stands behind his little counter, his arms outstretched towards us holding the drinks he knows we have come for.

A short walk to the Post Office to pick up any mail completes the daily round of errands and we turn to head for home, to our cooling fans and a short nap until we have regained our cool and our normal pulse rate. Just this short journey around the dry streets that are warming up rapidly is enough. Rome wasn’t built in a day; there is no rush, and even if there was, we have learned that rushing for anything other than to avoid being crushed by a passing lorry is unwise. The Sudanese don’t rush around, and they have been round these parts a bit longer than we have, so we amble, and the pace entirely suits my new age.

Arriving home, we find the electricity and the water are both off. If this wasn’t enough, the shop next door has run out of Pepsi Cola. They wouldn’t be cold anyway, the fridges are as quiet as the fans in our rooms.
“Maalesh!” It doesn’t matter – it won’t have to, will it! The fan would have kept the flies away, they buzz around merrily to irritate us.

“Al hamdulilah!” It’s all the same to me now. My Sudanese friends repeatedly warn me; “Sudan huwa Sudan.” Sudan is Sudan – it will never change, and the flies, the heat and the whims of the water and electricity supply echo these sentiments everyday – the best thing to do is to do like the locals do; say ‘maalesh’ or any one of several other utterances that they save for just such occasions.

Enjoying one’s stay here, or at least making the most of it and perception is reality. On the walls of my bedroom back home in England, in the Pennines is covered with a wallpaper that is fairly uninteresting. It is so uninteresting, in fact, that I stare at it whenever I find sleeping difficult. It has a plain background, and on this are little flowers spaced at regular intervals, about three eighths of an inch apart, horizontal and vertical. It is regular, plain and uninteresting, yet I have found out through long hours of staring that it has a peculiar quality, despite its plain an uninteresting design.

If I stare at it for long enough, I begin to imagine that the little clumps of flowers that are spaced so regularly on its surface, are in fact grouped into clusters of three, four or whatever number I choose to count, up to about seven. If I count out four clumps of flowers, the whole wall appears to be arranged in groups of four by four squares, if I count out six, it appears to be arranged in sixes by six squares. In fact the wallpaper will always conveniently oblige me by arranging itself into whatever number I choose, up to this maximum of seven. Any more than seven my gaze starts to wander and the flowers appear to be randomly and equally spaced again.

Now the point of this little diversion is this; the spacing is dead even, horizontally and vertically; the flowers are arranged in no such clusters as two, four or six or whatever; it is entirely due to my counting that the flowers appear to line up for inspection in groups of two, four or six. It is my own perception that defines the reality before my tired eyes.

As it is in my little bedroom back home in England, so it is in Sudan; I stare at the same phenomenon, upon which my presence or my staring has no bearing whatsoever, and I see good or bad, convenience or inconvenience, or a nuisance, or a pleasant surprise. It is up to me and though my dotty wallpaper and the Sudan are strange bedfellows, the analogy is a useful one, to me at any rate.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 11

2007-02-04T01:28:00.000-08:00

-11-

The schools of Gezira are silent and empty. There has been trouble and the Min of Ed, on the orders of the government and the Prime Minister, Mr. Saddiq Al Mahdi, have shut all the schools of the province for an indefinite period.

The students in the towns of El Messelemiya, El Hasaheisa, and the second city of Sudan, Wad Medani have been rioting and burning. In Hasaheisa one boy was accidentally shot dead. Troops and riot police with shields and protective headgear move round the towns in lorries. Boys take flight when a lorry approaches although the main disturbances appear to have subsided.

The schools remain shut. The boarders have left for their villages; some have been arrested although I hear that these too have been allowed home. The debris has all but been cleared up, but some of the shopkeepers are very bitter about what has happened.

The main reason for the riots was the sudden increase in the price of sugar; around 60% at one go. The reason for this large increase is purported to be the Prime Minister’s acquiescence to the International Monetary Fund regarding the promptness of repayment of Sudan’s massive loan from that body.

Sudan is a poor country, repayment is slow, possibly too slow for the financial gurus of the World Bank. The Prime Minister, faced with the demands of his country’s creditors and his country’s low productivity figures, has made a decision. Sugar prices are the go up. Sugar is important to the people of Sudan. It was already expensive and now it’s price is to rise even higher.

It was said in town that the owner of the gutted shops were stockpiling certain commodities, including sugar, and waiting for the inevitable increases. In the event, the 60% price rise turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back and the riots began.

From my house between the Higher Secondary School and the Intermediate School for Boys, I can hear the chanting of a nearby crowd. I turn over and try to go back to sleep. It is five o’clock in the morning.

Walking towards school at 7.30am, the chanting of the crowd of boys and girls is now coming from another direction – the marketplace. The schoolyard, usually so full of boys at this time, is all but empty and very quiet. Some boys are leaving for the marketplace. The noise of the mob reaching the doors of the black-marketeers is only broken by the thud of tear gas being fired into the middle of the approaching crowd by the hopelessly outnumbered policemen who normally have very little to do in this quiet market town in the middle of fields of Gezira cotton.

Flames leap thirty feet in the air and three shops are quickly gutted. The townsfolk are shocked and shops shut to avoid incurring the wrath of the mob. With the burning of the shops and the actions of the police, the rioters lose their momentum, or their nerve and the town becomes quiet again.

An uneasy calm after the riots is a sight to see; men talk volubly in small knots at each corner, women hurry indoors and normal service is suspended for a while.

At 4.30 in the afternoon, there is an announcement on the radio. All the schools in the troubled province are to shut indefinitely. In the course of my stay in Sudan, a period of ten weeks, the schools of the Central Region, of which Gezira is a part, have been shut for four weeks. We have just restarted after a series of similar disturbances in the south of the region.

The schools have been open for exactly one week when the demonstrations took on an altogether more serious and concerted appearance. Instead of one centre of rioting, there are several at similar times, giving rise to speculation that they have been previously arranged and orchestrated.

The schools remain closed with nobody being sure when they will reopen. The boarders return to their remote villages and the tow is quiet again – until the next time.
Robert L. Fielding

Letter from Sudan # 12

2007-02-04T01:23:00.000-08:00

-12-

It is a hot afternoon in the Gezira. Afternoons are always hot in Sudan. Nights in Gezira Province provide no exception. Likewise, the mornings, evenings and nights are hot, only the degree varies.

A cool evening chat turns to the question of the temperature. Our host, Ustaz Yassin, brings out a thermometer to settle the argument.. I personally would rather not have had the chance to look at its little column of mercury; it reads 95 C and I have lost my argument. I had said that it was no more than the mid 70s F.

The discussion turns to how hot the afternoon must have been if this pleasant has been wafting in the mid 90s. The general feeling is that it must have reached something like 110C between one and three o’clock. Our acclimatization must have reached a pretty advanced stage for 95C to feel ‘cool’ to the native of a far off land where people uncomfortable if the temperature reaches 80F.

We have certainly acclimatized to the heat of Sudan; it really does not feel anything like 95C is supposed to feel like. The abnormally high temperatures do take their toll though. Everyone I know suffers from nausea first thing in the morning and learns to live with it.

A Sudanese dawn lacks the freshness of an English morning. There is no dew to wipe away the dusts of the night before, and the smells linger to sicken. On the hottest summer’s day in Britain, the morning allows sufficient time to rise, wash and breakfast before turns all thoughts of food repulsive.

In our little hosh, catching any coolness there may be is a matter of stumbling in the dark and hearing the prolonged wails and chants as the Muazzin calls the faithful to prayer at four, his microphone crackling to announce his forthcoming recital from the Holy Koran.

The robust health of England all but gives way to dreary, melancholy disability and mental resources as well as physical strength must be called upon to overcome the feelings in the pit of the stomach that would make life a trudge if they were allowed to.

Some have been less fortunate. A mild feeling of nausea is quickly shaken off. The first cup of tea puts that feeling to flight. For some, it will take more than an early morning cuppa to shake off their ague. Several of my colleagues have had debilitating bouts of malaria, amoebic dysentery and other sundry unidentified doses of something akin to diarrhea, vomiting and feverish sweats that render the victim a pathetic bundle of weak humanity as it may ever be your misfortune to meet.

Out of three or four people sharing the same water supply, eating the same food, working in the same stifling classrooms and trying to sleep in the same warm nights, bathed in seat, one will develop some scourge that keep him awake long into the night, make his days torture and take away his appetite.

Should he stop drinking the large quantities of water that are vital to his general well being, his condition will ultimately deteriorate and he will need the doctor, a week off and a course of antibiotics. Why one individual should fall foul of the lurgy under conditions that entirely suit the other three is difficult to say.

Various answers are proffered in layman’s terms ranging from those that condemn the drinking of too much Pepsi Cola at all hours, to others, more serious and altogether more deprecating diagnoses including the clear signs and symptoms of a psychosomatic disability that might bode well for a buckshee ticket home.

Whatever the reason for the ailment that right now is real enough in its outward manifestations, the overall effect of such a harsh climate as the one peculiar to Sudan and presumably to all lands between 12 and 14 N, is bound to be detrimental to the wretched sufferer from the Home Counties, whose only previous experience of hot weather has been a fortnight in Torremalinos or a summer in Weybridge.

In a country such as we live in, it is easy to forget the forces of Nature and their effects on our health. Before irate English people with crippling arthritis, bronchitis or rheumatism feel forced to pick up their pens in anger, I shall qualify this outrageous statement regarding our apparent immunity from the more elemental effects of the blue planet upon which we dwell.

Granted, the climate, or more properly the weather in England does take its toll on our health. Ailments such as those already mentioned: arthritis, bronchitis and rheumatism all seem connected to the damp and the cold that we endure living in Britain.

With the demolition of poorer quality housing and the advent of central heating, double glazing and the like to make a life in England more bearable, I think we have sanitized, humanized, and tamed the physical conditions under which we live so that they no longer dominate our lives in the same way that they possibly did a hundred years ago or more recently than that.

It almost goes without saying that things are very different in sub-Saharan Africa, and Sudan in particular. It is easy, for instance, to forget or take for granted the part played in our lives by the land drain, the gutter and the grid, as well as the subterranean pipes and tunnels that lead unwanted water away to our rivers and to the sea.

Even all but the heaviest, most prolonged downpours leave no sign of having occurred at all a short time afterwards. The effects of heavy rain are only felt by most of us during the time between leaving home in the morning and arriving at work, and the reverse journey in the afternoon of each working day.

I know that children and cricketers, and lovers strolling out detest the heavy shower of rain that interrupts whatever it is they are doing, but those inconveniences are of a hugely different order to those experienced by the population of a country whose drainage systems are rudimentary or non-existent.

After the deluge, transport by whatever means is either a chore or impossible and can remain so for days afterwards. Sudanese homes do not have carpets on their floors, and for a very good reason; mud. In the aftermath of the rain, it is so plentiful that any movement ensures its presence in every home, on every sandal, and in between every toe on the soggy way home from wherever.

Like winter snow that stay through January and February, or used to, on the pavements of our High Streets when all but the remotest road within five miles of a motorway exit is as clear as a leafy autumn lane, the mud is put up with, swore at and slipped on until it disappears. People adapt to the conditions in which they find themselves; Lawrence wipes his brow, Scott wraps up and Aldrin and Armstrong deal with their weightlessness.

To the ‘howaja’ who has previously lived with Nature in its tamed, controlled form, who has had s gas fire to turn on when it is too cold and Wellington boots to put on when it is too wet, the nearness of the elements and their effects all too clearly illustrate man’s vulnerability and serve as a timely reminder that we are not after all the centre of the universe, that the Earth was not created so that we may do what we please with it, and that, in the grand scheme of Nature, man is fairly insignificant.

The lesson is a salutary one and humility rather than arrogance, understanding rather than crass ignorance, and a healthy respect for all things natural, including our fellow man moght help to make our brief stay on Earth a more pleasant one.
Robert L. Fielding

El Messelemiya Higher Secondary School for Boys: # 11

2007-01-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

People

The people of the Sudan are largely Muslim with people in the south of the country being Christian. In the Gezira, the only non-Muslims are the howajad. My colleague, Mohammed Ahmed, the teacher of Islam at the school, throws up his hands in amazement when I declare that I have no immediate wish to become a Muslim.

This is not bigotry or intolerance but a concern for my welfare in the hereafter. He concedes that I worship the one God, stating categorically that there is no God but God. It is in his next utterance that we differ. His insistence that Mohammed (PBUH) is His prophet separates us, but it is not significant enough to separate us in any other way than this difference in our beliefs.

Muslims acknowledge the existence of my prophet, but adhere to the teachings of Mohammed (PBUH) who came later to this mortal life. Perhaps the main difference between us is in our devotion; his is absolute whereas mine is rather tenuous, if consistently so. Mohammed Ahmed is not alone in his complete devotion to his religion, and prayer, one of the five pillars of Islam, is undertaken five times daily with the visit to the Mosque taking place on Fridays.

The twin influences of Islam and tradition inform the people of the most appropriate behaviour towards their fellow man; this is based on honesty, modesty, good neighbourliness and a genuine feeling of welfare for a fellow human being, Muslim or not.

You might say that Islam gives the people compassion, taking care of the poor being another of the pillars of Islam, whilst tradition puts this compassion into practice in the form of hospitality. Traditions and customs seem to occupy the same position that contractual obligations occupy in developed nations. Obligations here though are unspoken, and morally binding rather than written and only binding for the set period of the contract. Such obligations in Sudan ensure stability, continuity and more open behaviour that bodes well for society in general.

Perhaps the most striking evidence of this openness, to a stranger’s eyes particularly, is the way that the older members of the community are integrated into society in ways that are sadly becoming more and more common in England.

The elderly folk enjoy the respect of the young whilst they join in the social life of the towns and villages. Most nights will inevitably see old and young alike sitting drinking tea at the tables that surround the suq. The old provide the link with the past and the customs and traditions that serve to inform the younger members of the community.

This is not to say that the customs and traditions of Sudanese life are foisted on a tardy youth. On the contrary, the young fiercely defend these aspects of life to the hilt. I recently spent an enjoyable day in the company of several young men of 18 or 19 years of age and they heatedly discussed with me the detrimental effects that television was having on these social mores. They argued vehemently that the influence of TV was eroding standards of behaviour in Sudan – they wished something be done about it and implored me to give them an answer to this problem, and all my mental resources were stretched to provide them with an answer that stood up to their searching criticism.

The enthusiasm of my inquisitive companions assured me that this was no show or display of their ability to speak English for the ustaz from England. Rather, it was a frank and emotive discussion of a subject that greatly concerned them. I tried to think of the last time I had had such a discussion about the evils of TV with teenagers in England – I couldn’t recall one off hand.

I should be careful here not to paint a picture of the young people of the Sudan as being too severe or moralistic in their attitudes, although this is undoubtedly the case on certain issues. No, boys will be boys, and Sudanese boys are no exception, enjoying fun and games every bit as much as their counterparts the world over.

Fun and games though, doesn’t seem to involve the downfall or misfortune of others. Fighting, for instance, is rare, and the friendliness towards others in the community at large is found in miniature in the schoolyards, and although this is no place for a day Sermon on the Mount, I only say that we might do well to consider how other, supposedly less developed countries conduct themselves before we attribute to ourselves the accolade of a civilized existence.
Robert L. Fielding

El Messelemiya Higher Secondary School for Boys: # 10

2007-01-15T23:44:00.000-08:00

Leaks

For me, the rain presents another problem; my roof leaks and it is all I can do to keep my belongings out of the dirty water that pours in through holes that need fixing. I have been told that every roof leaks in this kind of rain – I presumed they meant ‘wet rain’ but didn’t ask.

Leaking roofs are nothing to write home about for the Sudanese teachers next door. It is the will of God and is stoically accepted. Besides, what if the roof does happen to let water in, there is nothing to get wet. The contents of an average Sudanese home wouldn’t fill a teenager’s bedroom in Bradford, Buxton or Birmingham.

There is nothing to get wet – except skin, and that is soon dried. In the howaja’s house it is different: he has four suitcases, a typewriter and an expensive camera to keep dry, he has ten shirts, four pairs of trousers and a check jacket to save, he has ‘Ulysses’, ‘Moby Dick’ and ‘Catch 22’ to cover, he has the portable remnants of a Western life to put into black poly bags and the rain is a problem.

It quickly passes, and I mop up, cursing my sieve of a roof. Perhaps I should be more like Salah and the others but Rome wasn’t built in a day and changing the habits and attitudes of as lifetime cannot be done overnight, particularly when that night is a wet one. I am trying but it will take time. A change in my attitude to life, a change from a Western orientation to a more relaxed pace that suits both the climate and the temperament of the Sudanese would certainly be to my advantage. My lesson in the Ministry of Education was a salutary one and I am learning.

In a land where change is at most gradual, and at least, almost non-existent, failure to adapt to the traditions and customs of its people, could and would make life more difficult than it need be. You might say that the average Englishman in Sudan needs to lower his sights regarding his surroundings, and raise them in his dealings with his fellow man.
Robert L. Fielding