Showing posts with label island. Show all posts
Showing posts with label island. Show all posts
St. Vincent's Remedy
It’s not the cure-all for the deficiencies of mankind but it does its best. There are island choices, whether to read a book or sit on the balcony in the sun and surrender, sublimely, to the translucent waters of
When inactivity becomes entirely too
inactive the beach is just a few strides away, to swim or with flippers and
snorkel to greet the fish, multicoloured, striped, with long snouts or googly
eyes. It’s to be observed that the postcard paradise continues underwater. Lucelle,
meanwhile, might be taking her husband for a dip; but there’ll be no crowds to
contend with, there.
Things to think of are not absolutely
absent, don’t misunderstand: it’s best not to swim out too far lest Bequia’s
currents sweep you away, and don’t get caught up, irretrievably, in the dreamy
pink palette of the Caribbean sunset,
either. But it’s not much to worry
about. There’s a lot of goodness in St. Vincent
to find you. Life won’t bother you much, there.
Lucelle doesn’t have guests. It’s one of
the first things she says, that at her laid back hotel she only has friends.
Even if you’re new friends, arriving at her little patch of Indian Bay fresh
from the airport, just in from Grenada, you’ll understand it easily that she’s
not only saying that. When she learns you have no car it’s unimportant because
in her older model, brown car she takes enjoyment from showing her friends a
lot of the little main island. Lucelle is proud of her West Indian nation,
independent since 1979 and homeland to 120,000 people, her SVG.
You’ll wonder if it was Lucelle who added
the final touches to island calm or if the island brought its kindly
disposition to bear on her. There’s an inkling of the sound of the waves in her
demeanour and the soft crunch of beach sand in her pace. Or perhaps it’s merely
the sort of gentleness to be expected from a diplomat’s wife.
By narrow road into the green hills away
from the coast she took us to the gardens of Mesopotamia .
We strolled and chatted among a bounty of fruit, patterned leaf and orchid
flower; and the conversation flowed as simply as the stream, there.
Yet it’s no cure-all. Wherever there are
humans there are problems and we can see this by the black sand beaches of the
east coast. Lucelle wanted to show us the tunnel dug under the hillside by
African-origin slaves, at the time when the British engaged the island in sugar
production. There aren’t natural harbours on the east side so the tunnel was a
convenience through which trolleys of cane could be hauled and loaded aboard
small boats and anchored ships. The British ordered the landscape altered,
there.
But there exists no obstacle that can
obstruct beauty, according to St. Vincent , and
what should have been a morbid site of slavery’s remodelling, wasn’t. A melange
of colour and shade, the walls of whitish rock were covered in lichen in bright
red and fluorescent green, turning a horrific history toward art. Over time St. Vincent ’s remedy had done its best, making new beauty
with a little weathering. We should remember people’s goodness and struggle,
and not only their suffering: it’s a reminder.
She drove on, north, to colonial looking Georgetown
Above the clouds, Soufrière’s active bellybutton
peak in the island’s north is out of view; it’s the skyward tip of the painted
parasol of an island and it can erupt, and disrupt, again. Yet it’s true, St. Vincent would over time remodel any catastrophe, to
make new beauty, with a little weathering.
Wherever there are humans there are
struggles and Lucelle tells us of youth unemployment and the fear that her SVG
could fall into the trap of drugs and crime that has already beset some of the
neighbouring island nations. But she shows us the new schools the Vincentian
government has built and the site of a proposed larger airport that could
accommodate larger planes to help the tourism industry to bloom. She considers
if her SVG couldn’t become the IT hub of the Windies. She sees a bright future,
there.
Meanwhile beyond the capital Kingstown on the west coast and another day the older
model brown car drove to the little bay of the Hollywood
treasure chest, where the movie Pirates
of the Caribbean was filmed. Swashbuckling sets, warehouses and coffins are
still, there. And in the small town of Barrouallie
Sometimes Lucelle would come to us and we’d
sit in lazy chairs on the balcony overlooking Indian Bay
She remembers the parties of Europe back in the diplomat days and smiles, and I won’t
tell the whole of it but I did want to mention about her husband, who suffers
from dementia. She helps him to the beach and back twice a day, for a swim; and
he needs a lot of care, not always knowing who she is. Sometimes in the
not-knowing he can act with violence.
So when Lucelle worries about his safety,
when she worries he might wander off and finds it hard to speak of these
things; when she says ‘He was very good to me,’ it’s really something to
respect. That there’s a kind of entwining in this world that can overcome any
obstacle: it’s a reminder. Sometimes we need reminders and Lucelle was an exceptional
one: we saw so much goodness in her.
One day, she said, she walked into a bank
in Kingstown
SVG is not the cure-all for the
deficiencies of mankind but it does its best.
* I * S * L * A * N * D * S *
Cyprus
Taiwan
Malta
Hatiya
Hongdo
West Indies
This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: St. Vincent's Remedy
The Fish of Hongdo
It happened fast. Racing over the water, the small boat appeared suddenly, bashing against the minor waves as it crossed them, with the whirring of its motor growing louder as it unexpectedly closed in. The vessel I was on was larger but even if it tried to power away it could hardly have escaped. It was too late for that. What did they want?
I could only take my cue from the other
passengers and the crew, because with everything happening in Korean I was at a
minor disadvantage. The small boat sidled up to ours, its motor cut as an
animated conversation across the gap of water began. The passengers were
fussing; they seemed to be negotiating. It happened near the coast of Hongdo, Red Island ,
in the Yellow Sea .
Winter had come to South Korea
It’s in Korea China
At closer quarters the islands are similarly unwilling to conform to standardised design specifics. A vast range of rock shapes, delicate, unusual and unexpected, document the drop of the island into the sea. Or at least on Hongdo they do. One of the furthest islands from the mainland, Hongdo is famous for the artistry of wind and wave, which is why tourists go there. It’s the reason I was on that boat.
It’s not difficult to reach Hongdo. There are scheduled ferry services to cover the 115 kilometres from Mokpo City
It’s not difficult to organise the two-hour circumnavigation tour of the island by boat, which is the best way to appreciate the gallery of rock formations, nature’s art.
But before that it’s possible to follow the Il-gu-to-I-gu road, the stone and dirt pathway up the nearer hill that rises to about 200 metres. There, the camellia bushes grow large and create, in places, a tunnel. The views, over the island, over the sea and down to the villages, are deep breaths of oxygen, life-bringing. The island takes its name, Red, from the effect of each sunset on its rocks and cliffs; although in spring there is the red bloom of the camellias to be considered.
It was on the second day, near to the end of the circumnavigation tour, that the smaller boat had suddenly appeared. Aboard I could see three men, in thick jackets, two in baseball caps. They had knives.
The passengers were animated. What’s going on, I thought. It was only a matter of moments before the nature of the trouble became apparent.
It was about fish. Fresher fish there could not be. The fishermen in the smaller boat had just caught them and wished to sell them. Meanwhile the fish flapped about in a water-filled bucket.
Although I realise it’s nearly criminal activity in Bangladesh
I watched as fish were sold, the unusual part being in how they were delivered: pre-chopped and salted. With each sale the fishermen took the fish to a wooden board on the deck of their boat, scaled and gutted them on the spot, cutting them into thin strips of boneless meat. Then they were sprinkled with salt, put into a bag and handed across to the larger boat.
The even more unusual part was how they were eaten: directly. There was, I thought, a missing step in the process, in accordance with usual procedure: the cooking part. I watched as Koreans took thin strips of raw fish by hand and pushed them into their mouths.
I was fortunate, arguably, because on our boat was one Ms. Kim from Suwon , near to Seoul
At the same time from somewhere that rice wine, the Korean version called soju, surfaced, to accompany the fish. So I joined in: a nip of soju, then a few strips of salted raw fish gulped down the throat just as a pelican might do. It wasn’t bad, actually, although it might’ve been better not to know what it was. The mood on the boat became festive as everyone, and I was the only foreigner among them, drank and ate.
I don’t wish to imply it was the first time I’d faced raw fish during that preceding first week in South Korea
This result was despite my deliberately having tried to increase the chances of variation, by pointing towards the top of one menu at lunch and towards the bottom of another during dinner. Somehow, I was remarkably consistent in my random choices. Yet I was sure Koreans ate other things.
But of all the raw fish that followed, chased and hunted me down, it was the fish of Hongdo that was the most special, and clearly the freshest.
These days in Dhaka it’s usual to consider the freshness of food, especially when eating from a street side stall. Food freshness is an important consideration anywhere.
It’s just that in countries with a national cuisine that’s something like South Korea’s, a further consideration for the uninitiated might be if the food isn’t actually, on occasion, a little too fresh.
Or, probably, it’s the sort of thing one learns to enjoy.
Seeing the Mountain
Once there were 13,000 inhabitants on the island of Montserrat Plymouth
Wake up. The alarm clock is ringing. The Earth is calling. The sun has risen over the waves of the sea to say that the time of unconsciousness is ended. It is morning. Dreams are to take rest and memory processing to cease, even on the idyllic shores of the Caribbean island of Montserrat
People are opening their stores in the main street of Plymouth
Imagine. The circle of the sun, the gravity to hold them, the energy of food and the physics of human movement: the many life-defining forces that bring predictability and comfort. The routines of sea breeze and season; the ebb and flow in the tides; the phases of the moon; and the greeting of friend and neighbour: all the natural systems to promote a laid back sense of continuum. There must’ve been that usual perception of lives languidly evolving, in small steps barely discernable, like the leeward waves spreading out on the sand.
It’s an easy matter that the Montserratians didn’t see their mountain, because a mountain that sits nearby all the time will with certainty fade into invisibility.
All the years of growth and change, from childhood to old age, the whole of a human lifetime: for the ocean and the land it’s just the blink of an eye. The Earth has its own cycles and ambitions that last ages and eons rather than months and years. On 18 July 1995 it was time for the mountain they call Soufrière Hills to wake up.
There were signs. For three years there had been stirring, seismic yawning to indicate the final stages of a slumber that had endured since prehistory. But you know how minor tremors are: they reverberate through the ground and on into human gossip, what one was doing at the time and a whole series of ‘what ifs’, only to disperse from consciousness once more as the forces, the going to work, the fishing and the writing of a letter with a pen reclaim their centrality.
They knew it was a volcano. But with the thick of the forest covering the slopes it must’ve seemed a rather friendly one. Yet when a mountain chooses to move, finally, there are none that can deny it. So it was when Soufrière Hills erupted.
Wake up. The volcano is waiting. It’s 2006, the day we’re going to Montserrat . The little plane with propellers will take us, there and back across the short stretch of Caribbean from Antigua to the new airport in Montserrat . We’ll see what they call the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean : the forested north, the planned but soulless settlements where one-third of the evacuees from the island’s south now live. We’ll drive to vantage points to collect our thoughts in view of the exclusion zone, the half of the island given in to rubble and mud. We’ll see their Soufrière Hills spewing forth boulders that tumble down the hillside leaving tails of dust. From the distance those rocks look as pebbles, so easily are they tossed. We’ll see the great brew of their cloud and smoke that as far as Antigua changes the colour of sunsets. It’s the ash and cinders the vulcanologists call tephra, the airborne fragments called pyroclasms. We’ll hear their mountain: a continuous, distant rumbling is the voice of the Earth.
The old airport, it’s down there, only a minor patch of tarmac left. That’s the end of the runway with white lines still painted on it. See it! The control tower looks as an archaeological relic protruding from the mud.
On the leeward side we’ll go as far as we can towards abandoned Plymouth Plymouth
On a red tile at a safe distance we will leave our handprints in the dust that covers everything, there too, as we hear how the Montserratians occasionally need face masks when the wind blows northward, when the volcanic storms that fertilise the surrounding islands of the West Indies and far across the Caribbean , keep busy their brooms.
We will stop in the green north again to drink from a small spring on the hillside. There’s a sign that reads: ‘If you drink from this burn, you will surely return.’ But for the two-thirds of Montserratians who left for surrounding islands and Britain
In the evening fromAntigua , as we eat dinner, we will see the stripes of fire on their Soufrière Hills horizon, bringing light to the night as sure as their mountain once endowed darkness upon the day.
In the evening from
Wake up. It’s 2013. It’s the other side of the world, in Dhaka, in Bangladesh Montserrat ; rather in a positive, healing way. Maybe it was always there, you know, the mountain we didn’t see.
The alarm clock is ringing. The Earth is calling.
The alarm clock is ringing. The Earth is calling.
From Montserrat. South lies Trinidad where the birds mimic the sun. Southeast lies sweet, sweet Barbados where the waves speak of liberty. Southwest, a little far, the Earth offers a blessing. While on a distant continent, south, very south, extinct volcanoes spell adventure.
Diabula Did It
It must’ve taken a measure of bravery for
the Portuguese to first set out on their voyages of discovery in the fifteenth
century. With the weight of the unknown,
the myths of sea monsters and risk of falling off the edge of a flat world they
nonetheless set forth. By the following
century they’d made it as far as the Bay of Bengal where ultimately they
established a port in Chittagong and a
settlement on nearby Sandwip
Island
Kashem Bhai of Rahania village in
modern-day Hatiya is not Portuguese and he certainly has little in common with
Henry the Navigator or Vasco Da Gama.
Unlike any Portuguese explorer indeed, it is with considerable care that
Kashem Bhai contemplates his actions, and the actions of others. He’s someone who finds no delight in
risk-taking.
In the night sky over Hatiya, every few
minutes there are the lights of planes, transcontinental, small and very
high. We’ve considered it might be the
Hong Kong to Dubai
There’s also the important matter of
ceiling fans. Kashem Bhai wonders how it
is that people can sleep under them, what should happen if during the night the
fan were to fall. ‘How risky!’ he says,
‘Why do people trust their lives to a single, small screw!’ He means the one
holding the fan in place. ‘Is it really
necessary?’ Living in Rahania, Kashem
Bhai is lucky not to have to face the threat of ceiling fans often. On any island electricity is not a
straightforward matter and what electricity there is in Hatiya seems to have
got lost somewhere along the way to Kashem’s village.
It comes as a surprise, therefore, to hear
of the occasion when Kashem Bhai’s careful planning and risk avoidance considerations
failed him. It was on a day that started
like any other. As with many a villager,
Kashem’s hours are normally consumed with chores and duties, household this and
marketing that. But on that day Kashem
Bhai decided he was in need of rest, and as he lives by the Hatiyan coastline
it was little trouble to gather a few friends and propose several hours of adda at the beach. There’s usually a welcome breeze blowing in from
the Bay of Bengal there, he knew, and it’s not
a place where the day’s duties could track him down.
Getting there presents few problems. It’s simple enough to follow path-and-aisle
between the rice fields and to negotiate the muddy crossings of the tidal channels
in the open land they call ‘The Garden.’ Nor is it overly challenging to zigzag
through gaps in the coastal shawl of the mangroves beyond. There’s usually a patch of dry sand or a
grassy clearing nearby; the local fishermen can advise as to the best place for
adda on any day, in accordance with
the Bay of Bengal ’s latest artistry.
But it’s also a simple scientific fact that
adda is not restricted by daylight or
tides, and it was well into the afternoon the small party of conversationalists
thought to return. The best way back
changes as tides come in and in the darkness it’s not as simple to watch out
for cobras; nor are there too many paths to choose from due to the channels and
the rice fields. But as that afternoon
wore on there arose an even more pressing problem: society and that peculiar
disadvantage of being a respectable member of it.
Unfortunately, on the very day Kashem Bhai determined
to go to the beach was also scheduled an important shalish, a public mediation.
Even from the beach Kashem could see the distant bazaar was crowded with
onlookers and participants, ready for the event. Kashem Bhai considered his reputation: what
would people think if they saw his little group of friends returning from the
beach at a late hour? Would word of
their wasting time on adda reach
their wives? So they waited.
Unfortunately the mediation was a land
dispute that had generated a good deal of interest. There was much to be said and technicalities
to be considered. It’s a simple
scientific fact that village mediations are not restricted by daylight or
tides. As the path to the bazaar started
fading towards darkness and the water started coming in, it seemed as though the
shalish would never end.
Eventually the group could wait no longer;
but if perhaps they walked apart they might yet be able to reach their homes
inconspicuously. At any rate they’d need
to try. One by one they set off: through
the mangroves, jumping over muddy channels and weaving a way through The
Garden.
The crowd proved to be a blessing, with
each of Kashem’s friends able to enter the market from the sea side unhindered
and without remark. It was dark by
then. But unfortunately, just as Kashem
Bhai’s feet found the start of the bazaar he was spotted. ‘Kashem Miah, where have you been?’ Abdullah
Member asked.
Kashem Bhai didn’t know what to say. But fortune favoured him because after a
moment a convenient skerrick of local folklore came to mind: the legendary
Diabula.
Kashem embarked upon a carefully crafted
tale, about how he had been walking home from the bazaar to his house as he
usually might, when for some reason he found himself walking and walking, still
walking, and still not seeming to cover the short distance to his home. Finding his situation odd, Kashem Bhai
explained, he started to think it was Diabula’s work.
In Hatiya, Diabula is an invisible spirit
but not a jinn or a bhoot of the
ordinary sort. Diabula has the
particular trick of snatching people’s sense of direction and leading them
astray; and people are at greatest risk of attack when they walk alone.
Kashem Bhai told Abdullah Member that he
stopped walking and on suspicions of Diabula thought to turn his lungee upside
down. This action is the commonly
understood remedy for Diabula’s handiwork.
And when he did so, just about half an hour earlier, Kashem Bhai
continued, he was shocked to find himself, quite inexplicably, at the beach!
Having enjoyed the little tale, Abdullah
Member could have no further questions.
It’s strange to think that the Portuguese
journeys of several hundred years ago may have assisted Kashem Bhai as he
entered the bazaar that day. It’s just a
theory, but is it impossible to imagine that the islanders’ Diabula was long
ago derived from the Portuguese diabo,
the word for the devil?
Why not stay a while longer on Hatiya Island or in Bangladesh, go west for Paschimbangan mangoes or east for Thai buffaloes, whiteboards and refrigerators?
This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Diabula Did It
Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh
This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Diabula Did It
Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh
Prothom Alo Article: My Bangladesh
English translation below.
English Translation:
My Bangladesh
I’ve been given the world’s most difficult
task: to write just one thousand words about our Bangladesh,
or my Bangladesh,
the one that has been in my life for the past sixteen years. How to choose which morsels of information to
include? I would not attempt such a task
except that the request comes from a newspaper of renown, Prothom Alo, to
contribute to their anniversary edition no less, so I have no choice but to
try.
‘Why do you live in Bangladesh?’ It’s hardly an uncommon question. CNG drivers laugh. ‘Bangladeshis go to Australia,’ they say, ‘and you are
coming the other way?’ Hospital staff
once admonished my friend, saying, ‘Tell him not to waste his life here!’ If I say that I like living in Bangladesh, local
reaction ranges from puzzled bemusement to perplexed wonder. And that in itself is reason to admire Bangladesh.
I’d like to say it’s different in Australia, but
it’s only different in the sense that while Bangladeshi thought stems in
general from humility and lack of international experience, Australian reaction
stems from prejudice and lack of international experience. My sister said once, disparagingly, ‘But it’s
a developing country.’ Apart from a few
hours in Mexico
I don’t believe she’s been to a developing country so she doesn’t know what
she’s talking about. My oldest brother
meanwhile commented that Bangladesh
was Hindu: to his mind some version or other of India. Bangladesh remains a country that
is less well-known.
To the CNG drivers I say, ‘Okay, but in Bangladesh the
hardest part is work. If you have a reasonable
income then it’s a fantastic place to live.’
To my sister there’s nothing to say. Her views are immutably negative. It was with bewilderment in her voice that
she told me over the phone how much Mum and Dad enjoyed their visit last year,
to Dhaka and the village in Hatiya. Bangladeshis meanwhile were delighted to see
the village photos on Facebook, of Mum in a sari and Dad in lungee. Those clothing items were gifts from my
Bengali family, the one who by neither blood nor marriage became my Bengali
family over the course of sixteen years, for more or less no reason than
because it happened. There’s a
particularly nice photo of all the parents together: Mum, Dad and Amma. My Abba passed away before I met him.
Bangladesh: how to explain? I could do
worse than start with this afternoon, when I was on the phone to Dinajpur to my
Bua’s mother. After a belated Eid greeting it came: the dawat.
I know it’s a cliché, the tremendous hospitality of Bengalis, but I am
forced to mention it because it’s true.
‘If a Bengali has five taka in their pocket,’ a Dhakaite friend said,
‘they’ll spend ten buying tea for their friends.’ Although I never seem to have the opportunity
to take up most of these dawats they
arrive almost daily; and while some of it has to do with being a foreigner, I’ve
seen how liberal and hospitable Bengalis are to my friends also, fellow
Bengalis. So it isn’t only because I am
a westerner, at least not all the time, and in Hatiya it never is, not anymore.
Of course hospitality and thoughtfulness
are culturally specific. I saw that on
the day Mum and Dad travelled on Hatiya’s rough dirt roads by motorised tom tom
to Rahmat Bazaar on the coast, near the beach where I once played kabbadi with Nashir and his
cousins. It was a slightly brave journey
because those roads aren’t in good condition and the tom tom nearly fell
through a hole in one of the small concrete bridges.
Mum and Dad are in their seventies and at
Rahmat Bazaar they were tired, although my mother was actually tempted to take up
Pankaj’s offer of a haircut in his tin shed saloon. Instead he cut mine. But we couldn’t leave because Arif the tom
tom driver had to take his children home from their school examination and we
had to wait for him. We took rest at a
nearby house on hastily arranged chairs in the shady yard.
Well, there was a bit of a fuss: the
householder tried very hard to make us stay for lunch, although I don’t know
him as such, and even though we declined he secretly sent for supplies from the
bazaar in order to start cooking. To him
it was unthinkable people could walk into his yard and not be fed more than tea
and biscuits.
Well, there was a bit of a fuss: my mother
was greatly concerned because, in her Australian thinking, we’d intruded. ‘Are you sure they don’t mind us sitting in
their yard?’ she kept asking. It
reminded me of how I was when I first came to Bangladesh. In Australia thoughtfulness sometimes
centres on privacy. When the tom tom returned
my mother, in English, warmly thanked our host for letting us sit there, which
he had no hope of comprehending, not meaning the language but because thanking
a Hatiyala for sitting in their yard is a bit like thanking the air for letting
us breathe it. In any case the
householder was still frantically negotiating: if he couldn’t feed all of us
then maybe just my friend’s children who were with us? He should be feeding someone!
‘Do you know him?’ my mother quizzed me
later.
‘Anybody would do that.’
Cultures grant us new ways to think. Just as my mother’s thoughts were totally
logical and obvious, so were the Bangladeshi thoughts of hospitality. It is just one tiny example of how things
differ. Why Bangladesh? It’s because there’s so
much to learn here, so many qualities to admire and welcome experiences to
have. It’s because Bengali ways have
become as natural and obvious as the Australian ways I was born into.
And it’s odd that feeling that used to be,
when I would visit Bangladesh annually: on leaving Sydney by plane with the
predictable ‘going away’ thoughts going on, only for the plane to descend
twelve hours later into Dhaka, with an undeniable but technically incorrect ‘coming
home’ happiness welling up inside.
Australians would over analyse that last sentence, seeking to rationalise
and capture it. And in this instance the
Australians would be wrong: it’s the more poetic and spiritual, easy acceptance
of things that Bangladeshis demonstrate which gives the answer here. Sometimes things just are.
Andrew Eagle is an Australian citizen who has been a
regular visitor to Hatiya, Noakhali, for the past sixteen years and considers
Hatiya, where his friend Reja Ali Mobarak (Situ) is from, also to be his gramer bari. For the past four years he has lived continuously
in Dhaka and he contributes regular articles to Star Magazine of the Daily
Star, Prothom Alo’s English language sister concern.
Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
