In parts of the world where potable driving water isn’t something that can be taken for granted, Mafia-like organizations are bribing, colluding, embezzling, among other things in an effort to force the poor to pay premiums for access to clean, drinkable water. Nat Geo is currently featuring an article on water corruption around the world, and notes that even parts of the developed world are not immune to the practice.
In Honduras, for example, residents who either cannot afford connections to centralized water systems or live in places where water is not easily accessible pay 40 percent more for informal water supplies…In Bangladesh and Ecuador, mafia-like groups often collude with public water officials to prevent access to cheap water services.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that countries such as El Salvador, Jamaica, and Nicaragua spend more than 10 percent of their income on water services, in part due to corruption. In comparison, those in developed nations such as the United States pay approximately 3 percent.
As part of an ongoing series, Ray Nayler blogs about life in Central Asia.
How does one drive in a country with no rules? Or more specifically—how does one drive in a country where there are rules, but all of those rules are so undermined by corruption that the final result is chaos? On the main street of Dushanbe, Rudaki, it is not uncommon to see three or four traffic police clustered every twenty meters, their light blue shirts bulged over contented bellies, their orange plastic batons (they light up at night like blunt little light sabers) dangling from their thick wrists. They stand just beyond crosswalks and just after traffic lights, hoping that someone will break a law or that a foreigner will pass by and they can pull him over and try to convince him that he has broken a law. A friend of mine was once pulled over and told that it was illegal to wear his seatbelt inside the city. I was pulled over and informed that I had not let a nonexistent pedestrian cross the street. There is little to guide you (until recently, there were no lane markings on the 6-lane boulevard) and what signage there is is unclear. And all along the main street, hundreds of traffic cops are waiting. They pull you over, salute, and start explaining to you what you have done wrong. Then they threaten to take away your license. Or, they suggest with an oily little gleam in their eyes, you can pay a little something . . .
I don’t pay. I’ve paid enough to obtain the 5 completely useless documents necessary to drive here, in defiance of all international treaties, and I don’t feel like supporting their families. I say “sure, I’ll pay. Let me just call my embassy.” “Sure, I’ll pay. Let me get your name and badge number so I can just let my people know.”
There’s a joke that I heard over lunch once:
“What’s the difference between a cow and a traffic cop?”
“The cow goes from the road to the fields to eat. The traffic cop comes from the fields to the road to eat.”
Meanwhile, anyone with connections ignores all traffic laws. Illicitly purchased Porsche SUVs and Black Mercedes Coupes ram through the red lights without a glance, and the traffic cops turn their heads.
Off of the main street, the story is entirely different: the roads, neglected for decades and destroyed by tanks during the nearly decade-long civil war here in the 90’s, are a lumpen mess and becoming increasingly impassable with every year of neglect. Recently, Chinese companies have begun to rebuild some of the key roads, such as the one leading north across the Fan Mountains to Khujand—but where the roads are repaved and smooth, they have become increasingly lethal. People here will perform acts unthinkable in the US—acts we don’t even regulate against, like passing someone while they are passing someone else on a 2-lane road – or just flashing their lights while passing and heading straight into oncoming traffic. Villagers step without looking out into the roads, unused to the new, high speeds at which cars can travel.
And between the Chinese and the Tajiks, tempers flare, as road closures happen unannounced along the only intercity arteries in the country. There have been fights and even killings. The Tajiks accuse the Chinese of eating all the frogs and turtles in the rivers. The Chinese (and rightfully so) accuse the Tajiks of disregarding their personal safety. many roadworkers have been killed by incompetent or careless drivers.
No surprise in a country where a driver’s license can be purchased, and they are sometimes given to teenagers as a surprise birthday present.
So as I pilot my little Russian Niva 4WD my passengers often ask me: “How do you drive here?”
Travel Writer Stephanie Plentl goes to a covenant-turned-retreat in Hérépian, Languedoc in the south of France, to learn that Frenchwomen aren’t born chic, it’s an acquired skill.
As part of an ongoing series, Ray Nayler blogs about life in Central Asia.
Every Wednesday and Friday in Tajikistan, weather permitting, the Aga Khan foundation flies a helicopter from Dushanbe to the remote city of Khorog, in the Pamir mountains at an elevation of 2200 meters (7,200 feet) above sea level. If space allows, and you happen to work for an NGO here in Tajikistan, and have some business in the autonomous region of Gorno-Badakshan, you can sometimes get a ride. Gorno-Badakshan is the home of the Pamiri peoples, Ismail Muslims whose native languages are a series of obscure Eastern Iranian offshoots with fewer that 100,00 native speakers, Anya and I were lucky enough last Friday to benefit from the Aga Khan’s largesse, and hitched a ride on the helicopter to Khorog, where we planned to conduct recruiting for one of our programs as well as a re-entry seminar for our FLEX alumni, high school students freshly returned from the United States, in this remote corner of Tajikistan.
To use the phrase hitched a ride makes it sound as if it was easy, but there were, as always in Tajikistan, a number of bureaucratic hurdles to jump through, from getting permission for entry to the Gorno-Badakshan Autonomous Region to getting space on the helicopter itself. But all of the bureaucratic hassles melt away as the sleek Bell lifts from the Dushanbe runway and the ragged patchwork of agriculture at the edges of the capitol, the rusty bones of industry and scrapyards, give way to crenellated hills and wide, drying river beds with ribbons of water veining through them, reflecting the sun like mirrored glass. The helicopter banks gracefully southeast as the passengers, ears muffled in protective headphones against the engines’ roar, settle in to some of the most spectacular scenery the world has to offer.
As we move further from the capitol, the mountains grow drier, more violently twisted from the flatlands below, and more imposing. Knife-ridges of rock lay exposed to the eroding wind, and layers of sediment hardened to granite lay tilted to the sky by tectonics. From far off, it appears as if the loose earth is running down the mountains like water. Soon we are flying not over but through the mountains, with grey sentinels rising around us and white flashes of snow that grow, over time, to glaciers grinding their way down the mountainsides and, as we hover over Afghanistan, sawblade ridges of stone outside our windows. Below, the Pyandzh River winds its course, and villages nestle up to, splashes and streaks of cultivated green in the arid, twisting scene.
Emo culture. You know, the usually privileged urban/suburban teens who wear eye makeup, and whine incessantly about their abilities to feel sadness, the depth of which you will never be able to understand. In proposed Russian legislation (that I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to were it to be introduced in the United States) a ban is being called for on it. Russian authorities cite the negative influence it has on the youth of Russia who are apparently already facing a ‘spiritual and ethical crisis.’
Among other measures, the proposed legislation apparently calls for heavy regulation of emo web sites and for banning young people dressed like emos from entering schools and government buildings.
According to the bill, The “negative ideology” of emo culture may push young people toward depression and social withdrawal, and the movement carries a significant risk of suicide, especially for young girls.”
The [Moscow] Times says “The bill also outlines what it calls a ‘spiritual and ethical crisis’ facing Russian youth, including the high rate of alcohol abuse, teen abortions and ‘negative youth movements.’
Want a quality cup of joe in a sea of Nescafe? It’s gonna cost you.
Mercer’s annual survey of 143 of the world’s most expensive cities continues to be controversial in that it estimates average cost of living for expats with expense accounts, not local citizens. The results are used to help government agencies and companies sending employees abroad estimate cost of living and compensation allowances. That said, there’s no doubt that the Russian capitol can provoke some serious sticker shock, and Moscow, with its flashy oligarchs, including 74 billionaires, has topped Mercer’s list for the past three years for a good reason.
Numbers two and three on the list are, for the record, Toyko and London. New York clocked in at 22, and was the only American city in the top 50.
My advice for anyone looking to live in a major former Soviet Union city — find yourself a babushka who knows the black market well. Fast. Before some multinational gelatinizes, plastic-packages, and slaps a hefty price tag on the good sour cream.
Don’t ask, because foreigners don’t want to tell. Or at least that’s what China has told its citizens about questions related to “age, salary, love life, health, income, political views, religious beliefs or personal experiences.”
“Personal experiences?” What all does that include?
The Beijing government notes that it’s normal for Chinese people to ask such questions to people they’ve just met, but that “foreigners respond negatively.”
In advance of the Paralympics, Beijing has also created educational materials designed to teach citizens how to communicate with disabled people.
Locals are told not to use phrases such as “It’s up there,” or “It’s over there” when talking to anyone who is visually impaired, and to avoid phrases such as “It’s behind you” to physically impaired athletes.
Instead, locals are recommended to use phrases such as, “You are really great,” or “You are wonderful.”
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In May, Beijing organizers apologized for a training manual issued to thousands of Olympic and Paralympic volunteers following complaints about inappropriate language used to describe disabled athletes.
As part of an ongoing series, Ray Nayler blogs about life in Central Asia.
I’m not sure there is anything more grueling than moving households in the Former Soviet Union, but so much of the process is a dull blur of pushing through that I hesitate to communicate it in a traditional, narrative way. Instead, I’ll pick out some moments to pull you along with me.
At Domodedova Airport in Moscow, I find myself with a grumpy cat in a plastic, ventilated cage and 18 boxes and suitcases, loaded onto two of those familiar-to-everyone airport carts, trying to navigate through security. It is just Anya and I, and I have, as I will discover when I check in for my flight to Dushanbe, 193 kilos, or around 420 pounds, of overweight luggage. This, I later ponder, is a clear mark that I am no longer a visitor here: In fact, I no longer live in the United States, where I keep a permanent address and a few boxes at my father’s Sunnyvale home. The uncountable weight of nostalgia I carry with me, along with an ever-growing library of books in both English and Russian.
My wife Anya and I part before security and passport control, and somehow, after much scanning and prodding and taking the cat out of her cage (terrified, she clings to my shirt), they let us pass to the gate.
In the middle of the night I wake up to the aging Tupelov plunging though turbulence. Near the tail section of the groaning, roaring plane, it is ice-cold. The captain reminds everyone to buckle their seat belts. Over the past few years I have had a growing fear of air travel—as if, every time I board one of these decrepit, aging soviet ships, death creeps a litle closer to me. Though the odds are with me, still, I feel a claw upon my shoulder. The plane luches hard over the mountains. In the dawn, the peaks emerge below snow and brown, the highest points devoid of vegetation, then giving way as we approach Dushanbe to disordered green and the rooftops of villages that seem, somehow, to signal safety.
Seems the other end of the spectrum (see below) might be just across the sea. While China struggles to convince it’s citizens not to eat dogs, the Japanese are busy dancing — yes, dancing — with theirs.
From one end of the spectrum to the other: in China dogs don’t get psychotropic medication and behaviorist visits, they get eaten. “Fragrant meat,” as it is known there, is consumed by some for its purported medicinal value. But in the wake of the upcoming Beijing Olympics, the Beijing Catering Trade Association has banned dog meat from all 112 official Olympic restaurants in fear of offending foreign visitors. It’s all part of a larger initiative to encourage the Chinese to “respect the habits of many countries and nationalities,” including smiling more and not spitting in the streets. A dog meat ban also occurred during the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
The first I heard of dogs visiting behaviorists or taking anti-depressants was, stereotypically, in California. Some friends of friends had an otherwise wonderful pup whom they’d adopted from a shelter, who, when left alone would proceed to take out his loneliness on the furnishings. He not only peed on couches, but also, desperate to join his ‘mom and dad’ shredded the paint and first several layers of wood off a door with his teeth and/or toe nails. The owners (ahem, ‘guardians’ in San Francisco), after consulting a behaviorist, tried giving their dog treats before they left the house. The thought was that he would associate a dramatic exit with reward. When this didn’t work, they tried sneaking out without him spotting or hearing them. After coming home to an ever more shredded door, and later, a mangled dog cage, they decided it was time to try doggie Prozac.
Separation anxiety is the most commonly diagnosed mental ailment among American pets, but obsessive-compulsive disorder and even schizophrenia have been recorded. And, with growing diagnoses, major pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly and Pfizer have launched “companion animal lines” that allow them to, potentially, reach the same clients through even more avenues. Americans spent approximately $15 million last year on pet behavior modifying remedies.
The New York Times Magazine has a long but intriguing piece on Pill-Popping Pets — Dogs, Cats, and Mood-Altering Drugs. Meet Max the OCD tail-biter, Booboo the schizo kitty, and Zoey the aggressive food-fighter, and wonder whether, yikes, separation anxiety isn’t just the tip of the iceberg, and whoa, what brought this on?
One thought had haunted me as I listened to the Bridges’ story: If I were locked inside the bathroom all day, I’d swallow the shampoo, too. Although most animal-behavior problems are believed to have genetic roots, their expressions are typically triggered by the unnatural lives that people force their pets to lead. “A dog that lived on a farm and ran around chasing rabbits all day would be more prone to being stable than a dog living in an apartment in Manhattan,” Dodman says. Undomesticated canids, neither confined nor excessively attached to people, don’t suffer from separation anxiety. Some captive horses endlessly circle their stalls or corrals — a compulsive behavior similar to Max’s tail chasing — but such purposeless repetitions have never been observed in the wild.
Jason P. Howe was trying to earn his photojournalism chops documenting both sides of the brutal Colombian civil war. Along the way, he fell love with a woman, whom he would later find out was an AUC paramilitary assassin. This is his retelling of his entanglement in a conflict that has killed over 200,000 in the last 40 years, and that has often forced regular people into morally precarious and extraordinary situations.
To dismiss all this brutality as a simple war over drugs does the Colombian people a gross injustice. Its roots are buried in the economic and social imbalance that permeates the country, a huge working class living in poverty, lining the pockets of a tiny, wealthy upper class who own more than 90 per cent of the land, industry and business. My goal, therefore, was to meet and photograph members of each of the groups involved, and to attempt explain Latin America’s 40-year conflict.
Initially, Jason met Marylin on a bus and ended up staying with her family for a few weeks. During close to a year of on and off courtship, Marylin joined the AUC and began to progress through the organization.
She then hit me with a confession that would both thrill and confuse me. She explained that in the months that I had been away in Iraq her role within the AUC had changed; she had joined the urban militia and become an assassin. Her job was now to eliminate informers and traitors. So far, she told me, she had killed at least 10 people in the area. I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, Marylin looked at me through the smoke as I exhaled, waiting to see how I would respond to what she had just told me.
Strangely, her confession did not have the impact one would expect; I did not recoil in horror. The months I had spent in Colombia and in Iraq surrounded by violence had altered my perspective. I don’t think that I had become immune to death or suffering but I had certainly become less easily shocked. The difference between victim and victor, rebel and refugee, often felt like only a matter of perspective.
Harper’s has a really fascinating article on ‘culture-bound syndromes’ (mental illnesses specific to a culture) in which Frank Bures travels to Nigeria to explore the epidemic of magical genital theft, which is believed to have started in the mid 1970s, and is still occurring in Nigeria to this day. The phenomenon usually consists of a man or woman publicly accusing another person of making their genitals shrink or disappear completely. Often the accused thief is caught and killed. If the accuser seeks medical attention and is informed that their genitals are intact, they often act shocked, believing their genitals have magically reappeared.
An epidemic of penis theft swept Nigeria between 1975 and 1977. Then there seemed to be a lull until 1990, when the stealing resurged. “Men could be seen in the streets of Lagos holding on to their genitalia either openly or discreetly with their hand in their pockets,” Ilechukwu wrote. “Women were also seen holding on to their breasts directly or discreetly, by crossing the hands across the chest. . . . Vigilance and anticipatory aggression were thought to be good prophylaxes. This led to further breakdown of law and order.” In a typical incident, someone would suddenly yell: Thief! My genitals are gone! Then a culprit would be identified, apprehended, and, often, killed.
During the past decade and a half, the thievery seems not to have abated. In April 2001, mobs in Nigeria lynched at least twelve suspected penis thieves. In November of that same year, there were at least five similar deaths in neighboring Benin. One survey counted fifty-six “separate cases of genital shrinking, disappearance, and snatching” in West Africa between 1997 and 2003, with at least thirty-six suspected penis thieves killed at the hands of angry mobs during that period. These incidents have been reported in local newspapers but are little known outside the region.
Cool Things in Random Places has a really amazing gallery of rice field art in Japan. Apparently, they plant different types of rice for different colors, and the art only lasts until the rice is harvested.
