Self Help Africa

Posted on July 25, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Self Help Africa is the new magic word and the name of a program that has several groups around the country in Malawi. So we went to see one of those new, inspiring groups in the Zomba region. After some indications received by officials, we ended up in one of the local offices of the Ministry of Agriculture in a small village. There they told us the Self Help Africa group did not exist any more because the donor stopped. Apparently a Self Help group starts on the basis of donations and is supposed to do things alone after a while. What could have been done was to hand the group over to local officials or other projects but this wasn’t done. Logically, in my eyes, as the method was supposed to be self help so why hand it over. Anyway not the most successful project I heard about so far…

At the office that was about agriculture, we did see a girl who came there for help: she was bitten several times by a raging (rabies) dog. She was placed on a bike and fastly driven away: I don’t know where, given the fact that we were a bit in the middle of nowhere – and I don’t know how much time she would have. She was very calm and very sad. I hope she ended up well.

Other blogs about this theme:
Millenium village Southern Malawi
Aid for orphans in Malawi

Other blogs about this region:
Zomba: creative use of waterpipes
Malawi Fever Tree

Dead Aid in Malawi

Posted on July 24, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Dambisa Moyo is an economist, born in Zambia, and the author of the New York Times Bestseller “Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa”. In the past fifty years, she writes, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse. Dead Aid offers proposals for developing countries to finance development, instead of relying on foreign aid. If you don’t know about her ideas yet, find more at www.dambisamoyo.com.

Walking around in Malawi, that is among the 5 poorest countries in the world and relies for more than 50% of the national budget on external donors, her book becomes a living truth. The police here is paid by the English, treatment against aids for over 300.000 people is paid by the Italians. On every corner a charity can be found but there appears to be no economy. Moreover, the harvest has failed in large parts of the country so that hunger is expected the coming months for over a million people here. I have never been in a country that was more desperately seeking for aid, and that donors feel compelled to give aid to. The words of Dambisa Moyo that aid is an addiction, both for donors and for receivers, can be seen in practice here.

Many workers ‘in the field’ realize that aid, after fifty (!) years of aid already, is not the right answer for the problems of Malawi. A totally different approach is necessary, but they are squeezed between the two groups of aid-addicts:
1. The donors on the one side who want to answer to immediate needs of the Malawi people in the same way they always did, and who in many cases pay their salaries and the means they work with;
2. The Malawi people on the other side for whom it has become completely normal to rely on external sources and to ask for more, as much as possible, and who knock directly on their door.

However, things are going to change. The publication of Dead Aid a few years ago was a first sign. The economic crisis in the West, that brings new ways of thinking not just about the western world itself but also about ‘the way things are done’ in relation to the rest of the world, is a second sign. And for everybody who is travelling in Malawi, subtile notions are there that the acceptance of whites will not be so big any more in the years to come – like it happened in other southern African countries already; that is a third sign.

The situation in Malawi is absolutely an example of Dead Aid; may it also become an example of the solutions that Dambisa Moyo has proposed in her book, at a short term notice…

Other blogs about this theme:
Aid for orphans in Malawi
Millennium village
Pigs, kids and why it works in Malawi
Self help Africa

Stage fever is an English invention

Posted on July 23, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Stage fever is an English invention: that is what people say in Nigeria, where performing in front of others is not the same dilemma as in many places in the ‘western’ part of the world. It is the same here in Malawi. Yesterday I spent some time at a youth meeting in the compound of Stephanos, close to Blantyre in the south of the country. Stephanos has many projects for health, agriculture and so on, and also an orphanage where many children get education at primary and secondary school level. On Sundays, they come together for Bible study and singing and they love it. Groups of young people stand in front of the group as a whole at the first invitation they get: happy to sing, without any stage fever. They simply don’t care, they are not busy with the thoughts of others (‘what they might think about me’) with the music itself.
They are spontaneous and very talented. Their sound has a good volume, because the absence of stage fever gives the result that everybody is singing full heartedly and not like in the Netherlands with their mouth half closed because of shame or whatever other reason that is withholding them. And it is maximum melodious, with tunes that are different from western or Asian music, so that we can recognize them immediately as African melodies.
(photos or video about this performance will be uploaded as soon as Malawi internet connections work better than right now…)

More blogs about Stephanos:
Pigs, kids and why it works in Malawi
Seba culture and diversity workshops in Malawi

More blogs about the culture of Malawi:
President in the warm heart of Africa
When inclusiveness met apartheid

Van Waveren Tapes make you shiver…

Posted on July 5, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Van Waveren Tapes form a strange and highly intriguing documentary. I went to the cinema to see it, just because I read the story of its creation in a newspaper. A guy bought a lot of tapes on one of our famous Dutch flee markets, the Waterloo Plein in Amsterdam, and discovered a life story that played mainly in the years ’70 and ’80. The tapes were made by someone who taped many or maybe all of his phone conversations and who also talked to his tapes just for himself. Who would buy tapes like that? And who would be able to make a movie out of it? A guy like that is 100% original and a great artist!

Like in a detective, the story unfolds step by step. When you watch this documentary, you realize that the scenes are not spoken by actors, but real life conversations. It made me shiver to enter this closely into a personal and rather tragic life. The maker did an extremely good job: this movie keeps your attention until the very last minute… and it makes you think about life in an extraordinary way.

When I tried to reserve cards for the cinema, the girl at the phone told me ‘it is not necessary because nobody will show up’. Then she corrected herself and said ‘it will not be very busy’. Indeed there appeared to be only nine of us in total. All of us very impressed and very enthusiast. Don’t miss it. This is not the kind of thing you can see every day!

Other documentaries you are probably interested in:
Visages villages: the brilliance of the normal
The hunt for my father
Taxi Teheran

Istanbul street cats

Posted on March 3, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Istanbul street cats keep intriguing me. Changes can sometimes be perceived in small signs that function as a symbol for deeper lying norms and values I said in the blog I wrote two days ago. I found another of those small signs in the life of street cats in Istanbul.
Twenty years ago, Istanbul street cats had a very hard time. They were very thin, always looking for food and also very scared. Meeting with mankind was not something to advice to those poor cats, because they wouldn’t be treaten well. People would rather kick them or tease them than be good to them, so they carefully stayed under cars, rocks, inside empty houses and all those hiding places that only cats can find in cities. Sometimes you’d walk into one of those skinny cats that made you think: it’s not going to survive the day of tomorrow. They were sad and lonely fighting animals with a miserable city life…
This has changed a lot. Although there are still many street cats that don’t have enough food or are even ill, you don’t see them skinny and miserable the way they were in the 20th century. They are less afraid, which means that they noticed from experience that people are not such a threat for them any more and quite a few are even affectionate, asking explicitly for human attention 🙂 And they get food in many places: Istanbul citizens are putting specific catfood in safe places for cats on the street side, thus helping the poor animals out. Or they even give them some fish, like the cat on the picture in this blog. That cat also got an improvised home which is not exceptional; on many more places, people have made homes out of boxes for the street cats. Isn’t that sweet?!
If these are signs that function as a symbol for deeper lying norms and values, what are they? I think this symbolizes great progress in wealth and education in Istanbul. Istanbul twenty years ago was very much a survival of the fittest. People were striving to take care of themselves every day and a large part of the street population was uneducated. Hundreds of thousands of people moved from the provinces to the big city of Istanbul hoping to find a better life and the city had problems to embrace them all. Street cats, harmless and defenseless, were on the lowest spot of the ladder and paid the price.
Nowadays, it is clair that the people in Istanbul have time and energy left to take care of animals like the streetcats. Being valued as a human means that one can value an animal as an animal and embrace animals in their very existence close to mankind. Once the concurrency for food and survival is gone, care can be deployed. The conclusion is that Istanbul as a whole goes better because the Istanbul street cats go better!

Other blogs about this theme:
Street cats in Adana
Streets cats in Cyprus
Kedi: movie about cats or humans?

Other blogs about Istanbul:
Istanbul: mysterious tickets
Istanbul: no regret for my changed decision

Istanbul: mysterious tickets after Süleymaniye Mosque donation

Posted on March 2, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Süleymaniye Mosque

On leaving the beautiful Süleymaniye Mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque) I gave a donation to a guy sitting at the exit of the Mosque with a sign ‘donations for the Mosque’. As the entrance was free and usually the maintenance of this kind of buildings is enormous in costs, it seemed reasonable to have some contribution. I gave money and got a few blue tickets in return for that. I looked at them and thought, why do I get this kind of tickets? I gave a donation, but what is this for?
As my brains couldn’t find a solution, I started to think the Dutch way. This must be a proof for tax administration that a donation was made, I thought. In the Netherlands this exists; for income that is spent in gifts to good aims, citizens don’t need to pay taxes. But you must be able to proof that you gave away that money. I suggested the Turks might have the same system and that the tickets I got at the Süleymaniye Mosque served to prove to Turkish taxes that this money was really spent as a gift. But I also know that perspectives can be coloured too much by national perspective. The reason why I got the tickets could be completely different.
So in the restaurant, close to Süleymaniye, where we had dinner after visiting the Mosque, I showed my newly acquired tickets to the staff and asked them for the meaning of them. The staff was very surprised about it: ‘we have never seen these tickets before’. They started to question me ‘the Mosque is free to visit, why did you give them money?’. I tried to explain to them the idea, or should I say idealism, of donations but my table company destroyed it all by saying ‘she wanted to feel good about herself’, making everybody burst out in laughter as if I were the kind of fool that was hardly seen in this part of Istanbul.
The restaurant staff explained to me ‘the government takes care of the Mosque, they don’t need your money’. Hey, I don’t give up that easily so I responded in an utmost surprised way ‘ah, I thought Turkey has a separation of state and religion’. ‘Well yes’, they replied, ‘the state doesn’t pay any money but local government does, the city of Istanbul is taking care of the Mosque’. I thought that the separation of state and religion also involved local government as well as national government but they thought that local was completely different from national and showed surprise that the City of Amsterdam is not giving money to churches or mosques ‘Istanbul is very social but Amsterdam is not’.
Soon enough, we started to talk Turkish instead of English and we jumped from the way Christians were treated in the South-East of Turkey to the way Muslems were treated in Greece and Bulgaria. I got a bit upset and so did they, and they had the superiority of language, meaningful in situations like the moment where I said that the monasteries in the North (güney) had a hard time under Turkish government when they declared there were no monasteries in the North – like I usually do, I mixed the words South and North (kuzey versus güney); a problem of mastering a language that weakened my arguments because they wouldn’t notice that I was not telling an ‘untruth’ but making a language mistake.
We didn’t really find a solution for Muslems in Greece and Bulgaria or for Christians in South East Turkey but we had a drink together to close the discussion. The only problem that lasts now is that my question about the tickets was left unanswered: why does a tourist who gives a donation to the Süleymaniye Mosque get tickets showing the period, the amount and the purpose of the donation? If you, reader, know the answer, please send me a message because I really like to know after all…

Other blogs you might like:
Istanbul and souvenirs with a religious component
Agios Nikolaos
Istanbul street cats

Istanbul religious souvenirs

Posted on March 1, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Istanbul religious souvenirs

Changes can sometimes be perceived in small signs that function as a symbol for deeper lying norms and values. One of those signs in Istanbul is the way souvenir shops deal with presents that have a religious component. When I was here twenty years ago, the presents with different religious background were thoroughly separated from each other. For example in the jewelry market, jewelry with the ‘bismallah’ sign were sold in shops with a muslem owner, golden crosses were sold in shops with a christian owner. In that time there was no mixed collection of presents with religious component to be found at the same shop; absolutely nowhere!
This is something that has really changed now. In many shops it is possible to find articles with islamic, christian and jewish meaning all together not just in the same shop, but also on the same shelve. For someone like me who missed 20 years of Istanbul development, it feels like a radical change. I asked some questions about it in one souvenir shop and the workers there kindly explained to me that they believe in and respect all the prophets. I tried to explain them how this was in the years ’70, ’80, even begin ’90 but they kept telling me how they feel about it now. They couldn’t explain history to me, why it was different before and why it changed. They had Maria and Jesus hanging in their shop next to islamic holy artefacts, see the picture above, and considered that as normal.
I cannot analyze this yet, it would need a more indept insight but as said I have seen this mixture in many shops in Istanbul city already. These are small signs for what could be a more fundamental change. My first and overall impression is that the selfconfidence of the Turks has increased a lot in daily life, and tolerance often comes with selfconfidence. Another way of looking at it could be that the Christian minorities form no more threat whatsoever to the Turks which allows a different attitude. Finally, it is also possible to look at this businesswise. The Turks were always good in customer service, eager to help customers out, create strong relationships and earn some money; maybe they have just added these new products to their buckets…

Other interesting blogs:
Minorities in Gaziantep
Istanbul: mysterious tickets
Mikve Israel-Immanuel synagogue
Ramallah: Jews removing Christians from Middle East

Istanbul: no regret for my changed decision

Posted on March 1, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

My last visit to Istanbul was over 20 years ago. Did it change?, I thought when I booked for my fifth trip to Istanbul. 20 years is a lot!

My first trip to Istanbul was short after the third coup in the early eighties. I was a student for the first time in a country where the army played a big role and looking back I think I was partly unaware. There was a soldier on every corner of the road in Istanbul and there were hardly any tourists. It was a strange time and as a student, I was very excited, curious, eager to learn more about the world.
In 1990 or 1991 after quite some travelling in Turkey during the years, I decided that I was at last really fed up with the behaviour of Turkish men who wouldn’t let western women any freedom; I will never go again, I said, and focussed since then on Turkish Cyprus as one of my favorite places to be.
However, not every decision can last for a life time and now I am back, enjoying to be back really! By now I have walked around Istanbul all day in snow and wind and I found it both familiar and renewed. Familiar is the way of life, the simits and marrons and lots of other stuff one can buy in the streets, the friendliness of the people, the silent and thankful smiles when a tourist appears to speak some Turkish. Renewed is the pavement of the roads, the electricity that I remember, at that time, had open cables everywhere, quite dangerous in a busy city. The city is definitely a lot richer, the pavement of streets has been taken care of and the garbage in this intensely lived city is now none compared to my memories of the 20st century. Religion is more present in daily life than it was before, but women seem to be more free in the meantime.
A city that has existed for so many ages wouldn’t radically change: it keeps it character but it develops, that is my conclusion. And it is nice and beautiful as ever!

Other blogs you might like:
Freedom day Northern Cyprus
Istanbul street cats
Istanbul religious souvenirs

Iron Lady – too soft a movie

Posted on February 7, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Iron Lady is a surprising, rather disappointing movie. Years ago, I read Margaret Thatcher’s biographie. I found it very interesting to read about her own views on what she stood for and how she wanted to achieve her goals. She was one of the first women at the international stage. In the Netherlands, until now, we never even had a female Prime Minister. So Margaret Thatcher is a woman we can learn something from.

In the movie The Iron Lady, however, we learn little about her views; the movie doesn’t even explain or pay any attention to the question how she could achieve at all to become Prime Minister as a woman in an ‘all men’ environment. On the contrary, we see most of the time an old woman who is having memories about her past life in short parts and sketches. She is already confused in a starting dementia, imagining her deceased husband around her most of the time and talking to him, sometimes even thinking that she is still Prime Minister.

In the various scenes about her life we see in the first place a woman who is Prime Minister, rather than a Prime Minister who is a woman. The focus is on her style much more than on her ideas, policies, views. Especially for a Prime Minister who lead a country through many changes, this is a surprising and also disappointing focus.

Research has shown that this treatment is reserved especially for female ministers. Journalists for example ask them two to three times more often about their private life and children than they do to their male colleagues. When they report about women in government positions, they report first of all about their style; however for their male colleagues, the main attention is paid to the content of their politics.

Nobody can say that Meryl Streep did not do a good job, because she was brilliant as ever. But she is not responsible for the script that chose to show one of the most influential Prime Ministers of the 20th century from a vulnerable side that is at least partly based on phantasy of the maker rather than as a strong and powerful person with ideas and the competence to realize them. Let’s hope another, more visionary movie maker will stand up and do the work that the Iron Lady movie has neglected to do.

Other blogs you may like:
Turist and the myth of heroism
Lore movie that silences the public
Simone Veil: une vie

Northern Cyprus Heritage (12) cultural approach

Posted on August 1, 2011 by wordpressgrethe

Northern Cyprus Heritage: cultural approach

Culture exists and it doesn’t exist. It is almost impossible to describe a culture in general terms as it is always possible to show members belonging to that culture that differ from the description. There is so much diversity within cultures – diversity that will even increase the coming years – that people who read about the culture they adhere to can strongly disagree about the description given. Nevertheless, I am going to give it a try, knowing already that some people might feel irritation while reading it.

Concerning Northern Cyprus heritage, it seems that Turks are more oriented towards the future while Greeks are more oriented towards the past. In the words Turks and Greeks I include Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, without denying that in many aspects they have an identity of their own, as Cypriots.
The consequence is that Turks are inclined to value and use Northern Cyprus heritage that they see as relevant for the present. This is why the former cathedral of the Lusignans in Lefkosa/Nicosia, the Venetian castle in Girne/Kyrenia and a typical Greek building like the Mavi Kösk / Blue House are well kept and get a good profile in any touristic and cultural presentation. They can show the greatness of the Turks in actual times and the (conquered) enemies they had to deal with. This is also why churches like Ermelaos or monasteries like Sourp Magar and Pandeleimon get no attention at all: what message for the future could be given with that heritage?
I remember a visit I made once to Hattusa in Turkey. The guide told us that Hettites were the high and mighty ancestors of the Turks. He got very very angry when I said there was at least 2000, maybe even 3000 years of difference in time between the Hettites and the Turks arriving in actual Turkey. Clearly this was not just about the facts: this was about the value that Hettite history presented for the greatness and the future of the Turkish people. What I saw as objective truth, was useless for my guide and even upset him.
Greeks have a magnificent ancient past. They had Socrates, Homer, Euripides and so many others, really high science and culture. Then they developed an independent and mighty church that created such beautiful monuments. Memories of that past are kept with the highest care as to remember what Greeks brought to civilization, development, faith and culture in this world: it is their identity. So when a new country exists that calls itself Macedonia, Greeks protest firmly as Macedonia including Alexander the Great is considered as a Greek identity and cannot exist independently of them. The fact that this happens anyway in the 21st century is very difficult for the Greek.
In Northern Cyprus heritage, two cultures meet. Greek see the way the Turks deal with their monuments as a proof that Turks are barbarians (barbaros = the ancient Greek word for a stranger, a non-Greek). Just read some Greek websites where these issues are discussed and you will notice a consequent approach: tell the world how terrible the Turks are. In several blogs I have shown pictures that prove them right.
Turks really do not understand what is expected from them: why would they contribute to prove the greatness of the Greek past? They prefer to invest in what they see as relevant for actual life and development of Northern Cypriot inhabitants. There are few Turkish websites that blame the Greeks. The Turks have given up the territories that they lost in 1974 as well as their monuments, lives and dreams. They are looking forward, not backward. They just ignore the Greek complaints and move on. In several blogs I have shown examples that prove them right.
In Northern Cyprus heritage, two cultures meet. To find each other, they need to listen more. At this moment, they are mainly blaming or judging each other – this is strongly influenced by the problematic political situation of course. However, for heritage it is a lot better if parties listen to each other and recognize and value differences. This could be a starting point to create synergy in diversity. Then both the past and the present will profit!

Maronites – Northern Cyprus Heritage (11)

Posted on July 30, 2011 by wordpressgrethe

Maronites – Saint Georgius of Kormakiti

The Maronite community on Cyprus (both North and South) counts 6000 persons and it is very much alive. Since 1974 the Turkish army took hold of 2 of the 4 Maronite churches / villages, to the great regret of the Maronite community. In Asomatos it is possible to have church services, Agia Marina is so closed that during 36 years nobody could even see the place. A meeting from the Pope and the Turkish Prime Minister last year was necessary to allow an exceptional visit; maybe the first step for more opening? The Maronites see the lost churches / villages as an important part of their heritage, necessary also to live and express their identity.

On special days like Christmas, Easter and the 15^th of August (2 photographs below for the breads delivered and the procession around the church – and the Lebanese bishop’s car), the large church of Saint Georgius of Kormakiti is packed; not just church banks are full, also corridors and even outside the doors people stand to follow the service inside. Many of the visitors are young people, aware of their identity and ready to contribute.

Maronites live in Cyprus (as well as Lebanon and Malta) since the 8^th century. They are part of the Roman Catholic Church but have their own rites in Aramaic and some different rules, f.ex. the priests are married. They were always oppressed: by muslims, by Venetians, by Franciscans, by Greek Orthodox, the latter trying to take over their churches. Under the 1960 Constitution Turkish and Greek Cypriot form two equal communities, the Maronites are seen as a religious minority which means that their ethnicity, culture or language are not recognized. They had to choose a community to belong to and they chose the Greek community. Maronites have one ‘observer seat’ in the Greek Cypriot Parliament so they have a voice but not a vote and depend of Greek Cypriots to defend their interests. However, Greek Cyprus leads a politics of assimiliation. On the Turkish side the Maronite interests are neglected.

The Maronites position is very complicated. They do not want to be involved in the dual conflict of Greeks and Turks. They have the Greek Cypriot nationality because they belong to that community according to the 1960 Constitution but their villages lie since the 1974 division in Northern Cyprus. Recently the Turkish Cypriot nationality was offered to them so that they can have equal rights but accepting that nationality means conflict with the Greek Cypriots who accuse Maronites of bad citizenship and ‘trying to get the best of both worlds’. For the future the entrance of (South-)Cyprus into the EU in 2004 opens new perspectives for the Maronites as the European concept of multicultural diversity is larger than the actual dualism on Cyprus and could improve the position of the ethnic-cultural and religious ‘other’.
In the meantime, there is nothing that withholds the Turkish army to give back the 2 churches / villages to the Maronite community right now.

Wanna read more indepth analysis about Cypriot minorities? Read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Minorities-Cyprus-Development-Patterns-Internal-Exclusion/dp/144380052X or this article: http://www.ahdr.info/ckfinder/userfiles/files/14_andrekos.pdf
Absolutely interesting to look at Cyprus not from Greek or Turkish perceptions, but from the perceptions of Cypriot minorities.

Graveyards – Northern Cyprus Heritage (10)

Posted on July 30, 2011 by wordpressgrethe

Graveyards in Northern Cyprus

War is not a rational thing. You’d say it is a fight between the living but when the Turkish army took hold of Northern Cyprus, also the dead suffered: many Greek graveyards were destroyed with an anger that is surprising. One wonders who would do such a thing. Don’t we all love our dead and cherish the monuments we give them so that they will not be anonymous and have a place of their own?

I remember about ten years ago there were some ideas in Alba Club in Lapta – I think it was the manager – to restore the demolished graveyard that lies in front of the Club. They thought it was a shame to have that at their entrance. I checked this year but no, this has not been done, see the photographs:
$graveyards\$
In Alsancak, close to the Riverside Holiday Village, lies another demolished graveyard. It is not that people here do not know what it should be like; see the photograph on top of this blog showing the Turkish graveyard right beside it: peaceful, nice and well taken care of. Apparently the Riverside does not feel embarrassed to have this so close to their compound and the community of Alsancak does neither.

Is it possible to hate so much that you also hate the dead of your enemy? Or is it just disinterest and lack of feeling of responsibility, like is the case for other heritage sites? However these were deliberately destroyed and 37 years have passed now: it’s about time to restore the graveyards. Until that time these graveyards lie like open wounds in a society that otherwise is proving to find ways for social and economic development in many aspects.

In 2017 a scientific publication using my pictures! Read about it here

Other blogs you may like:
Agios Nikolaos Limnia
Agios Trias Basilica