Three days in Macedonia

Independent since 1991, Macedonia sits squarely in the middle of the southern Balkans. Blessed with natural beauty, friendly locals (especially when compared to their more dour Bulgarian neighbours), and a meat-heavy diet to put Argentina to shame, Macedonia has suffered, unfortunately, from calling itself... Macedonia.

In perhaps one of the more mystifying and long-running international disputes of modern times, Macedonia is provisionally known as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM, in the international arena due to a disagreement with southern neighbour Greece. For the Hellenic Republic, the fact that Macedonia has chosen to call itself Macedonia – in addition to claiming Alexander the Great as its own – implies a threat on the Greek province of Macedonia, which includes Thessaloniki.

Quite how one of the poorest countries in Europe, with an ethnically and religiously divided population of 2.1 million whose Albanian portion led a brief insurgency in 2001, would one day seize a significant chunk of the European Union’s southeastern flank is a question beyond many of us, but Greece has continued to delay Macedonia’s accession to some international organizations until a name more suitable than “Macedonia” can be found to replace the tentative FYROM. Greece has floated a number of suggestions in the past, such as the “Vardar Republic of Macedonia (Vardar being the name of the river that runs through the capital Skopje), or the “Central Balkan Republic” (Central African Republic, anyone?), but the suggestions have not elicited much Macedonian approval. As for Macedonians, the only thing they are sure of is that they are Macedonians.

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The road from Istanbul to Skopje nominally takes about 13 hours, although such an optimistic number naturally fails to account for the usual tribulations of trying to cross an international border. With checks, re-checks, officious officials, bored officials, non-existent officials, and officials perpetually on break, frontiers, especially Turkish ones, are places where time slows down to an excruciating snail’s pace and travelling 50 metres takes the best part of 4.5 hours.

Moreover, frontiers, especially Turkish ones, are also places where “buying” cigarettes for the bus crew is not so much seen as an act of kindness by the passenger, but as an semi-obligation necessary for onward travel. The process requires no financial input on the part of the passenger – all that is required is a passport. Accustomed to the semi-mandatory trip to the duty free to buy cigarettes on my passport, I willingly went again this time to the shop with the driver, expecting to have a carton or two put on my passport. The crew, instead, put nine cartons on my passport – 108 euros or 1800 cigarettes worth – and did the same for seven other passengers.

A merry two hours was thus spent finding various innovative and novel places to stick some 14,400 cigarettes (72 cartons or 864 euros worth of cigarettes) so as to avoid detection by the border authorities of various countries (penalty for the discovery of one carton: 100 euros, allegedly). Safely through the border with our cache of carcinogenic goods, we eventually continued on the road to Macedonia.

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With a reputation for being one of the drearier Eastern European capital cities around, there is little to detain the traveller in Skopje, other than perhaps the prospect of excellent Albanian-style kebap.

Indeed, while the capital and its cuisine reflects the ethnic and religious diversity of the country, which has a majority Orthodox Macedonian population but significant Muslim Albanian, Turkish, and Roma minorities that one seems to encounter everywhere, there are more delights to be found elsewhere in the country, including the breathtaking 12^th-century monastery of Treskavec outside Prilep.

Treskavec lies at the top of a two-hour climb up a dirty, muddy road on top of a rocky outcrop – a position that has prevented it from being benighted by souvenir stands and bus tours.

Today, Treskavec is home to a single monk, an economist by training who found God when he was 26.

With subject matter like religion (obviously), nationality (it seems few in the Balkans don’t have an opinion on the matter), the European Union (“Why should a bureaucrat in Brussels give me lessons about tolerance? Western Europeans are busy electing Islamaphobic far-right demagogues while Christians and Muslims were living here in peace a century ago”), sport (it was the first time I had discussed hockey – ex-Vancouver Canuck Ed Jovanovski is of Macedonian heritage – with a monk on a mountaintop), the name issue, and all other matters of Macedonian minutiae (trivia question: What city has the second largest Macedonian population in the world? Toronto), there was more than enough to talk about for five hours with the Skopje-born brother.

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Of course, there are other sights in Macedonia as well. While cold Bitola can claim to be the country’s former leading city, as well as the location where the future founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, did part of his schooling, today it feels like many other Eastern European cities – not in the sense of ubiquitous and depressing concrete apartment blocks, but in the new sense: one main pedestrianized drag that has been sanitized of its difference from other cities in the region and furnished with cookie-cutter cafes and the same global brands that feature everywhere from Sydney to Sofia.

This notwithstanding, Bitola is still a refreshingly progressive city, although it has the unfortunate distinction of being outshone by nearby Ohrid, Macedonia’s crown jewel. With a serene and expansive lake, old Ottoman quarter, and picturesque monastery that featured in Macedonian director Milčo Mančevski’s 1994 film, Before the Rain, Ohrid is a delight.

Ultimately, many places are labelled as “being on the crossroads of civilizations” (irritatingly so if only because it has become a cliché); Turkey is certainly one, although Macedonia could certainly be another. Once colonized by the Romans and later by the Ottomans, Macedonia retains the influences of both and more. With a long history of Christians and Muslims living side-by-side in relative peace – the fighting of 2001 notwithstanding – perhaps Macedonia does have something to teach the Geert Wilders of the world about tolerance and integration.

Photos:

1) The 12th-century of St. Bogorodica, generally known as Treskavec, sits on top of a mountain close to the city of Prilep

2) The approach to Treskavec

3) A square in Ohrid, featuring a 900-year-old plane tree in the background

4) Popeye the Sailor stands in front of Sveti Jovan Monastery on Lake Ohrid

5) Sveti Jovan

Finding the 'Child of the Sea' in Hopa's Green Hills

Hopa is the last Turkish outpost before the country's frontier with Georgia. In Soviet times, this, along with Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, was the frontier from which Cold War rivals the USA and the USSR stared down one another. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, however, Hopa has become an important and lively border town, handling much of Turkey's trade with the Transcaucasus. Like many border towns, this tends to entail a somewhat marked increase in somewhat more 'unregistered' trade -- hoteliers might be mildly surprised to learn that the prospective customer is intending to stay the night sans financially-recompensed Eastern European female accompaniment, yet the level of offering is usually discreet.




Most foreigners come to Hopa long enough only to board the next bus to Georgia; apart from transit connections, there is little to recommend the tourist in Hopa -- most store proprietors were more than a little perplexed at my presence in their fair city. The current war, however, has triggered a flood of people trying to escape the next Russian bombing raid (as luck would have it, I fatefully decided to make Georgia my visa run destination before learning that all hell had broken loose -- luckily my 10 minute sojourn in Georgia was uneventful and accomplished with nary a Russian Mig in sight).





I, on the other hand, was not particular interested in certain paid companion services. I, instead, had come to Hopa in search of its most famous citizen:





On 25 June 2005, Turkey lost one of its most beloved sons, one of its best voices, one of its most committed environmental activists, one of its most vocal advocate for minority cultural rights, and one of its biggest Trabzonspor football club fans. The premature death of Kâzım Koyuncu, then aged only 33, precipitated a wave of grief that quickly spread to the four corners of the country. The death of Koyuncu -- accomplished solist, musician, advocator for Laz linguistic rights (the Laz are an Eastern Black Sea people related to the Georgians), leader of anti-nuclear protests, and outspoken leftist -- was received with great sadness by Laz and Turk alike, by women, men, and children, by Islamists and secularists, and by far right Fascists and far left revolutionaries; in short, the sheer vocal ability and the extraordinary decency and innocence of Koyuncu the person succeeded in breaking down the entrenched social and political divides that normally polarize the country. Claimed by the left on account of his political views, Koyuncu is also fondly remembered by groups generally violently opposed to the left.





A rural boy, Koyuncu came from the aptly named village of Yeşilköy (Green Village), a small settlement that makes its living from the lush green tea and hazelnut plantations that surround the village. While still young, Koyuncu had taken a keen interest in preserving his native Laz tongue; in combination with his prolific musical talent, Koyuncu and some friends formed Zuğaşi Berepe (Children of the Sea), a highly successful rock band that sung mostly in Laz. Following the band's breakup in 2000, he embarked on a solo career that focused more on presenting traditional Laz music (particularly characterized by the distinctive kemençe (a violin type instrument) and tulum (Eastern Black Sea bagpipe)) to a wider audience. Loved by his local Laz neighbours, Turkish compatriots, and millions of overseas fans, Koyuncu's life was cut short by cancer in 2005. Long a campaigner against the prospective use of nuclear power in Turkey, he ironically succumbed to the long-term fallout of Chernobyl's 1986 meltdown, a catastrophe that has had an abnormally negative influence on Turkey's Eastern Black Sea region.





While Hopa's leftist town council struggles to gain federal approval in the renaming of a city park in Koyuncu's memory, Hopa's 'Child of the Sea' is today commemorated by a simple grave and banner in his home village, just a short walk from his former primary school.





In keeping with his generous nature, those left in the village continue to honour his memory with the utmost hospitality. It was a fitting tribute to Koyuncu that my guide, a working class air conditioning maintenance person with overt sympathies to Turkey's far right MHP (Nationalist Action Party), took time off for the day, led me to his car, drove me to the village from the city centre, showed me around, presented a handful of local hazelnuts, and transported me again to Hopa, all while vociferously refusing payment for gas -- such was his appreciation that a foreigner had come to town just for Kâzım.





While Turkey's politicians continue to bicker and divide society, Hopa's most famous son unites it, even if it is in a melancholic commeration of one of the country's best voices.



1) Yeşilköy's green hills. The short plants found on the hillside is tea. Radioactive fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster had a profoundly injurious effect on Turkey's concurrent tea crop.
2) Koyuncu's simple childhood primary school, a short walk from his place of internment.
3) The widely loved, Koyuncu has so far been honoured only with one street name -- here, the road to the cemetary is named after him.
4) Koyuncu's simple grave adorned with the title 'Denizin Çocuğu' (Child of the Sea).

Breakfast in Közlüce

But for the car's headlights, the only light illuminating the valley floor was from the radiant stars and the easily recognizable band of the Milky Way traversing their paths across the cloudless Dersim sky. But the night was not entirely still, however. Through one of the 'highway's many passes, we were forced to share the road with a disoriented grey bear cub who had also chosen asphalt as the quickest route from point A to point B.

Meanwhile, at the village turnoff, our headlights woke up the lightly dozing jandarma guard; Tunceli, like many other places that have traditionally been centres of resistance to central rule, is dotted with remote and lonely police outposts -- for those that man these stations, life is generally filled with boredom punctuated only by the occasional firefight with insurgents appear from their mountain bases under cover of darkness. Theirs is an unenviable life; conscripted soldiers, many see weapons for the first time in their lives when they perform their obligatory military service. In Turkey, only the positively mad look forwards to completing between 5 and 16 months of national service; most, while professing the necessity of a national armed forces, see their time in the military as merely a necessary evil before normal life can resume. For those unlucky enough to be dealt a bad hand by the military's database (rarely does one get to serve in one's hometown -- most are randomly assigned to points throughout the country based on a computer printout), Tunceli can be a nerve-racking and dangerous experience, albeit one in the most awesome of natural surroundings.

This evening, however, the jandarma officer's voice is muffled more from fatigue than existential worry -- after explaining our destination and point of origin, he offers a muttered and sleep-deprived "continue on." Between the single track dirt road and the brook beside it, there is little room for anything else in the deep gorge that leads from Pülümür into Tunceli's eastern mountains. After no more than 7 km (but an eternity in trying to negotiate the road's rocky and dark path), we arrive in Közlüce Köyü, the contemporary Turkish nomenclature for the previous Zimâk, a name of Zazaca-Kurdish origin.

Közlüce is a microcosm for much of what has happened in Tunceli during the region's embattled history. With a summertime 'high' population of around 45, the number of those left in winter trickles to barely enough for a football squad. While there are potentially millions of people scattered throughout the world with a Tuncelili heritage, only 70.000 still maintain permanent residence within the district. For people in Közlüce, as is evidenced throughout Tunceli, winters are hard, cold, and lonely, work is impossible to find, industry is scarce, transportation is slow and likely to be significantly delayed by livestock traffic even at the best of times, few educational opportunities are available, and there is the persistent possibility of rebel activity, forest fire, or forcible resettlement by a security apparatus desparate to gain the upper hand in a long-running, simmering conflict with insurgents.

Közlüce's summer population, thus, is comprised primarily of people that now call Ankara, Istanbul, Köln, Berlin, Marseille, or Amsterdam home. Every summer, migrants from Western Turkey and beyond make an annual return to villages like Közlüce for a chance to nostalgically reminisce about a(n admittedly hard) childhood spent tending sheep or bees -- or, as is increasingly the case, to visit a hometown most have never lived in, such is the long-rooted history of displacement and emigration out of Tunceli.

In the end, Közlüce is an odd village: For every tut-tutting, grandmotherly clucks of the headscarf-wearing, hearty amounts of breakfast-serving, and çay-serving babuska, there are three lawyers, doctors, or engineers in attendance; for every word exchanged in Turkish -- or, more ancestrally, Zazaca, there are three in German ; for every beat-up Tofaş Şahin with Tunceli number plates (the Tofaş Şahin is a true Turkish institution: Boxy and belching, it continues to rule most Turkish roads, the day you happen to board a non Şahin yellow taxi anywhere in the Turkish Republic will be the day of Judgment), there is a BMW from Duisburg.

Though Közlüce might seem odd, its annual summer migration is one that mirrors many of the changing anthropological landscapes observed throughout Anatolia.

1) Közlüce's rocky approach by daylight

2) Some of the treeless mountains that serve to cut off Tunceli from the rest of the world

3) Közlüce's main thoroughfare

4) Sprichst du Deutsch? A good portion of Közlüce's summer population, from Germany and beyond

A Journey to Düzgün Baba

Düzgün Baba Ziyareti lies some 20-30km away from the centre of Tunceli. Like most roads in Tunceli, the way is bumpy, remote, and difficult; even the initial portion of the paved 'highway' (it is the region's only access road to the north and the highway that passes between Erzincan and Erzurum -- indeed, there are only three terrestrial access points into Tunceli, a testament to the area's remoteness and a determining factor in ensuring that all central governments have always had difficulty in controlling the region) is only wide enough for one vehicle in some parts. The ensuing turnoff to Düzgün Baba has a bit of the Bolivian to it with little but the minibus' Sabancı tires and the driver's skill separating the living from a premature end at the bottom of a rocky valley hundreds of feet below -- such driving skill is even more extraordinary given that most captains tend to nonchalantly negotiate hairpin turns with more interest directed towards writing text messages and lighting cigarettes than in investing due care and attention into their primary occupation of actually driving the vehicle.

Following one's tempting of the road gods, the traveller arrives at the Ziyaret of Düzgün Baba, a 14th century figure revered by many of Turkey's Alevi population. In embarrasment for a perceived transgression, Düzgün Baba took to the mountains to live in a cave -- while he continued to receive itinerant visitors in his mountain abode for some time, he eventually disappeared from sight -- meaning that his final resting place was never truly determined. Despite this, a funeral mound some kilometres from the base camp purports to be the final resting place of the holy man. Legend has it that an Ottoman army chose this site as a camp during a military excursion. However, after settling down, the ground began to pour forth with blood; from this blood a voice announced to the awestruck soldiers that this was place of Düzgün Baba. Needless to say, the Ottoman army quickly made alternate camping arrangements.

The arduous journey to the site, coupled with the area's mountainess terrain enhances the physical austerity and otherworldliness of the Ziyaret (literally "visit," the term usually refers to shrines for members of Turkey's Alevi sect. The shrines might be actual burial places, or, more likely, simply places where holy men have made a physical appearance (cf. Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary)). Here, religiously inclined Alevis arrive to perform animal sacrifices and create a shared sense of community through the exchange of common food staples to one another at the Ziyaret; food, such as bread, nuts, watermelon, or fanta is widely dispensible at any nearby market ("nearby" used here in a somewhat figurative sense, given that this is Tunceli), but acquires increased importance when traded following the performance of animal sacrifice in front of the site's initial Ziyaret, a large rock adorned with sheeps' horns on top and lit candles on the bottom. Though the area is devoid of stately religious buildings that one would commonly encounter in grand mosques or cathedrals, the performance of animal sacrifice, the subsequent distribution of its meat (it is, I'm fairly sure, the first time that I have walked around with a pile of raw sheep intestines in my hand trying to find a bag to put it in --- not excepting the distributed gift would be somewhat gauche), the lighting of candles around the Ziyaret (generally accompanied with tears borne not of sorrow but of conviction in the validity of the prayer), and the ritual exchange of common commestibles serves to "Alevize" the space. In short, while Alevi identity is a matter for intense discussion (I should know, it's my never ending master's topic), with diverse views as to what is and is not Alevi, the rituals performed at the initial stage of the Düzgün Baba Ziyareti serves to mark the area as a "religiously Alevi" area (religiously being the operative word, since most Alevis would identify with the group's secularist and humanist philosophy without professing any adherence in its religious practices).

Elsewhere on the mountain, there are further sacralizations of space in honour of Düzgün Baba. Along waystations towards the holy man's cave (a good 1.5 climb up shale and over boulders best left to those in reasonable physical shape), one finds cave springs and holy rocks typically adorned with candles, personal photos, and knotted bits of cloth (indeed, one finds knotted cloth in holy places around the world) representing requests for Düzgün Baba's intercession in whatever troubles the supplicant. Again, the area's physical remoteness and the largely unadorned nature of the ziyarets (tied cloth here, candles there, sheep horns over there ---- in marked contrast to the grandness of the Friday mosque or the great cathedral) reminds the visitor of Alevism's rural roots far from central authorities -- as an Islamic branch whose disdain for orthodoxy has often rankled its more normative, puritanical, and politically powerful coreligionists, the Alevis of yesteryear (and arguably of the present day) could not afford to invest in any form of permanent, grand architecture. As a result, one is left with the rural Ziyaret, exemplified most strikingly with the site honouring Düzgün Baba.

















Pictures in descending order:
1) The initial part of the hike to the final resting place of Düzgün Baba.
2) The initial Ziyaret for Düzgün Baba. On the left, one can see the sacrificial floor. On the holy stone, one finds sheeps' horns on top and lit candles below.
3) An intermediary Ziyaret at the site of a cave spring. Supplicants can also tie a piece of cloth when asking for Düzgün Baba's intercession.
4) A further Ziyaret, usually greeted with a kiss and the touching of the forhead to the candle-blackened stone
5) The purported resting place of Düzgün Baba. Before entering the circle, one removes one's shoes, takes three stones, and circumbulates the grave, throwing a rock onto the pile at the beginning of each rotation.

Malls and Mezars in Ankara

In behaviour more befitting the qualities of a stubborn individual rather than anything else, I had contrived for more than four years to avoid visiting Ankara; it was not as if I had reserved special hatred for the Turkish Republic's semi-purpose built capital, but more of a case of wanting to visit something more interesting than a sprawling, brown, treeless, and waterless town known more its drab ministry buildings than its culture, food, or antique architecture.

Regrettably, having finally planted my footsteps in the sprawling, brown, treeless, and waterless town of Ankara, I must corroborate the reviews of most Turks in confirming that it is a town known more for its drab ministry buildings than anything else. Perhaps compounding the misery, however, is the fact that the local council (still led, inexplicably, by the incumbent Melih Gökçek after 12 years of fiasco) has decided that the best way to 'create an even better Ankara' (as the billboard at the city's Otogar reminds the weary traveller (at least it was something to that effect)) is to go on a mall-building spree: The boom is inescapable; doubtlessly a crow cannot relieve itself without soiling the glass façade of one of Ankara's 'shopping and life centres'. Who, exactly, in a country where income differentiation between the richest and the poorest classes is growing daily is supposed to frequent these new gleaming shopping centres is a mystery to both the Ankaralı and the traveller alike.

Away from the ministries and malls, however, the fact remains that no student of republican Turkish history can come to the country without an obligatory visit to the capital. Angora was just a dusty village when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the hero of the Turkish War of Independence (Kurtuluş Savaşı), chose the town as the setting for the new republican capital, both because of its geostrategic location (far from the marauding Allied forces who were busily divying up the country's soil) and because it was the antithesis to the supposedly imperial and decadent İstanbul. It is thus befitting then, that the man more or less responsible for saving Anatolia from a fate as bad as the modern Arab Middle East (even if contemporary hindsight might judge him less favourably on account of a failure to address the issue of minority rights -- a challenge that the somewhat crystallized doctrine of Kemalism is only slowly coming to grips with) should be honoured with a mausoleum reminiscent of the royalty of the past. Built in a neo-classical style, the mausoleum and its whitewashed square provide a symbolic (and very material) reminder of the early Turkish Republic's ideals of secularism and a Turkish homeland free from the interference of the colonial powers. Such material symbolism remains all the more poignant when compared to the nearby Kocatepe Mosque, one of the largest mosques constructed within the country since the founding of the Republic in 1923, and arguably a symbol of the (re-)assertion of the country's Islamic heritage.



















But before this turns into an overly dramatic pulsetaking of the modern Turkish battle between secularism and religion, I will leave the story in a far more humble graveyard (though far more massive than anything else in the country). On the city's northern outskirts is Karşıyaka Mezarlığı (Karşıyaka Cemetary), the final resting of tens of thousands of Turkish citizens, some illustrious, but most common. It is here, however, at Gate 2, section 17, that one finds the resting place of Deniz Gezmiş, Hüseyin İnan, and Yusuf Aslan, heroes to millions of Turks, but sadly hung by the state on 6 May, 1972 during one of the state's frequent attacks on the radical Left. Denied larger graves supposedly for fear that their graves would become a rallying point for disaffected sections of society, the graves are places of quiet pilgrimage in which to remember the vision Deniz Gezmiş and co. hoped to bring to the country. When they were killed, they were accused of seeking to sell Turkey out to Soviet Communism; Gezmiş, however, always maintained that the goal was only to fulfil the dream of total independence envisioned by Atatürk. Whatever the case, their premature departure means that it must remain a matter of conjecture.

Whether the grave is grand or small, it remains clear that modern Turkish history inevitably revolves around Ankara, despite its sprawl, brownness, treelessness, and waterlessness.

Harbiye Dürüm -- The Best Kebap in Istanbul!

For a summer to be spent ostensibly engaged in research on Turkey’s minority Alevi population, SFU was kind enough to provide me with a summer scholarship (I suppose they had some money left in the bank after they bulldozed down half the forests on the mountainside to build condos) – enough to cover transport, accommodation, nourishment, drink, literary resources, and other related expenses.

After a trip to Africa whose final balance sheet was somewhat more than had been expected (somewhat exemplified by a knockoff Burkinabe football jersey wrenched from the hands of a street vendor for the somewhat princely sum of around 35 of your Amerikan dollars), and various other travel-related expenses, it became apparent that I would need to find additional employment to supplement my semester stipend from the good people at SFU. But what job to do? Halfway to a master’s degree in Turkish history in addition to a fairly fluent literary ability, spoken Turkish better than most foreigners (even if it is accompanied by an occasional and inexplicable Kurdish accent – although the frequent ungrammatical nature of my speech is less inexplicable and more just lazy), 1.5 years of teaching experience, ability to tutor English, and a strong interest in journalistic affairs (especially in the fields of current events, politics, history, and culture), it seemed that finding some sort of semi-official summer employment would be cake in a bag (the local idiomatic equivalent of a piece of cake). After mulling the various options available to my somewhat educated self, I chose the most appropriate: Working in a currently unlicensed (permit inevitably pending) kebap house run by friends from Hatay (Antioch).

Away from the dull routine of discussing potential coups, counter-coups, supreme court fights, issues over the very existential direction of the country, wars, massacres, and bombs is the far more scintillating world of dishwashing, çay-making, parsley/ice/beer/rakı/cigarettes-fetching, laying out tables, and learning how to balance food while walking up rickety stairs (out of a deference to the cost of potential hospitalization rates, I have fortunately not been permitted to actually make any kepabs). And, perhaps befitting my ability as the really pasty white guy that comes to change the ashtrays for various Turkish customers somewhat sporadically, I receive a financial remuneration calculated at exactly..... zero New Turkish Lira.

Yes, I revel in the fact I have succeeded in becoming one of the few relatively educated foreigners who, while watching friends back home and everywhere get real jobs and real houses, has taken a significant wage cut to enter into the barter economy: In return for my labour as a dishwasher extraordinaire at an unmarked and unlicensed kebap house (we close the front door after about 10pm to avoid unwelcome uniformed visitors) I am provided free food (the city’s best dürüm kebap (a bit like a hot pita), hummus, and baba ghanouj (spicy eggplant dip)) and a patch of rent-free floor at my friend’s house. Garlic-laced hummus, flatbread, second-hand smoke, and the occasional beer liberated stealthily from the kitchen fridge hath never tasted so delicious when they are won for free --- all it takes is a few hours of washing up.

In between scraping plates and scalding skin while carrying çay improperly, there is plenty of time to amuse new customers (while boring to tears other employees and long-time customers) with a routine performed at least two to three times a day between myself and Sedat, one of the co-runners who has succeeded in putting the ex in extravert:

-Sedat: Stefan!

-Stefan: Yes? (My voice almost drowned out by the washing foam enveloping the kitchen.)

-Sedat: Come here! (In heavily accented, though carefully pronounced English, he calls me over to meet another friend . I come, trying to extricate myself from the mountains of plates full of delicious, uneaten leftovers I’m hording in my kitchen-based lair.) Stefan, where are you from? (Said again in the same vein.)

-Stefan: Samandağ! (I reply emphatically – Samandağ is an Arabic-speaking town along the Syrian border near Antioch full mostly of Orthodox Christians and Arab Alevis (Nusayris). For a smallish town, I am endlessly amazed that every second customer at the kebap house seems to be from there. Somewhat unsurpringingly, given its geographical location, most of the people there are fairly swarthy.

-Assembled customer: No.....! (They reply incredulously in Turkish)

-Sedat: No, really! You don’t believe it? He’s really from Samandağ, he’s one of you!! (Sedat, now switching to Turkish, implores his friend with unshakeable determination to believe that I,in all my Viking ancestry, am too of Samandağlı stock.) Stefan, talk to them in Arabic! (Since Sedat’s English tends to leave him in a moment of excitement, he implores now me to switch also to Arabic.)

-Stefan: (I offer a badly mispronounced and somewhat lame “how are you?”) Kiyf Halek?

-Assembled Customer: Oohhhh!!! (Much rapturous applause – no doubt also the result of a desire to leave and avoid having to maintain the charade that I am Arab. My undercover identity appears assured, even if it is quite apparent that I have again been undeservedly rewarded for my childish Arabic.)

-Sedat: See, I told you he was from Samandağ! (Again in Turkish, while giving me a hug, as if in celebration that we have convinced at least one more person that I am from Samandağ).

And so and so forth – I am happy that Sedat accrues enjoyment from it, even if everyone else would love us to shut up about me pretending to be from Samandağ four times per day. Safe, however, in the thought that we have converted yet one more to the Stefan-the-Samandağlı cause, I return to my work of scraping dishes, making tea, and fetching cigarettes for the assembled patrons: While most Turkish kebapçı workers could only dream of somehow getting to Canada to continue (or, more likely, contemplate even starting) their education, I, one year from finishing a post-graduate degree, have come to Turkey to work as a kebapçı in exchange for food and board.... I figure everyone in their life has to do it at least once...

Assembled crowds, most likely waiting for çay from Stefan

Thom Sank

Though previous entries of these ramblings swore never to engage in any sort of discussion regarding African cultural and historical matters, one towering figure in the history of Burkinabè (the fairly nifty adjective denoting something from Burkina Faso) politics demands mention: Thomas Sankara. No trip to the capital Ouagadougou can be complete (at least for those who have a love for politics) without a visit to the garbage-strewn cemetery in the city’s Sector 29. In a graveyard despoiled by thousands of discarded plastic bags, rotting garbage, refuse fires, itinerant ne’er-do-wells, and chipped graves, there is the freshly repainted tomb of Comrade Captain Thomas Sankara (Thom Sank) and several of his ministers.

Depending on who’s counting, Burkina Faso is the world’s second or fourth poorest country (really, you can find data to support both) – how they have contrived to fall behind the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a mystery to me, yet the fact remains that the country is desperately poor. The country’s former colonial rulers, the erstwhile French, tended to make a hash of it in most of their African countries (well, I shouldn’t single the French out, what country actually benefited from the civilizing mission of the European imperialists?), but at least successor states like Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire tended to inherit a bit more infrastructure. Burkina, on the other hand, had little on the ground at independence; like most countries in Africa, the nation contains a highly homogenous ethnic mix (an outcome of the “rational and enlightened” Western countries’ drawing of irrational lines in the sand to create artificial and illogically conceived African states) that militates against effective nation building.

Duly, it came as little surprise that the fledgling state suffered coup after coup in the decades following independence. Most newly installed military administrations made soothing noises about a quick return to civilian rule and an end to wanton corruption (Pervez Musharraf, anyone?), only to join the parasitical class they sought to eliminate. The man who bucked this trend and became a hero to a generation of African youth was the ambitious young military man, Thom Sank.

Sankara’s revolution was only four years old when the “rectification” came, an overly optimistic and euphemistic term that sanitizes the fact that the Captain was overthrown by his former friend and ally, Blaise Compaoré, and received a bullet in the back of the head for his trouble. Despite the somewhat inglorious end (although such ends always tend to immortalize those that would have remained extremely mortal had they not walked the path of martyrdom), his policies earned him the title of the “Che Guevara of Africa.” His ascetic, populist, industrious, and charismatic approach drew adoration from the poorer sections of Burkinabè society: He succeeded in a mass vaccination campaign for children nationwide, championed women’s rights, encouraged literacy, and kept his word about stamping out corruption. Long a believer that economic colonialism was continuing even if official French occupation had ended, Sankara sought to redirect the country’s economy along a more autarkist path in an effort to encourage domestic industry.

But while such efforts were wildly popular among the lower strata of society, other measures tended to grate against more privileged sections of the country (calling rich people thieves probably was not conducive to cross-class bridge-building). Sankara slashed civil service wages, and sold the ministerial fleet of Mercedes in favour of more modest Renaults. Echoing Mao, he also “encouraged” ministers to go out and help in the countryside, lest such paper-pushers get too comfortable in their white collar jobs. Alas, such policies proved too much both for the country’s traditional elite and the state’s former colonial powers: Sankara, along with several of his ministers, were deposed, gathered together, and shot in Compoaré’s “rectification of the revolution.”

Though undoubtedly a man of certain excesses, Sankara remained true to his anti-corruption principles in the end: A survey of his personal effects revealed a beat-up Renault, a bicycle, a few guitars, and a couple hundred dollars. Fittingly, then, one of the superstars of 1980’s African politics rests not in a great mausoleum (those deposed in coups rarely are mind you, Adnan Menderes notwithstanding), but in a rubbish-strewn cemetery that has become a place of discreet pilgrimage for newer generations appalled by current levels of corruption and elitist excess. In dying so early, Thom Sank guaranteed his own immortality.

The Sun Never Sets in Mali?

Starting off the day in Mopti, Mali















Sound conveyances, ready for takers















Not particularly exciting, but Timbuktu is supposed to look like a frontier town
















Sky over Bandiagara, Mali













Loading up in Koro, Mali

Africa Shots

Towards Home... Dapoyah, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Unnecessarily artsy shot, 30 km from Djenne, Mali

Burkina Faso-Mali border

Market day in Djenne with the mosque adjudicating the proceedings

Bazaar and mosque encore

Crossing the River

My previous entry discussed general matters of land-based conveyance systems in West Africa, but failed to provide either specific examples from this terrestrial mode of conveyance or explore the modi operandi of more aqueous forms of transport.

The historic town of Djenne lies on a large, sandy island on the Bani River in Central Mali. Known locally for its diverse Monday market that draws traders from the surrounding area, the town is more famous internationally because of its mosque, the world’s largest mud structure and a UNESCO world heritage site.

Despite the notoriety, the town is somewhat illogically underserved by transport options: Travellers coming from either the west (Bamako) or the east (Mopti) usually find themselves not so ceremoniously dumped at a junction some thirty kilometres from the town. Onward transport, of course, can only be arranged following the usual procedures (waiting in the sun until the bush-taxi is just a bit fuller than full, sharing your seat with protruding metal things, taking pictures of the driver/master mechanic underneath the hood miles from anywhere, etc., etc.). Once en route, however, everything is in order -- until one reaches that which even the chutzpah-laden African car dares not traverse: The Bani River. The Bani is certainly not the Amazon, but its width and depth are sufficiently enough to ensure that our car, possessor of a body that one could charitably describe only as somewhat porous and of questionable buoyancy -- and uncharitably only as a P.O.S – would not come through the fording with particularly flying colours. The answer, thus, was a ferry.

I use the term ferry only in the broadest, instrumentalist conception of the term: A long metal plank, equipped on one side with a motor and bedecked with several Bob Marley stickers would perhaps more accurately illustrate the nature of the conveyance. Having arrived in one piece from the road junction some 26 km away, I took my place in the departure terminal (there was a large metal crate on the shore whose 4 foot high ledge gave a commanding view of the river – I took this to be the departure lounge) and waited for the next sailing.

The Bani River, however, is somewhat infrastructurally challenged, in that it is singularly devoid of a dock. The river itself is laden with sediment and is consequently quite shallow. Given this lack of port infrastructure, the river’s shallowness, and the geometric composition of our plank-cum-ferry, there was precisely zero opportunity for a dry boarding procedure. In my opinion, the night we went to Djenne probably wasn’t so bad; in a Herculean effort, the ship’s captain managed to wedge his floating plank just some 4 m offshore in preparation for our embarkation. The other vehicles’ occupants were able to keep their feet dry since their transport was of sufficient enough construction to manage a short river-bound excursion immediately prior to boarding. Our conveyance, alas, in her asthmatic, wheezing, porous, and rusty (though I must say very stoic!) condition would most certainly not have had the stamina to ford the 4 metres of shallow water and board the plank with us occupants also on board. It was, thus, a reversal of the Normandy Invasion (or perhaps, more appropriately, Dunkirk?), with groups of people running through the water to board a quasi-buoyant sheet of metal immediately before departure. Though I’m not sure my feet necessarily took a liking to Bani River water (nesting worms anyone?), the embarkation was at least accomplished without the accompaniment of any sort of Normandy-style gunfire.

Once boarded, the captain dispensed with the standard safety demonstrations and instructions as to where to find personal floatation devices and life rafts in the event of an emergency in transit (I’m sure such safety procedures are a regular occurrence on Malian ferries, but we just happened to catch our captain on an off-day). Out of the vehicles, the ferry comfortably held room for about 20 people, although was filled on our crossing by about 20 more.
Though daylight was waning fast, I took an inventory of the plank’s fellow passengers, cargo, and conveyances. In the front, there was our anaemic bush-taxi (a lack of light precluded me from taking another photo of our driver industriously diving underneath the hood in an attempt to conjure up a new engine through a bit of alchemy or other such magic trick), followed by a two story bus – one story for the bus itself, a piece of machinery that at one time very much might have been painted orange, and one story for the varied collection of boxes, rice bags, and wildebeests tethered to the top (OK, there were probably no wildebeests, but it was too dark to ascertain absolutely that there were no wildebeests present). Behind the large, vaguely orange bus was a Mercedes that had remarkably succeeded in maintaining its blackness. It is with great regret that I failed to quiz the vehicle’s owner as to how he had succeeded in achieving this on an African road. Lastly, and lest one forget the conveyances that all of us used in yesteryear, there came a horse and buggy. The horse, looking none the worse for wear after fording part of the Bani, was evidently transporting a precious cargo to the market in Djenne. Closer inspection, however, revealed a multitude of rusty metal bits on their way to the bazaar (such an impressive collection of rusty metal things in all shapes and sizes conjured up memories of Mardin’s Hotel Başak, and their toilet facilities which happened to double as a rusty-metal-bit depository – I imagine the allusion is helpful to precisely no one, given that few sane people would ever darken the door of Mardin’s elegant Hotel Başak, nor have had the pleasure of ever spending two long nights there); I was regretfully unable to locate the purveyor of these metal bits the following day during the marché.

Our three minute crossing completed, I silently acknowledged my fellow passengers (be they man or beast) and returned to our stalwart bush-taxi (our driver had apparently constructed some headlights during the crossing using metal coils and prayer during our ferry-ride) for the remainder of the journey to Djenne.

Our asthmatic bush taxi in a rare, kinetically inclined moment.

De Transportatione Africana (Some General Observations)

De Transportatione Africana (Some General Observations)

It has been nearly nine months since my last entry – a lack of correspondence on my part that I ascribe to the vagrancies of graduate school and the fact that my whinging about said education would not make for particularly engaging reading. Such lack of correspondence ends today, for this is my first communiqué out of..... Africa! (At this juncture, I should further apologize to the vast majority of people who hold my acquaintance for sloughing off to the sun of West Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali, to be precise) with nary a mention from me --- I attribute such antisocial behaviour to the aforementioned vagrancies of graduate school, as poor an excuse as that may be).

I should iterate at the beginning of these ramblings that I am far from being an ustad on Africa. I might remember all of Roger Milla’s goals at the 1990 World Cup, cried inconsolably when Cameroon lost to England at that same competition, and written a second-rate exam about Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta in first year university, but I think that hardly constitutes any sort of substantive corpus of knowledge about African customs, culture, history, or social practices. Thus, lest I glibly make sweeping generalizations about various cultural matters that are not within my prevue, this entry is necessarily devoid of the cultural and historical minutiae of any one geographical location; it is, instead, a cursory overview of one of the dominant themes -- at least in the eye of the beholder -- of African travel: Transportation (here, I autocratically reserve the right to glibly make sweeping generalizations on this theme despite my earlier indications to the contrary).

In regards to the means of vehicular conveyance available throughout West Africa, the following can generally be observed:
-All taxis must be green.
-If your prospective taxi driver gives you a low-ball price, it usually means one of that the engine doesn’t work, the radiator is non-existent, the car needs a push start from three fairly fit males to start, one or both headlights detached themselves from their holder sometime in the 1980’s, or that your driver has to stop every six seconds or so to ask directions to your hotel in the very centre of town. Alternatively, all of these factors might be evident in the same vehicle.
-Expect dust.
-When possible, the inside of your taxi should be as gutted as possible. Rusted metal with protruding sharp bits is definitely a la mode. Better bus companies should also display this trend.
-In keeping with this minimalist theme, seats are mostly characterized by their unadulterated metal nature. Any randomly adhering bits of vague, upholstery-like material on your lumbar support device are purely accidental.
-All taxis must be issued with a musical selection that alternates between West African kora music, and reggae. This is non-negotiable.
-All vehicular door handles fell off shortly after post-colonial independence. Any taxi that doesn’t possess a clothes hanger or other sort of contraption in lieu of the factory handle is no taxi at all.
-Longer-haul minibuses should also display this lack of door-handle accessorization. Rope is usually the preferred method of maintaining the conveyance’s structural integrity.
-For longer-haul minibuses, departure time should invariably be when the minibus is just a bit fuller than it has been for the previous 43 minutes spent on baking tarmac at midday. When the captain has indicated that things are full enough, it is best also to wait just a few minutes more should any stragglers come.
-Expect wind and dust.
-One should naturally assume that a maximally long bus journey should be mirrored by maximum personal discomfort. No matter what seat you choose, your seat will always be the worst; you will be reminded of your profound personal discomfort/length of journey about every three seconds on account of the inexplicably placed piece of protruding metal burrowing into your kidney.
-All photos of vehicles in Africa will invariably portray them with their hoods up and several men working industriously inside trying to coax the engine’s brakes/radiator/sparkplugs/transmission/fans/filters/all of these back into life. Alternatively, those labouring might be trying to coax the engine back into life without the benefit of one or all of these standard features (Africans are master automotive bricoleurs and, at that, master mechanics). These photos, meanwhile, will be taken somewhere between the middle of nowhere and the end of the earth, for that is invariably where your breakdown will occur.
-Expect dust to inexplicably cover every inch of your body and possessions, no matter how much you bundle up.
-A hot day to make Dante sweat, coupled with a lack of onboard water, will invariably ensure that your driver chooses to take longer and more unnecessary chatting/cigarette breaks in locations devoid of disposable water.
-Although your long-haul transport has been booked several hours in advance, and although the minibus has been sun-tanning under the open skies for even longer, your mass conveyance device will invariably fuel up with gasoline only after you have all packed in (inclusive also, of course, of the extra 43+ minutes of time spent waiting on the tarmac for the driver’s cousin to appear). Minibuses, as a rule, cannot be fuelled up before a journey.
-Expect half of Noah’s Ark to accompany your bags on top of your minibus. If your minibus is one story high, expect an additional story of bags, metal things, and local florae and faunae lashed on above.
-Expect to hack up red dust coloured mucus at least five days after your last voyage.
-Expect cavernous potholes.
-And, lastly, expect to get there eventually, come hell or highwater (and given African weather, hell and highwater are usually apparent on the same day) – come what may, your chosen form of conveyance will invariably deposit you (more or less) at your destination at some finite point. You may have only accomplished 400 km in 17 hours, but the guy at the ticket booth (or rough approximation thereof) didn’t promise the EuroStar to Calais either.

So there you have it: An unerring portrayal of transport in West Africa that importantly avoids the pitfalls of overgeneralization so common to other travel accounts.

Bonne soirée!

Obligatory picture of African transport with hood raised, miles from anywhere...

From the Centre of Anatolia to the Coast of British Columbia

For anyone that has gone overseas for a certain amount of time, they know that reentering the "home" country is a far taller order than leaving it in the first place. Indeed, the greatest culture shock comes with a return, not with a departure.

So while I had spent most of my July and August engaged in various pursuits such as drinking tea with ex-PKK prisoners while discussing the interrelationship between Marxism and Anarchism, monitoring general elections in 46 degree weather, endlessly riding buses with broken air conditioners while my seatmates vomitted, trying to speak Dutch with returning Turkish migrant workers at sacred springs while the Army and the PKK traded salvoes in the surrounding hills, cutting my fingers while trying to open packages of water with my Serbian knife while talking to Communist insurgents, discussing German linguistic minutiae workers at a Fascist-run hotel, getting sick, getting sick again, getting sick and going to the doctor, getting even sicker and going back to the same doctor and being told I just needed to drink more raki, having small Turkish nurses inserting large needles into my.....lower body, riding brakeless motorbikes along the Meditarranean Coast in order to get more large needles inserted into my....lower body by different, small Turkish nurses, watching the waves crash along the Meditarranean shore, watching the waves crash along the Bosphorus, pretending to know how to dance to Gypsy music (for a second time), and any number of related pursuits, my flight on the 13th of August approached just a bit to rapidly to get everything done, let alone allow me the time to prepare for a reentry into the white Canadian suburbs.

The greatest antidote (or at least temporary postponement of the inevitable), then, would be a holiday upon returning to the Great White North. The destination was Bella Coola, a village situated in the rain-soaked Coast Mountains along Canada's rugged fjord-lined Western shore. The region is typically marked by a) A near total lack of humans, and b) An inverse abundance of bears, whales, mountain lions, eagles and anything else German and Japanese tourists spend thousands of dollars to come and see (directed to the latter group of tourists are many signs in the province suggesting to would be photographers that posing for pictures with grizzly bears is generally not recommended --- although, to be fair, when I managed to spot a bear in one village, I spent the better part of 15 minutes intelligently poking around bushes looking for it in order to take its picture, so I suppose I have no right to criticize).

The trip was also with my family, which meant that not only was I saved the burden of actually spending money, but it also meant that I did not need to resort to spending the night in hotels frequented by fairly prolific Moroccan ladies of the night (not to my room I assure you) or subsisting on apples and bread as my main sources of sustenance.

But, thankfully, the trip was not in total luxury (luxurious things can become somewhat dull quickly), for the trip was centred around a 25 hour ferry ride, which, for my mother, is somewhat slightly longer than eternity, but for me, is the equivalent of a bus ride from Istanbul to Van, and thus not very long at all.

The ferry, which can only run in summer due to the severity of Canada's winter storms, is the main source of supplies for many isolated communities along the fog drenched coast, including Ocean Falls, population 38. In a lesson that oil boomtowns (perhaps also the Gulf countries as well) should heed well, the town had a population of 5,000 in the earlier part of the 20th century, replete with bowling alleys, a pool, a vibrant multicultural community (until the Canadian government "cleansed" the town of its Vietnamese population and bulldozed their houses, Nicolae Ceauşsescu style, in the 1940's), a rather popular bordello (for those who were so inclined), plus the largest hotel on the Western North American Coast north of San Francisco for a good part of the early 20th century. Alas, when the town's main employer, the local sawmill, closed its doors in 1968, the town essentially died --- but for the 38 hardy souls that continue to work for the province's electricity company.

But while the residents of Ocean Falls were discussing current affairs and playing chess at the very popular local brothel, the residents of Sointula, a few hours down the coast, were busying themselves creating a socialist utopia. Started by Finnish socialist utopians in 1901, the town of Sointula (meaning 'Place of Harmony' in Finnish) has long been a stronghold of the left and other alternative thinkers in the province of British Columbia.

The utopia, unfortunately, did not even last a decade (the town's charismatic leader, Matti Kurikka, left the settlement in 1905 after the town cooperative's disastrous bid on a nearby bridge contract left Sointula bankrupt --- ideological visionaries are perhaps good at persuading people and pointing to (typically unfulfilled) glorious futures, but they are not known for their mathematics and accounting skills: The cooperative bid on the construction of a bridge, but only estimated the cost of the materials involved (neglecting the cost of labour), meaning that Sointula's residents were forced to work for free on the construction of the bridge for two years: Matti Kurikka, gifted and charismatic Marxist theoretician though he was, was evidently found lacking in the more numerical sciences...) before being disbanded. The town survived, however, and continues to retain both its original Finnish character and its anti-establishment ethos. Indeed, but for electricity and broadband internet, services are by and large contributed by the locals themselves, while the town's cooperative store is the oldest in British Columbia.

Alas, Turkish tea, Turkish breakfast, football, and other more Anatolian pursuits do not exist on Canada's West Coast. At least, however, I can be assured that there are interesting things to see on the shores of my own country, something I never thought possible until now --- whether they be decaying hotels in Ocean Falls, Finnish socialists in Sointula, 18% grade mountain roads, some of the most varied topography found anywhere in the world or good salmon. Hopefully the return to a life of graduate studies and suburban existence will have similar happy returns...

The present guests of Ocean Falls' hotel

A banner in Sointula, pointing the glorious socialist future.