Happy New Year...

I just returned from few days off. I spent them visiting some nice spots around the island. After having observed for more than a month the tourists visiting Socotra, it was my turn to be one. Few days off duty (and the calendar!) brought about a mental process that, I guess, everybody all over the world is more or less on : a balance of this finishing year and lots of wishes for the coming one. How was your year, dear friend? What are your intentions for the coming one? Lose weight? Give up smoking? I do not expect any answer, as this is a very intimate sphere of yours I do not want to invade.

Personally, if I look back and evaluate Year 2007, I guess that I should not complain too much about it. Sure: I have a new job; I live in place that lots of tourists pay big money to visit, I am healthy and so are those I love… but it could have been better (of course!).

Recently, a friend of mine told me that my “legendary pessimism” always makes him (bitterly?) smile. I would be so happy if I could realise by myself such legendary pessimism, because what I feel is that I am just being…realistic! Let me bring you some examples.

Some places of Socotra are really beautiful, but also extremely important and fragile ecological reserves, which need effective protection. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is bringing forward the “Socotra Archipelago Conservation and Development Project”, which foresees a fee tourists have to pay to the guards when entering a protected area. Great! The problem is that when I asked a tourist guide why are some protected areas full of garbage, and why the guards did not seem to be really keen in removing it (as part of their job!), he answered: “we have great difficulties in teaching the locals to preserve our environment, and anyway some (meaning “most”?) of the guards are only interested in their salaries, not really in the trash”. When I warned that more jerry-cans or syringes floating in a beautiful lagoon would entail fewer tourists and salaries (for guards, guides and the rest of the tourism-based economy of the island), he could not find any suitable reply. Sad issue: as I told you before, the importance of the island is comparable to the Galapagos, and there is an on-going campaign to include Socotra as a World Heritage Site. Unless the United Nations organise a strong awareness campaign among the locals and, above all, the guards, Socotra would not only renounce to see its name in the UNESCO register, but would also have to adapt to big hotels, mass tourism and…more trash! That is exactly what the people here are not willing to accept.

When I returned home from my tour, I turned on the radio: new assassinations, new invasions, and more countries facing serious political crisis or generalised violence… Old disagreements on environmental protection, everlasting armed conflicts in all Continents… I later decided to have dinner and some tourist-spotting. I said hello to the manager of the restaurant and asked him: “Did you hear about the killing of Benazir Bhutto?” He replied he did and, as he saw my face still under shock for the news I had one hour before, he philosophically added: “That’s life!”

His comment was not meant to be a macabre pun, but an innocent thought coming from a simple and pragmatic man, used to the dirty sides of the human condition. Still, such statement after the killing of a human being is another proof that there is something tremendously wrong in this World, where hatred, racism, fear, ignorance, and the resulting petty politics of our leaders are overwhelmingly dominating. We enter 2008 with another great achievement of mankind: if I am not mistaken, it is the first time in history that a country with a considerable nuclear arsenal (and some problems with neighbouring countries!) is in the threshold of a civil war. Frightening!

Please, give me some of your optimism (if you have any left) and I shall welcome with you the brand new year! Give me good reasons to believe that it will be better than this ending one, and I shall join you in the big midnight fun of Times Square, Place Charles de Gaulle, Puerta del Sol, or Stonehenge. But, for the time being, I simply rejoice to be still alive, healthy and in a peaceful environment, in spite of the magnificent stupidity of humanity.

“We eat and drink, while tomorrow they die”. Happy New Year!

Noged, Indian Ocean

"Aid Mubarak!"

Today is Aid, one of the most important celebrations in Muslim societies.

The first Aid I saw was in Niger and it was quite similar to the one of Socotra. The second was in a military camp of Bangladeshi peacekeepers in Cote d'Ivoire: too peculiar as to take it as an example of Aid.

It is the day that families gather and eat the goat that has been slaughtered in the morning and, after that, the relatives greet themselves. Later, they send one of them to bring some meet to the neighbours, and they would not bring to another house a piece of meet that is less valuable than the one that house had previously sent to them. It is also the day that all bad feelings are left behind and reconciliations are easier. Doesn’t is sound a bit like…Christmas?

Anyway, I was not left behind in my being a Western foreigner and my assistant kindly invited me to have Aid with his brothers. It is the first time I actually participated in the celebration. We had lunch in a very cosy room, all around a big tray, full of meet, rice, vegetables and fruits. At the end of lunch, they all stood up and wished each other “Aid Mubarak!”. In Socotra, males kiss by touching the other’s nose with his, avoiding the contact of the two fronts, and making a discrete sound of a kiss. During this ritual, they sometimes kiss each other by cheek-contact. Don’t ask me what women do, because they gathered in another room.

Incredibly, they wanted me to participate to their greetings. This moment was the best cultural contact I could establish with the local population. I felt like being accepted in the family’s celebration just like all the other members. Today, I am probably the only foreigner in Socotra celebrating Aid, but I am also the only foreigner having the tremendous luck to be among a family who has welcomed me in its house like a close friend.

This is a very important day for me. Some people gave me the chance to forget about my daily intercultural difficulties and merge in the community during its special celebration. I just hope that I adequately responded to their generosity and honoured them as they deserve.

Today, somebody let me in, regardless of my cultural or religious distance. Today, I did not feel alone. Today, I am happy.

Ah, and some children I had never seen before knocked on the door to greet me. They run away with a packet of biscuits and a very puzzled expression on their face.

Aid Mubarak!

"Fratelli d'Italia"

It is quite known that Italians express their typical, though nowadays more and more latent, Mediterranean sense of mutual solidarity and support when, being abroad, they find themselves facing similar experiences or difficulties, too far away from home and…mothers!

The first time I observed such phenomenon was during my golden Erasmus year in Granada. Though our charming and funny manners usually make socialisation quite easy with Spaniards, we often ended up among ourselves having late night spaghettis and drinking red wine, missing our friends and our beloved football league. Later I found out that the same ritual ceremonies happen when we meet in weird and remote places, working for NGOs or stuff like that. Maybe the one who had just returned from holidays in homeland would bring a pot of pesto (parsley sauce for pasta, typically from Genoa) or the latest album of some famous singer. Of course, together with this romantic gathering of some home-sick fellows, you can also observe the most superficial or ridiculous version of this socio-cultural event: a good example would be those tourists who meet in the Rambles in Barcelona and decide to merge their groups and go partying for the simple (or simplistic?) reason of being all…Italians! Let me assure you that in such trivial occasions our above-mentioned charming and funny manners turn, to the eyes of the locals, into a disturbing circus of a bunch of pathetic and arrogant people. And you can be just as sure that usually, as soon as we go back to our neighbourhoods and provinces, we shall be again these selfish, miserable and snobbish small bourgeois, who couldn't care less about the “wonderful people” they met abroad or the difficulties of her/his lifetime neighbour, unless they would get succulent and morbid stories to report to their bar mates later in the evening.

But what I would like to highlight here is the genuine instincts and physiological need to join among cultural peers who work abroad and in not always friendly environment. We choose a cosy place and have pleasant, relaxing and comfortable time. I don’t know if other “national cultures” behave like this in similar situations, but let me tell you that the regenerative properties of this behavioural pattern are amazing. I must admit that the benefits I had from the last time I met other Italians living in Yemen were astonishingly beneficial for my mental health.

I had to go on a five-day mission to Sana’a, from which I just returned. In spite of having to take again a series of flights, and sometimes in very unfriendly hours, I must say that it made a lot of good to me. I stayed in the same hotel in which I slept when I first arrived from Barcelona, so you will certainly remember that I mentioned the Italian TV by satellite. But now you must take into account that it’s been a month I didn’t have a hot shower or real meals, like the one they serve on the beautiful terrace (remember the picture I had posted?)

But this was not all. The manager of the hotel is a very kind Italian lady from Vicenza (North-East, close to Venice) and this time we had dinner together a couple of times and learn a little bit more about ourselves. Also, I had the pleasure to meet again a very kind and easygoing gentleman from Salerno (South, few kilometres away from Naples), who works in the Italian embassy. The lady, the gentleman and I spent few hours chatting in the hotel lounge the night I had to travel back to Socotra. As they are both Italians and living in Sana’a, they knew each other quite well and looked like they were good friends. Generally, an Italian would certainly agree that the North-East and Southern culture are very different, still not so different as to avoid making jokes about it and laugh loud! As usual, I could not clearly position myself in all this because, though Italian, I have no well-defined roots in the cultural panorama of my country.

I felt amazingly good to spend a couple of hours with these two charming people. Even if it was very late and we were all quite tired, we were using slang expressions and body language you can fully understand only if you are Italian. We were commenting on the news we get from Italian media, on the on-going political and social debates (in Italy they can go on for years without any visible results…), and it was absolutely unnecessary to agree on our point of views. I think we were all feeling fine and having a great time. The gentleman, coming from a region of philosophers, poets, dramatists and sailors, has such a strong accent that the conversation automatically becomes even more entertaining; the lady, as soon as she got aware that I was “celebrating” my first month of full abstention from alcohol consumption, rushed to get a bottle of Averna (Sicilian liqueur) and pour some joy in my sad and empty glass. Yeah… It felt real good!

There was a phase of the chat in which my already physiological home-sickness showed up again, like in Matiaf. It was when they started organising for Christmas and deciding who would bring what to the traditional dinner. I am sure that if they knew I could have come to Sana’a and celebrate Christmas with them and their friends they would have invited me to join in, but they were perfectly aware that I could not have travelled: I am expecting a very welcomed visitor here, so anyway I would not have been all alone celebrating Christmas and New Years’ Eve in Socotra. When I find myself in Europe in this time of the year, I hate having to participate in the consumer orgy that comes in the package of these traditional celebrations, but I think I shall be missing them this time. Of course, humans are never satisfied and hardly coherent with themselves…, but is it also that, in addition to my being home-sick, I am turning more indulgent towards my own cultural traditions after they have annoyed me for so many years? Am I missing my glass of Grappa with the ones I would like to be with? Or am I just feeling like this fish who is tired to have swam off its bowl for too long?

Who knows…Anyway, I shall always feel grateful to these people, who have given me a short time of authentic Mediterranean well-being. They have warmed me up with their friendship, their humour, their liqueur and…their so dramatically being Italian! I wish they would honour their promise to show up in Socotra when the rain season is over, that is around half of January. I hope we will have red wine and laughter in a small hideaway, but also some sweet collective blues between desperate Italians away from home!

Southern Exposure

Have you ever seen some episodes of the late 80’s / early 90’s TV serial “Northern Exposure”? I hope you did, but in case you don’t know this rare example of intelligence and sensitivity of some enlightened American screenwriters and producers, let me give you the idea. For Italian or Spanish readers, I refer to “Un medico fra gli orsi” or “Un doctor en Alaska”.

A young Jewish physician, Joel, leaves behind for some time his life in Brooklyn and moves to Cicely, Alaska, to look after the sick villagers as a way to pay back to his sponsor the studies in medicine. He is not very happy about renouncing to the great stimulations of the Big Apple, even less to end up in a place where moose are more numerous than humans. But he has no choice, so he arrives in this small and peaceful community, full of very interesting characters and an incredibly beautiful nature.

The beginnings are always difficult and the intercultural shock obviously shows up to the poor doctor: the white timber workers are not really like Greenwich Village intellectuals, and natives do not really look like the smart people in 5th Avenue either. But this young Republican and urban professional will soon find out that even in this “middle-of-nowhere” called Cicely there is a lot to learn about humanity, principles, simplicity, honesty and a respectful life towards Mother Nature (though people there go out hunting a lot, I must say…) And Joel would soon become a part, a very important part of this idyllic society.

To be honest, this serial is the one that has best matched what I look for in such a commercial product. It is a low-cost production (you don’t pay the beauty of the Northern nature, and somebody told me it had not been filmed in Alaska!), the actors are very good (even though, as far as I know, no one got famous after this work) and the story-boards are simple, but also profound, and sometimes even hilarious and surrealistic. What I think makes the serial really special is that all characters prove an enormous, but simple at the same time, sense of humour, philosophy and humanity. Not all of them are saints, and some look more ambitious than others, but their lives and thoughts are described as to make you think a lot after you turn you TV off.

While preparing myself to go to Socotra (let us be honest: I was not aware of its existence until I was offered to go), I was fantasising about being this Joel arriving in a small community. I knew that here I would not have found any beautiful young woman flying on a Cessna, but I would have loved to meet someone like that radio station dee-jay, who plays good music for his village and broadcasts the (very) local news!

No. Socotra is not Cicely. But why can’t it be? What makes it impossible?

First of all, Socotra is real life. Not a TV show: in the episodes I saw there is no “baddie”. Everyone has its own vices, but frankly there is no one who disturbs the peaceful days in Cicely, or not even a character you would hate. Socotra has a much bigger community than the one of Cicely and obviously some are more honest than others. Also, it is true that honesty itself is not a clear-cut concept everywhere! Secondly, Socotra does not have its own radio-station, or any other infrastructure existing in Alaskan villages. Third: here we have no moose, but goats: all over the place!! And last, but not least, the intercultural shock is much greater for me than for Joel.

Big cultural differences, like the one I am facing with people who do not speak a language I can understand and do not share with me many values and norms, are barriers not only in your professional activities, but also in the interpersonal sphere. Therefore, it is difficult to establish a real friendship with any local. And I do not really feel like running after Italian tourists either…

In conclusion, I would say that the considerable cultural knowledge you collect from the people you work with in different cultural environments may be a precious treasure for yourself. And, of course, for a simple matter of mental survival, you learn a lot about chameleonic behaviours according to the kind of place you are in. But what you pick up and gather along the way often ends up in a strongbox you would open only when you return to your cultural peers. But Joel could have his opened all the time: for the benefit of the people in Cicely, but also for his own. He could openly share culture and skills with those who have welcomed and accepted him as a new member of the community.

And that’s the point. What if I suddenly really open up my strongbox and then find out that what I actually opened is a Pandora’s Box of unforeseeable consequences?

Socotra, 17th Century

A dear friend of mine, a psychologist, is also a collector of ancient maps. He has just come across the picture above and is kindly willing to share with you. The author is Allain Manesson Mallet (1630-1706), a French cartographer, engineer and soldier. The picture is from his work “Description de L’Univers” (ed. Denys Thierry, 1683/86, Paris). This geographic and ethnographic encyclopaedic atlas, which complete title is too long to be worth stating here, was published in five volumes: the map of Socotra is in the third one, page 95.

A Sunset in Matiaf

Matiaf

On the early morning of 19th November, the local Red Crescent Society left from Hadibo to reach Matiaf, near the Eastern edge of the island, Indian Ocean coast. My assistant and I have been kindly invited to join the mission, which objective was to provide medical treatment to the local population, as well as training in a number of disciplines concerning prevention of some diseases and basic first aid techniques.

To arrive to that fishermen village of about 400 inhabitants, you need to cross the island from North to South, through the central highlands. Most of the route is on the asphalted road connecting the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean, which reminded me that a friend is waiting for my visit in his Punjabi homeland. Then you have to drive through a track of stones up to Mahferhin. There, some fishermen took the whole delegation (and the materials we had along) on three small fishing boats to Matiaf.

It is a beautiful place and the welcome of the local population was just as nice. Useless to say again how amazing were the white sand beaches and the turquoise colour of the sea; pointless to discribe the beautiful night sky I could see above before falling into Morpheus' arms.

Still, it was the first night I felt somehow alone and away from my friends, scattered around the world. Blame it on the urgent need of sharing the beauty of the place with those I miss, or on the fact that my neighbours were having a long, hilarious sleepingbag chat in Socotri, but for a while I felt uncomfortable. After having spent some time in weird places, I should be used by now to this feeling, but I guess that such blues can never be avoided. Some psychologists have studied this phenomenon, and it seems that no matter how many missions you have behind (and keep in mind to charm possible grand-children!) or how long did you stay away from friends and relatives, such feeling always appear, sooner or later. The best you can do is to keep them under control and diluate them with good times and laughter with the people you are with.

So this is what I did, starting from the morning after. I must say that it was not a difficult thing to do, because the camp was full of charming people, who always made sure that in any difficulty I would face, they would be right behind me and help anyway they could: by giving me their sandals to walk on the rocky sea bottoms, or preparing philtered water just for me and my delicate, foreign organism...

The three days and two nights I spent there went fast. The people of Matiaf do not see very often foreigners in their small community, above all if obviously Western-typed. The teacher of the school invited my assistant and me in his small class-room to say hello to the children, and the leader of the community invited us for tea in his house. I also had wonderful dinners with my colleagues, and even managed to share some jokes with them. I guess they somehow felt on themselves the blues I could not manage to hide the first night.

I even had the chance to make short walks on the shore, along beaches and cliffs, and made my incredible discoveries: part of a whale’s skeleton (a rib was more than three metres long, a vertebra like a fresbee) and the carrions of two dolphins. Sorry for this last unpleasant detail, but still it is something that does not happen to me every day…I just hope next time the dolphins I shall see will be jumping around the boat, like in the TV serials for children…

I had a great time in Matiaf, and I hope that my promises to be back soon did not sound false, for it is really a pleasant place to be. Still, for not too long: I ended up missing my bed and, most importantly, my bathroom.