Month: September 2014

The Man from Much Wenlock: Meet Ken Milner

It is a privilege to know Ken Milner, a gentle creative man with deep rooted sensibilities for the past in and around Much Wenlock. He is a treasure house of information on country lore, on the families who have lived for generations below Wenlock Edge, and on the novels of Shropshire writer Mary Webb which, incidentally, he only learned to read at the age of thirty five. He built the house you can see in the video, and he created this beautiful garden which brings joy to all who see it. Graham passes it twice a day, driving to and from work. It is a floral threshold between the town and Wenlock Edge.

Ken also paints, makes sculptures, and is a poet and storyteller. Here, though, is his living creation – his garden. The video content was created by Ken and Wenlock poet, Paul Francis, and the whole filmed by Silva Productions, a Midlands production company. You are in for a treat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23lgFSQzvTw

#WenlockEdge

Flickr Comments: M words

Night-time Plea in Nice: Come Rescue Me…?

There are so many enticing shop windows to gaze at in Nice – everything from brightly coloured marzipan sweets to exquisite oriental teapots. This window, however, was most disturbing. The more so, since it was just across the street from our hotel.

I think of this as my ‘David Lynch photo’. It seems to have about it more than a hint of that director’s very weird but somehow compelling TV series Twin Peaks. By day, the window on Nice’s Rue de Rivoli (just up from the swish Negresco Hotel where we weren’t staying) was scarcely noticeable. Only at night, when dimly lit from within and without, did it take on ‘a reality’ (though I hesitate to explore this further) and you could see more clearly what was inside. It seemed to be a dry cleaners, but there was also a lonely parrot in a large cage, and an assortment of wedding gear arrayed on a wigless bride, and many large-brimmed sun hats. This girl, though, was surely yearning for rescue. Perhaps she is still. Any heroes out there?

Ailsa’s Travel Theme: Inviting

DP photo challenge: nighttime

Night-time in Nice

Nice is a lovely city to walk around at night. So many bistro and restaurant menus to browse, the sound of the sea along La Baie des Anges, the October evening crisp after the day’s warmth; ghosts of times past…

Daily Post Photo Challenge: Night-time

Thursday’s Special: looking at the sky over Wenlock Edge

Is it just me, or are our skies growing more interesting in terms of light and cloud formation? I know I spend more time these days looking upwards. Behind our house on Sheinton Street the farmland rises in a series of scarps till it reaches the tree line on Wenlock Edge. Thereafter the ground falls away through hanging woodland. It is quite a drop and means we view the weather higher up somehow, always beyond a series of false horizons. The light and cloud change every minute of the day. You can lose hours simply watching.

This week Paula suggests we post portraits of one kind or another. Here, then, are some sky portraits taken over Townsend Field and Wilmore Hill. You may imagine, too, the frequent exchange that takes place between G and me as we move about the house and garden: I say. Have you seen the sky?

Lost in Translation Thursday’s Special

#WenlockEdge

Rhinos: strong but oh so vulnerable

The poaching of rhinos for their horn is a truly abhorrent trade, and shows humans at their worst, not only in terms of wanton cruelty, but also for their gross stupidity in believing that the horn a) makes a nice macho handle for their dagger, or b) does a single thing for their sexual performance. I do not wish to be sexist, but we are talking of the male of the species here.

However, while we are blaming recent decades of poaching for big game loss, it is worth remembering that some truly monumental decimation took place in countries like Kenya under colonial rule, and by the kind of aristocratic settler who considered East Africa their own personal hunting ground; this to the exclusion of the people whose land it had been for generations, and who then became labelled poachers if they were caught hunting for the pot.

John Hunter, was but one of many white hunters who worked both on his own account as a safari leader, and as a game clearance officer for the government. He began his hunting career around 1910 after quitting his job as a guard on the Mombasa railway. In an article in LIFE magazine 12 July 1952 he begins by saying:

When I first came to Kenya the game covered the plains as far as man could see. I hunted lions where towns now stand, and shot elephants from the engine of the first railroad to cross the country. In the span of my 65 years the jungles have turned to farmland and savage tribes have become factory workers. I have had a little to do with this change myself; for the government employed me to clear dangerous beasts out of areas that were opened to cultivation.This was in a day’s work for me; yet I have always been a sportsman.

John A Hunter(1887 – 1963)

His career tally for elephants killed is 1,400, but when it comes to rhinos, he holds the world record. Over a two-day period he was responsible for 1,000 rhino deaths, the slaughter taking place in the Makindu area of Ukambani, about a hundred miles south of Nairobi. The land, and rather poor land at that, was wanted by the authorities for the resettlement of the Akamba people. But the scale of the killing goes to show how plentiful these animals once were.

When John Hunter came to retire in 1958, it was to the small hotel he had built at Hunter’s Lodge, Makindu. I have written about the place in other posts; we practically lived there in ‘92. The story goes that successive owners had long given up trying to keep the roadside hotel sign upright. Always, the locals said, some avenging rhino would come and flatten it. Whether this was a real or a spirit rhino, no one said, but there were certainly no rhinos in sight when we were there.

Today in Kenya there are several private reserves where small numbers of black and white rhinos live out their lives with round-the-clock ranger-guards. At the time when the top photo was taken, the white rhino concerned inhabited, with several others, a secluded part of a Maasai-owned group ranch. It is hoped that initiatives such as these will keep the species viable, but it is by no means certain. It is anyway a dangerous job for the men in the photo below. These days poachers come well armed with automatic weapons. It takes great bravery and strength of character to protect the world’s wildlife out in the bush. So three cheers for the rangers wherever they are working on this, WORLD RHINO DAY. These men and women deserve all our praise and support. It is only a shame that their diligent protection continues to be needed.

Anti-poaching team in a private reserve in Northern Kenya

For a South African perspective on the state of rhinodom see De Wets Wild, always a blog worth visiting for its wonderful wildlife photos.

And for an Indian view, Sriram Janak’s wonderful blog.

Ailsa’s travel theme: strong for more strong stories

Endurance in Central African Republic

There’s a story here. You have to look carefully though. This is very much a happenstance shot, taken by Graham from a moving overland truck many years ago. In the truck, alongside him, were a bunch of young Australians and New Zealanders. You may picture a row of enquiring, youthful, fair-skinned faces looking out on this scene. It is hard to imagine what the locals made of this passing vision of alien hobo humanity. The Central African Republic (CAR) has never been a common tourist destination. It certainly is not these days.

In the late nineteenth century occupying French colonisers apparently tried to turn the country into a cotton plantation. It did not work. Ever since independence in 1960, all has been shaky. For the past decade the people of CAR have been caught up in bloody bush wars, these apparently ethnic based and factional: Christian versus Muslim. Neighbouring Chad to the north is implicated. As in the Democratic Republic of Congo, CAR’s neighbour to the south, this is a beautiful land stuffed with riches: uranium, crude oil, gold, diamonds, and valuable hardwoods. There is also good farm land and hydro-power potential. Yet its people are also among the world’s poorest. As in DRC, it is necessary to ask the question ‘Who benefits?’ to find out exactly why this state of things persists in the 21st century.

…forest either side the red dirt road, rolling hills, coffee bushes, pawpaw tees, kapok trees, bananas, innumerable mangoes and desolate villages…people waving and smiling, but also some half-heartedly thrown stones and raised fists from the kids…

from G’s Overland Diary

You can make a guess that a good part of the answer will involve a chain of traded commodities that reaches us in the industrialized nations, for we are the end-users and buyers. By some means or other, arms will be going the other way. For this is the nature of the rich world’s (largely unseen) relationship with African territories. In the past it was the cropping of humans for slaves, and the cropping of elephants for tusks to make drawing-room piano keys, and balls for the billiard table games of civilized gentlemen. Today, it is the minerals that are craved, and at any cost. The trade keeps unscrupulous African potentates in power. They pillage resources from neighbouring countries to sell to the so-called developed world (is this us?). And so we have the carnage.

Until 1997 France maintained a military force in CAR; senior French politicians are said to have acquired diamond and gold interests in the country during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Thereafter, fearing a power vacuum, Paris funded French-speaking African nations to provide a peacekeeping force there (BBC news page). Today, French forces are back as part of the UN peacekeeping mission. Their fellow peacekeepers are Rwandans, and these two forces do not see eye to eye either (The New Republic). However you look at it, the country is a bloody mess. Once the Pandora’s Box of vested interest by multiple players has been opened, it is hard work to restore any vestige of order. We see this in the Middle East too.

And so back to this photograph. The girl’s wave is wistful as she looks directly at us. Frozen in the moment is her wondering about life elsewhere. The mother, though, knows better. She looks steadfastly away, eyes focused on some other reality. Her stance suggests proud forbearance, feet planted firmly on the earth, her piece of earth, weight evenly distributed. The arms that encircle the baby are sure, composed, protecting, not clinging. She is doing what women do in Africa – endure. Perhaps she is enduring still. Most likely not.

DP photo challenge: endurance

For more about conflict resources

Sounds of Portland Head

It stills the mind, listening to the sea. The chattering monkey mind shuts up. Gives in. Surrenders to the inward rush of waves, the rhythmic retreat. But add in the doleful wail of a lighthouse foghorn, and something else happens. A door in the imagination swings wide: images of storm-lashed fishing boats, a ship off course, the warning blast resounding on fog-laden seas, the tremors of anxiety as seafarers hear that sound and know of invisible danger ahead. Shoals, sandbanks, submerged rocks?

There was none of this kind of drama on the day we went to Portland Head Light. The morning’s sea mist had dispersed to dreamy afternoon sunshine. We watched a huge cruise ship sail out of Portland. People milled about the gift shop and ate ice creams. September in Maine – what could be nicer?

The Portland Head Light is the state’s oldest lighthouse, built at the behest of President George Washington between 1787 and 1791. Apparently government funds at the time were very tight and the story goes that the President ordered the masons, Jonathan Bryant and John Nichols of Portland, to use materials taken from the fields and shore and haul them to the site by oxen.

The original plan was for a 58-foot tower (17 metres), but when it was done it was realized that the light would not be visible beyond the headlands to the south. A further 14 feet (4 metres) was required, at which point Mr. Bryant quit, leaving Nichols to finish the job and build the small house beside it. The Light was dedicated by the Marquis de Lafayette and first lit on January 10 1791 using 16 lamps fuelled by whale oil.

The first keeper was Captain Joseph Greenleaf, an American Revolution veteran. For his pains of manning the Portland Head Light, Greenleaf was allowed to live in the keeper’s house and fish and farm nearby. He received no pay. By June the following year he had had enough. He wrote to the authorities telling them of his travails. For one thing in the winter the ice would form so thickly on the lantern glass it obscured the light, and he would have to go up there and melt it off. It is hard to imagine what kind of effort this would have involved, and in alarming conditions too. In 1793, until his death two years later, he received an annual salary of $160, which by today’s values would be around $4-5,000. Not exactly riches for saving life and property from treacherous seas.

Ailsa’s travel challenge: noise

Kui’s 5-star review on Amazon Kindle

Cover: Kathleen Collins Howell

There’s nothing like a good review for recharging flagging creative spirits, and believe me, they do flag. So I was more than delighted to receive this one for my novella Losing Kui. Many thanks bjg.

You can read the opening chapters on an earlier post HERE

Available on Amazon and also on ePub Bud for Nook, iPod/iPhone

Flickr Comments ‘K’ words

Far away in black and white in the Shropshire Hills

These photos were taken at the Bronze Age stone circle of Mitchell’s Fold, up in the South Shropshire hills. It seems isolated now, but four thousand years ago there was much human activity in these uplands. There are the remains of field systems from this era as well as burial cairns and other stone monuments. In more recent times this stone circle has been associated with the legend of a wicked witch called Mitchell. She is reputed to be entrapped within the stones. You can read more of this story at Witch-catching in the Shropshire Wilds.

With thanks to Cee for her brilliant challenges, and to Graham for the use of his photos.

Cee’s Black & White and Far Away Challenge

How much for humanity on the Congo ferry?

I have written elsewhere that the Team Leader’s long ago trip on the Congo Ferry is a source of great envy to me. I’ve said, too, that the Congo River is Central Africa’s super-highway. In a land with few roads and vast forests, the river is not only an essential means of transport, but a place to do business for communities along the river. This ferry plies some thousand miles of treacherous waterway between Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kisangani in the east. The ferry takes not only passengers, but also has several great barges hitched alongside, and to them are tied fleets of traders’ pirogues. Since progress can be slow with days of delay – running aground on one of the shifting sandbars being a common hazard – the ferry becomes a floating shanty town – all of life and death takes place here.

Henry Morton Stanley was probably the first European to explore the river’s length. It was down to his urging of the riches to be had there that King Leopold II of Belgium established one of the cruellest, most murderous regimes ever perpetrated on hapless humanity. Under the guise of humanitarian aid, Leopold secured this vast Central African territory as his personal fiefdom and named it Congo Free State. From 1885-1908 (until the Belgian Government forced him to relinquish control) Leopold was thought to be responsible for up to 10 million deaths*of African villagers who were terrorized, raped, mutilated and killed in order to provide their quotas of wild rubber and ivory to European Station managers. And believe me, you see only the merest glimpse of these European officers’ activities in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a tale that was rooted in his own brief experience as a steamboat captain on the Congo. Campaigners who helped to expose Leopold’s activities include British journalist E. D. Morel, Irish-born British diplomat, Roger Casement in the Casement Report, and Sherlock Holmes creator, Arthur Conan Doyle.

Nor has the resource grabbing by foreign powers ever stopped. One way and another, the world’s greatest nations have long defended their vast interests in the Congo. Western multi-nationals control millions of dollars of mining concessions. This was the reason why America installed, kept in power and armed the plundering Mobutu regime for 30 years. In 1998, after the repercussions of the Rwandan Genocide escalated into a civil war across the Congo, the US armed 3 of the African nations (Chad, Namibia and Zimbabwe) involved in supporting Laurent Kabila’s bid to take control**. In 2012 The Guardian newspaper reported that British MPs were investigating the ‘opaque dealings’ of London-listed mining companies in DRC***:

“News of the potential inquiry, which could involve top FTSE 100 mining executives being called to give evidence, comes as campaigners argue that natural resources deals are benefiting multinationals rather than the DRC’s population. Commodity trader Glencore will also face calls to explain its involvement in the resource-rich central African country.”

And so the question that nags is when, in the name of humanity, is the plunder and rapine ever to stop? Do not be fobbed off with the notion that the bloody conflicts that have been raging along DRC’s eastern border with Rwanda for over a decade are ONLY to do with local warlords, or Rwanda’s predation. They are to do with coltan that is an essential resource for making cell phones. They are to do with diamonds that adorn the elite and pampered, and are essential to industrial processes and make foreign dealers very rich. They are to do with gold, and copper, and cobalt, and hardwoods, and oil prospecting. They are to do with super-power arms dealing. For this piece of Africa is the most resource-rich territory on the planet, far beyond H M Stanley’s wildest dreams, or even Leopold’s rapacious imaginings.

Yet its people remain the poorest on earth. Corporate wealth based on unfair trading comes at human cost, and that cost is the same kind of barbarity that Leopold’s men doled out. As the angry Karim in Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane is wont to say, the question to ask is: “Who benefits?” In these conflict-ridden days, it is a question always worth asking. Sometimes it offers a glimpse of clarity between all the establishment smoke and mirrors.

References:

* Andrew Osborn Belgium Confronts its Colonial Demons

**World Policy Institute report: US Arms to Africa and the Congo War

*** Mining firms face scrutiny over Congo deals

Corporate Watch Death on the lake: British oil company’s role in Congo killings exposed

Related: Up the Congo for more of the history

DP photo challenge: humanity

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge