India: Sun Oct 21st

Maybe it is not surprising that there is a link between Wales and the Ghasi hills. The Welsh Presbyterian church git here in the 1800s, one Thomas Jones is much revered and had huge success with converting the population. We walked down to the village people were going to church looking serious and carrying black bibles. In the village of 250 souls there  were at least 5 welsh Presbyterian churches in varying degrees of plainness. Welsh hymns floated across the air. The house even looked Welsh with corrugated iron roofs. The gardens were lush with huge red flowers and lush vegetable patches, it felt like the end of a nice UK summer. WE walked down to viewpoint where one looked out over the cliffs and we saw the river winding through the forest and tiny villages deep in the forest.

On our journey back to Shillong i noticed how there was a gravel factory every 200 yards. The local people are busy excavating the whole mountain side and converting it into gravel for construction. It is a real eye sore. This is not regulated because the government doe s not own the land. It seemed a deep contradiction to the preservation of the forest. Mining also happens on a similarly haphazard way.

Back in Shillong we met up with Sandra’s and her family and had supper with Pat, the editor of The Shillong Times. She was a campaigner and seemed to have fast access to everyone in government.  

India: Sat Oct 20th

 Today we trekked out to see the living root bridges, a natural highlight of the area and a traditional way of using the forest resources. The sun was shining, despite Cheerapunjee being the wettest place on earth because the monsoon clods drop their rain when they reach the low mountains here. The jungle is so alive, the noise of crickets is earsplitting, huge butterflies flapped around black, yellow, brown and huge spiders guarded their webs. As we started out and we could see the waterfalls unlike yesterday. We walked down to a village and then trekked down through the forest walking on a set of about 2000 concrete steps, put in by the government with a plaque detailing the labour costs. People were coming up to market boys carrying small birds in bamboo cages. The forest was thick with a variety of trees, unfortunately our Ghasi gude was not familiar with the trees, when i asked him about the trees types he airly said “Jungle trees”! The root bridges were beautiful natural structures with thick roots growing out to the base and thinner roots forming the support pieces. They felt very strong and natural, unlike the wire bridges which we also crossed which felt fragile. The roots bridges take about 20 years to grow and last about 200. WE paused at villages in the forest, people had few possessions but we did see a school house. We had a refreshing swim in the cold blue mountain water. Then we had a hours climb up old stone steps to the top of a ridge, few people came along this path, our guide said he had last done this long walk a year ago. We got back to the village in time to have tea and enjoy the view down the steep cliffs to the Bangladesh plain with rivers. Omer was v keen to get back to Cheerapunjee for sun set and so we sped back up the hill and were just in time for the sunset and a rest.

India: Fri Oct 19th

Omer and I spent three hours in the Don Bosco museum in Shillong. This is a wonderful new museum spread out over 10 floors which describes life and traditions in the NE. There are galleries on fishing, hunting, crafts and religion. I had not appreciated that one could fish with bamboo in so many different ways. Because the museum had been built by the Jesuits there was a whole gallery devoted to 20 centuries of Christianity, In the topography section the Jesuit missions were located. There was also a fine installation piece by Dutch artists on the cultural DNA of the region. At the very top a steel frame skywalk  looped round the roof with 360 degree views of Shillong. It was not raining so we enjoyed the view. The city is spread over several hills and there are trees everywhere. There also films of local dances including a yak dance which reminded me of the Yaks i saw in Tibet last year. This area also feels close to Tibet and there is an Indo-Tibetan police force in Shillong. We then drove 2 hours to Cheerapunjee which is on the border with Bangladesh.. About half way we crossed into a deep valley withe the sides covered with dense forest. We crossed over to a huge waterfall which we only glimpsed through swirling  cloud. W.e reached cheerapunjee in time to see a beautiful sunset with the sun dipping down through purple clouds. This was Omer’s first mountain sunset.

India Thurs Oct 18th

Sandra, like me, packs her days full. So today we had a crash course in Ghasi culture and beliefs. We started off spending an hour wandering through a sacred forest. This is an area kept untouched by the tribes and has trees, medicinal plants and pure water there. We wandered in and along a narrow path, orchids bloomed, birds were flitting around. The sunshine filtered through the trees on to the stream. A fine quiet place. We then headed back to shilling, pausing for tea and rice cakes with green paste in a tiny tea shop where the woman had the brightest shining pans. In Shillong we stopped to look at the Martin Luther University, where Sandra’s husband Glen’s is vice chancellor. He has had the drab conctere exterior decorated by local artists.We then headed to Sandra’s office. She has reclaimed a tiny space in the dept of health. The adjacent rooms were packed from floor to ceiling with boxes of malaria tabs, Falciparum malaria is a big problem here. She and the central planners in Delhi have big plans to create  a Shillong Indian Insitute of Public health. A site has been identified on the edge of town and 21 acres fenced off. Right now it has pine trees and birds were flitting around. I wonder what building will come up here.  In the evening Omer and i walked down to the bazaar for supper. People were out buying presents for the upcoming Durga Puuja and Omer said it reminded him of sudan just before thier Eid celebration  

Blog from North East india Oct 2012

This series of blogs will come from a work trip to India. I have a busy programme with a visit to Sandra Albert, DrPH student in Shillong, NE India, Then a meeting Kolkata to review the results of a trial that we have done trying to improve the treatment of leprosy reactions. Then i have four days in Mumbai reviewing the work of Omer, a Sudanese PhD student who is working on neuropathic pain. Ideally i would have visited these sites in reverse order because the visit to NE India is the lightest of the trips and is shall be having a weekend in a nature reserve at the wettest place on earth. But holidays and other peoples availability meant that I shall start in North East India. This is a huge area which borders Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet and Myanmar. It is very wet because it has a heavy monsoon which is dropped on the land when the clods meet the mountains there.  It is also distinctive in not having the caste system, instead people belong to tribes. They are also mainly Chrisitian and they feel a long way from Delhi.

Wed  Oct 17^th

On my flight from London  i sat next to a young Indian woman who had her pilots licence and had lived in Shillong for  a year and was v enthusiastic about it especially the shopping. I then had a fabulous flight from Delhi to Gauwahati in Assam. First we flew over the flat plains of N india , then over the Ganges which had loops of river. There were forests on the hillsides, these then became small clumps around farmhouses and the area flattened out into a huge rice paddy. My Sudanese student Omer met me at the airport and we then had a 4 hour taxi ride to Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya. Gauwahati was flat but we soon ascended into the hill road. It was a long journey shared with countless Indian lorries with their bight logos of animals and goddesses on the lorry sides. In Shillong we stayed in a newly opened B+B. It is cold up here, ones needs jackets. The book at the B+B had a good description of Shillong architecture which seems to be a cross of India and Home counties in the capital. The houses have verandahs and peaked corrugated iron roofs.

Why read Annie Matthews?

It is a well written book that is really two novels, about a Victorian life as a governess in Holland and then an Edwardian life as a hotelier in Scarborough.   The author, David Lockwood, was deeply impressed by his grandmother’s life story which she told him when they were together in Winchester during the second world war. He grew up  in  the hotel in Scarborough and had observed her at her hotelier work. He also had a deep knowledge and understanding of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and so he gives her life a novel like context.  He depicts places and dresses and customs with a poets eye.  It is a compelling book to read, once started one wants to know what happens to Annie and her family.  It took David ten years to write the book, in his retirement and initially it did not find a publisher. My mother Willy then published it in 2011.

You can buy Annie Matthews from Dr W Lockwood-Mom, 61A Camden Rd, Brecon, LD37RT

For more information about Annie Matthews  visit www.dnjtravlesblogspot.com

Caribbean island with a dark side: Reflections after a visit to Cuba Aug 2012

A summer biking holiday in Cuba- I was looking forward to seeing the architecture and hearing Cuban music and experiencing the island as I rode across it. I did all this but I also discovered that Cuba has a darker side of unemployment, censorship and repression. These darker aspects put a shadow across my pleasure in the lighter, brighter Cuba that the tourist board promotes.

I went on an Exodus holiday with 17 other cyclists, age range 16- 64 and the oldest was the father of the youngest. Teachers dominated the group with a quarter being Irish. We rode across the island for 14 days and moved on almost every night. So we saw a lot but there was little time for reflection or even rest.  So I returned fit but exhausted.

We experienced the huge range of terrain in Cuba. The first day we cycled over high rolling uplands in the morning and were in the swamps around the Bay of Pigs area in the afternoon.  Another day we biked along a coast road with deep blue sea to one side. I liked the mountains best and we had a morning walking in the Sierra Maestra. We had climbed up through dense forest and looked across lush green vistas with big trees and palms and blue sky overhead. We saw into people’s homes because our toilet stops were arranged at the homes of our guides’ friends along our route. Most of the homes had few possessions, in the kitchen women cooked on small electric elements and many had a pressure cooker, popularised as part of an energy saving drive. Nearly all had a TV. One of the few homes with decorations had pictures of the Virgin of Cuba, Fidel and an ecological advertisement about saving energy and illustrated Cuba’s populist themes of religion, revolution and self–sufficiency. 

As we travelled I realised how much censorship there is. The only newspaper is the party paper, “Granma” and I only saw that a couple of times and no-one was reading it. There were no other newspapers and no magazines. I also did not see any paper or pens, nobody was writing anything. There were a few libraries in towns and schools. These were stocked with  texts such as Castro’s speeches and communist economic analysis. I did see a copy of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” in one library. It is a paradox that the Cuban government is very proud of its high literacy rates but there is little evidence of people using that literacy. I also talked to a Cuban journalist one day who was delighted to have my week old Guardian, he had infrequent access to the internet.  Cubans are barely allowed to use the internet, they can only access a few pages under government control. People also feel trapped; they have no passports and cannot travel. The journalist I talked to had a Spanish passport and had travelled to Barcelona, paid for by Spanish friends. This had been a huge trip for him and I was interested that he had returned and felt loyal to the regime. Our guide had also avoided answering our questions and on the last day we were each allowed to write down one question on a sheet of paper that was circulated. He then answered these questions very honestly but also in the safety of the bus and on the last day. There is also a very active secret police monitoring what people are saying. However news from the outside world is broadcast and Cubans knew all about the Olympics in London and had cheered on their own athletes (who won 14 medals).  Politically it felt just like East Germany in the 1980s with a repressed population.

We experienced the centrally run communist style economy. There are ration shops providing  essentials such as rice and beans are provided by a monthly ration, these looked poor quality and there were also a few other goods, even plastic buckets were very expensive.  There are a few shops with luxury goods such as bicycles and washing machines. There were a few markets but very little trading occurring, is such a contrast to Africa where people set up stalls anywhere. One of the communist features of the Cuban economy is that people cannot take out loans. This is good for averting debt crises but bad if you want to stimulate your economy.

Unemployment was visible with many young and middle aged people standing around the towns and villages. Many people have moved to the countryside and are living as subsistence farmers with  banana trees, vegetables and pigs. Keeping pigs and eating pork is popular in Cuba, when the government liberalised the laws on keeping pigs they were flooded with 14000 applications for keeping pigs the next week. Cuba is very fertile and well watered and it was saddening to see little large scale organised agriculture, beyond a few large sugar cane farms. There is no effective distribution system for agricultural produce. Farmers are now allowed to sell part of their crop privately but the government is very bad at paying them for the crops that they do produce and this does not incentivise farmers. We visited a farmers market and it felt empty with a few stalls selling shrivelled garlic bulbs.

Given the hot humid climate it is astonishing that Cubans keep their ancient American cars alive and functioning long beyond their expected life span. Only a few new cars have been imported recently. In the poorer parts of the island there are not even bicycles. In much of the island donkey and cart is the main means of transport.

There is a dual currency system. Tourists pay for everything in “convertible pesos” which are worth about 25 Cuban pesos. One pays with these in hotels, restaurants and shops. This also creates differentials, a Cuban working in the tourist sector can earn in a week with tips in convertible pesos  what a doctor earns in two months. Cubans can also go to bars where they pay in convertible but with the price differential one would have to want to really impress the person one was with. What is curious is that whether the price is convertible or Cuban just seems to be known rather than displayed. Our guide said that Cubans just knew which currency to pay in. Foreigners can only buy Cuban pesos on the street.  

Cubans have very good health indicators and they are over- doctored with one doctor or nurse being responsible for 1400 people and having to visit them every two weeks which seemed very invasive. I can see how they have effective public health measures but I suspect that even their primary care is quite minimal with little access to modern drugs. I was also surprised to see modest numbers of obese people, I wondered whether some unemployed people have a very sedentary life style. Maybe Cuba is a good example of how one can improve health indicators by improving water, sanitation and having effective vaccines together with a basic level of nutrition being available for everyone. Cubans certainly have better health indicators than their Jamaican or Haitian neighbours with longer life expectancy, lower maternal mortality and better water access

Cuban does seem to have social safety nets and I was left feeling that if I had to be poor I would prefer to live in Cuba than elsewhere.

Our bike ride taking us through villages exposed us to a surprising amount of Cuba and

                          

I left Cuba with my head full of questions, what will happen to the economy, how can civil rights be improved, what will happen post Raul? I could see that the communist economy does not work as a market; people are not rewarded by producing goods. It is sad that Cuba has not offered an alternative economic model to our own failing capitalist version. The Cuban economy is now as dependent on tourists as they were on sugar 50 years ago. This creates differentials between the Cubans and the tourists and between the Cubans themselves. The US trade embargo is counter-productive, it worsens the Cuban economy and promotes the absence of human rights. As I travelled I became more aware of the absence of free speech and access to the outside world.  I am now emailing the journalist whom I met but he can only go online for a couple of hours a month through a foreign student. Political opponents of the regime have also been imprisoned. I have also followed the blogger Yoani Sanchez  www.desdecuba.com/generaciony who describes life in Cuba with its repressions in a wry and insightful way. Cubans cannot stay abreast of medical and scientific developments if researchers do not have access to the internet. Since I was there the government has announced that they will be easing restrictions on travel but for many people this means going into exile. Cuba again risks haemorrhaging talented people overseas. Yoani Sanchez fears that 2013 will be a year of goodbyes, but promises to stay herself, to keep the door open. Of course if she continues blogging with her insightful, wistful pieces about Cuba she might be forced to leave. I doubt that her blogs are read with appreciation by the secret police. 

Conversely if I was poor and had to choose where to live then Cuba would be on my list, life there is much better than in many places. One has free medical treatment and no worries about unexpected medical expenses which is a luxury that my Indian friends do not have. There is a social safety net. The free education again provides something that my Indian friends might envy.  I guess that the government makes Cuban aware of these comparative advantages and this probably helps to dampen potential revolution. There is also a huge genuine pride in the Cuban revolution and doing things in a Cuban manner.  I left feeling that I would not want to go back as a tourist but would go back if there was a work related opportunity.

Jan 2013

Cuba A new History Richard Gott

The Cuba Reader Ed Chomsky, Carr, Smorkaloff