February 28, 2006
Beach, with blanket: Ocean City in the winter
My 1995 article on visiting Ocean City in the winter. You can click the image above to read it as a .pdf, or see it as text below.
I noted with delight that this week's Washington Post contains an article on visiting Ocean City in the winter: Ocean City: Why Wait? In the winter, it can be cold and desolate. In other words, perfect.
Why the delight? Because I wrote about the popularity of Ocean City in the winter almost exactly 11 years ago, also for the Washington Post Escapes section!
Rereading my article, which I've reprinted below, I enjoy (as if someone else had written these points) its celebration of blobbing in Ocean City and the way Ocean City and Assateague are explicitly paired as two parts of a perfect destination.
Lo and behold, after finding the Washington Post story, the Baltimore Sun chimed in, too, with Cold comforts: In winter, the Maryland shore is everything it's not in summer -- and more.
Well, here comes double the self-congratulation, since I'm sure nobody on Earth but me recalls my article in 1995 and noticed the two follow-ups this week.
When you are a writer, and someone is covering the same ground as you are, you peak at the newer work quite cautiously. Have the more recent writers totally trumped one's feeble efforts? I honestly feel that, since neither writer took my sister Sharon, or my sheltie Beau for that matter, they simply weren't privy to the joy Sharon, Beau and I experienced at this out-of-season destination.
Sometimes your company just "makes" a story happen.
My original article, for sake of comparison (click on the image above to see a PDF version of it):
BEACH, WITH BLANKET
Sometimes You and the Sea Need To Be Alone. Well, the Coast Is Clear.
By Jeannette Belliveau
Washington Post Staff Writer
March 8, 1995
"Recreational forecasts, Maryland beaches: Today, partly sunny, flurries. High 38-46. Wind west 11-22 mph. Ocean temperature 40-43."
PERFECT forecast for a weekend at the beach. That is, if you want a good look at Ocean City's nine miles of off-season sand with about 300,000 fewer partiers than usual. Before driving east on an unclogged U.S. 50, I canvassed people for suggestions of things to do.
"Sleep," my neighbor Rich offered.
"I pack sweats, knitting and a book," said my sister, Sharon. “Then wonder if it's too much."
"A lot of books are read," said Martha Clements of the Ocean City Visitors and Convention Bureau.
The advice boiled down to:
Take walks. Eat. Read. Blob. Repeat.
The beauty of Ocean City anytime is that there are plenty of activities, yet no must-sees. Especially in the off-season, this is one escape where you don't have to rush at all.
A simple pleasure: strolling beaches as deserted as Western Australia's, yet lined with enough condos behind the dune grass to house the entire population of Norfolk or Tampa.
Sharon jogged ahead, logging her standard three miles. I walked behind, with my Shetland sheepdog, Beau. I counted a total of eight people in either direc tion, as far as the eye could see. At the high-water mark lay scoured seashells and carcasses of horseshoe and blue crabs, but no human litter. Gull congregations gaggled at the water's edge like penguins. It was the first time I'd seen these magnificent beaches virtually empty, and I felt like an explorer stumbling on a secret hideaway. Maryland's boom resort seemed deserted and wild, more like the rocky Caribbean edge of Cozumel in Mexico.
A stiff west wind, crashing surf and big cloudless sky sent Beau into crazed raptures. He barked maniacally, attacked my shoelaces, snatched my glove and pranced off. Mind-reading his little dog thoughts was easy: Cold weather! An environment like my ancestral home! Another best day of my life!
Later on the boardwalk, Beau greeted his mirror image, Saber the Sheltie, part of a mini-throng lending a hint of summertune liveliness to O.C.'s main drag. Strollers bundled in parkas and scarves ambled past open game arcades and shuttered eateries. Vendors passed buckets of Fisher's caramel popcorn directly onto the boardwalk, through a window somewhat protected from the cold by hanging plastic sheets. T-shirt shops threw their doors open to the elements. A man added more layers of glitter and tackiness to the exterior of the Ocean Gallery. A policeman on horseback purchased funnel cakes.
A trio of Washington experts on the off season — Angie, Richard and Rob — met us for delicious pancakes and home fries at Rayne's, in a 1926 building near the base of the boardwalk. Wooden floors, flowery cur tains, a 1950s green Hamilton Beach shake blender and loads of philodendrons reminded Sharon of our grandmother's house.
Three local young people looking a bit worse for the wear took the next table. "Mountain Dew is good for hangovers," the waitress counseled, with near-papal authority no doubt gained on numerous other Sunday mornings. Angie, Richard and Rob shared their insid ers' secrets on things to do in the off season:
"Sleep late. Get up, read the paper, and sometimes not speak until noon. Swim in the condo's pool. We rode the tram behind Northside Mall to look at the Winterfest Lights, but we nearly froze."
Mainly they go almost daily to Assateague Island National Seashore, a nature reserve that acts as both Ocean City's polar opposite and perfect complement. Angie led us for our first visit to the Life of the Marsh nature walk. Two marsh deer peered, probably in astonishment, at our quintet of wind-lashed humans tromping along, studying placards about palmyras grass and the remaining scars of mosquito drainage ditches.
Assateague's wild ponies proved about as elusive as K Street squirrels. Squadrons of them surrounded autos on the roads and in the parking lots, smearing car windows with their noses, begging for food like Yellowstone bears in the '60s. The ponies looked particularly rugged and healthy with their woolly winter coats. A long wild forelock curled across the eyes of a piebald stallion, while a dark chocolate mare had a copper-blond mane and tail, an eye-catching photo-negative effect
Let us not give a wrong impression of ourselves as highbrows who only take nature walks. Something about the very atmosphere of Ocean City permits grown adults to savor without guilt:
1. Reading People magazine for content. Discussing the article on the Prince Charles/Camilla/Tiggy the nanny triangle.
2. Watching the Beavis and Butt-head "Moron-a-thon" on MTV.
3. Blowing $20 of quarters on Terminator 2 and arcade football.
4. Pouring sand out of our shoes at night.
5. Going to see "Dumb and Dumber." Due to beach maturity regression syndrome, laugh contagion spread to us from the 10-year-old contingent;
6. Watching (dumbest) the Ricki Lake show. "I started at Ocean City, went up to Dewey, then up to Rehoboth, and now I'm back at Ocean City," said Sharon. "K you're really sophisticated, you reach the stage of, I don't care, I don't have to go to the right places."
That's how everyone's favorite summer beach at 16 becomes a winter favorite at 40.
Ways and means
Many people prefer Ocean City's "second season" for the soli- tude and the bargains; rooms are typically half price or less. Incredibly, almost half of Ocean City's 8 million visitors per year arrive after Labor Day and before Memorial Day, with New Year's Eve drawing 100,000 visitors. . .
WHERE TO STAY: For visitors seeking bay views, luxury and a hint of the Caribbean, there are two hotels on Fager's Island, 60th Street at the Bay—The Coconut Mallory (410-723-6100), with a Haitian art gallery and winter rates starting at $69 for doubles, and the smaller Lighthouse (410-524-5500, reservations 800-767-6060), with rates starting at $89.
If you have a pet, try the Fenwick Inn on 138th Street (410-250-1100, reservations 800-492-1873), with rates starting at $49, or the Sheraton on 101st Street (800-638-2100), with rates starting at $60. Dogs are permitted on the beach in the off-season.
Numerous bargain places post rates on their signboards, or ask for brochures from the Ocean City Visitors Center (see below).
WHERE TO EAT: Fager's Island Restaurant (410-524-5500)—We won't spoil the musical surprise for first-timers. But try to arrive well before dusk (call for a recommended time) and sit near the bay-side windows to experience a surprisingly impressive ritual. BJ's on the Water (410-524-7575) offers an alternative venue for the same lovely bay sunset, good steaks and plenty of televisions for sports fans. Rayne's (410-289-9141) has home-style food, homestyle setting, local flavor.
WHAT TO DO: Among the possibilities—Assateague Island National Seashore, Route 611, 7206 National Seashore Lane, Berlin, Md., 21811, 410-641-3030 or 641-1441. Old Pro Golf, 6801 Coastal Highway, 410-524-2645, with year-round indoor miniature golf with a dinosaur theme and arcade games. Northside Park, a local favorite on the bay at 125th Street featuring a marsh walk — here, right behind Northside Mall, I spotted a blue heron.
Special events include a St. Patrick's Day Parade ; an Arts and Crafts Fair at the Convention Center, 40th and Coastal Highway and a wildfowl carving competition.
INFORMATION: For more information, contact the Ocean City Visitors Center, 4001 Coastal Highway, Ocean City, Md. 21842, 800-OC-OCEAN (800-626-2326).
- posted by jbelliveau at 6:42 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
- comments (0)
- permanent link
February 25, 2006
Beautiful slippers from Western Alaska
I received an interesting e-mail from my friend, Naomi Klouda, editor of the Tundra Drums in Bethel, Alaska.
She had some months ago sent me an ulu, a Yup'ik Eskimo cutting knife, that I use constantly for chopping food. Her latest e-mail was to bring a bit more of Alaska into my world here in Baltimore.
You can click on the picture of Naomi at right to read a pdf of her article in the Tundra Drums, dated Feb. 2, about her boots, handmade by Helen Nelson, 89, of Napakiak. She raves about how the boots are art museum perfect, as well as warm, and created not from a chart of foot sizes, but from a sketch of her own foot.
In her latest e-mail, Naomi asked me to send her an outline of my feet, because she wanted to send me a locally made present.
One requirement was that someone other than myself do the sketch (apparently it's difficult to accurately sketch your feet yourself).
My husband Lamont carefully outlined my bare feet on two blank sheets of paper. I added an inches scale to the paper to ensure accuracy as it took its 4,000 mile electronic journey. Then I scanned the sheet, distilled it into a PDF document, and e-mailed it to Naomi.
Here is a small version of the outline of my right foot.
So by these electronic means, we ended up with the most traditional of slippers.
Within about two weeks, I had in my hands handmade, custom-fitted slippers made by Pansey Lupie of Tuntituliak, a Native village of 370 in the flat, windswept Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. They arrived quite quickly by Priority Mail.
Naomi told me that Pansey, shown below with the tops of my very own slippers in her hand, comes into Bethel frequently, seeking sewing work. As for my slippers, they "are made of seal and rimmed in beaver," Naomi e-mailed me. Pansey "dyed a front portion, turned inside out, from seal. It's all hand-sewn."
It was wonderful to slip these on and feel them fit completely accurately. They are very soft and almost weightless, and drew impressed remarks from postal workers Joanne and Calandra when I retrieved them at my Post Office box. Also, the slippers grip our wood stairs, which can be killer slippery. Almost lliterally so -- I went airborne, with our poor cat Casey in my arms, going down the steps in new soccer socks, right after they were polyurethaned. That will no longer be a problem with these sealskin soles.
Top, Pansey Lupie shown in Bethel, Alaska, with just the tops showing of the slippers she custom made for me. Below, the slippers in action, on my feet in my office here in Baltimore.
One final note, these slippers need to be kept away from your dogs or cats. I was warned by Naomi that her dog was attracted to the natural fur of these slippers and she had to keep them up on a dresser. In our case, our young kitten, Olivia, rather than the dogs, drags them off the shoe shelf by the front door, into the dining room, to play with them. They now reside in a cubby where she can't quite reach them.
Anyone interested in ordering a pair of handsewn slippers from Pansey can write to her, perhaps enclosing an outline of EACH foot. You will have to ask her about prices. She doesn't speak English, but has access to interpreters. Address:
Pansey Lupie
P.O. Box 8102
Tuntituliak, Ak 99680
With my grandmother having been a seamstress, I have a good deal of respect and awe for the craft of making fine, custom clothing. I agree with Naomi, who wrote of her boots,
there's an element of whole-body comfort in these piluguug [women's boots] ... as if a massage is going on down there in my feet as I write this. The tradition and scientific knowlege for making Yup'ik clothing and tools exists still, and may it go on forever.
- posted by jbelliveau at 12:56 PM in Alaska
- comments (0)
- permanent link
February 19, 2006
Foreign travel and women
One of my themes in 
Romance on the Road is the power of traveling Western women to improve the lot of foreign women.
Some of this occurs with massive attendant controversy. Scandinavian women who traveled in coastal Spain in the early 1960s had many affairs with young local men, who could not sleep with their fiances. While many would likely condemn the behavior of the Nordic females, in a paradoxical way they eventually brought more freedom to Spanish women.
Similar trends have been noticed in Mexico, Greece and Costa Rica.
Here's more confirmation of the trend in India (albeit not involving romantic contacts with Indian men). In Girl Power in the Land of the Maharajahs, Terry Ward describes staying in a remarkable place, a guesthouse run by women, the first one she'd found in three weeks of traveling in India.
The mother and her two daughters had opened the guest house after the mother's husband died, as making a living selling produce from their fields was difficult after three years of little rainfall. They faced local anger if they hosted male foreigners, or if the daughters walked with male guests, but Mama prayed for the strength to keep their business going despite the criticism.
Ward asked one of the daughters a question:
I asked her how she felt about her mother choosing her husband.“I think your system is the best,” Arachana began. “Here parents try. Better to self try. But Mama knows me, and she knows what kind of boy I am liking.”
“What if you fall in love?” I prodded, too curious to resist a typically Western question.
Arachana cocked her head, a gesture I’d seen many times in India, a slight dip of the forehead with a piercing look that said neither yes nor no. I never knew how to interpret it; this time I figured she didn’t understand the concept. Then she said something that told me she did.
“One time there is a boy staying here, a photographer from Italy. He is taking many photographs of me and Rachana. He is a nice boy,” she said. “But Mama is saying to me, ‘He is not from your caste.’ “ She cocked her head again, and her eyes said it all: Her world was hers and my world was mine.
In sum, contact with Western travelers is bringing this family some measure of their livelihood, and causing the family and neighbors to weigh a lot of cultural values, including how women get married. Rural India may join the list of places drastically transformed by peripatetic women from the West.
***
Speaking of travel writing, don't miss this wonderful piece by Robert Kaplan, Cultivating Loneliness, in the current Columbia Journalism Review.
Reading Kaplan's piece put me in the mind of the years I worked as a graphics editor at the Washington Post. One day I asked older gentleman who served as diplomatic correspondent, who routinely traveled overseas with President Clinton's secretary of state, how often he got to look around the countries he visited. "Never," he replied.
From the article:
Journalism desperately needs a return to terrain, to the kind of firsthand, solitary discovery of local knowledge best associated with old-fashioned travel writing. Travel writing is more important than ever as a means to reveal the vivid reality of places that get lost in the elevator music of 24-hour media reports. In and of itself, travel writing is a low-rent occupation, best suited for the Sunday supplements. But it is also a deft vehicle for filling the void in serious journalism: for example, by rescuing such subjects as art, history, geography, and statecraft from the jargon and obscurantism of academia, for the best travel books have always been about something else.
Here is a valuable difference between the art of the travel writer and that of the journalist -- see especially the sentence I bolded and underlined below. It reminds me of an argument I got into with two journalist companions traveling in Japan, who relentlessly pumped our dinner companion about the bombs dropped on Nagasaki (described in the Japan chapter in 
An Amateur's Guide to the Planet):
Owen Lattimore, while traveling in Inner Mongolia, makes an observation that all journalists should take to heart:There is nothing that shuts off the speech of simple men like the suspicion that they are being pumped for information: while if they get over the feeling of strangeness they will yarn as they do among themselves. Then in their talk there comes out the rich rough ore of what they themselves accept as the truth about their lives and beliefs, not spoiled in trying to refine it unskillfully by suiting the words to the listener.Just listening to people, to their stories — rather than cutting them off to ask probing, impolite questions — forms the essence of these and all other good travel books. I learned this over two decades ago while trying to interview a refugee in Greece who had just escaped from Stalinist Albania. I had a list of questions to ask this refugee, but instead he preferred to tell me the story of his life. It was only after listening to him for several hours that the information I sought began to slip out.
But such a leisurely approach goes against the grain of journalism as it is commonly practiced. Reporting emphasizes the intrusive, tape-recorded interview; travel writing emphasizes the art of good conversation, and the experience of how it comes about in the first place. It has long been a cliché among correspondents that in Africa 10 percent of journalism is doing interviews, and 90 percent is the hassles and adventures of arranging them. But while the former fits within the narrow strictures of daily news articles, it is the latter that tells you so much more about the continent.
The travel writer knows that people are least themselves when being tape-recorded. You’ll never truly understand anybody by asking a direct question, especially someone you don’t know very well. Rather than interrogate strangers, which is essentially what reporters do, the travel writer gets to know people, and reveals them as they reveal themselves. After being with a battalion of marines for several weeks in Iraq, I noticed that they suddenly stopped using profane language when some journalists arrived and turned on their tape recorders. Whatever the marines were in front of the journalists, they were less real than they had been before.
And here is the section of Kaplan's article I truly want to applaud:
If anyone deserves a public service award for peeling back the curtain on distant societies, it is less the publishers of major newspapers and magazines than those of the Lonely Planet Guides and The Rough Guides. These two series combine historical and cultural depth with intrepid, solitary research by young travelers who get to every remote location in a given country; and in the course of informing the reader about where to stay and where to eat, say much about public health, crime, the economy, and politics in a society. In the 1990s, when it was particularly hard to get visas to Iran — and much of the information about that country emerged out of seminars in Washington — the best thing to read on the subject was Iran: A Travel Survival Kit by David St. Vincent, published in the Lonely Planet series.
That was my entire impression traveling in, for example, China in 1985: If you based your impressions of China on mass media coverage of textile imports and politics and so forth, you were utterly, totally unprepared for the Middle Kingdom. Only the Lonely Planet guide might warn you of the hell of hard-seat train travel, or people blowing their nose by covering one nostril and shooting snot into the gutter, or how crowd might gather, their children crying in terror, at the sight of a Westerner (hair and eyes the color of demons) on foot in their cities.
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:55 AM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
- comments (0)
- permanent link
February 14, 2006
Neglect in our backyard: the U.S. and the Caribbean
While the Middle East attracts just about all of our attention, we are likely losing a popularity contest in the Caribbean.
Today Opinion Journal has an article entitled, "10 Months in the Bahamas: How Castro stretches his tyranny to other shores." It tells the story of the Bahamas jailing two Cuban dentists whose escape boat foundered in nearby waters, despite the United States offering to update their visas. Excerpt:
The real problem is that the Bahamas fears Castro and the retaliation he might unleash--especially a mass refugee exodus--if the escapees are allowed to reach liberty in America. So its compromise with the dictator has been to keep the doctors separated from their families. ... The Bahamas is part of the British Commonwealth and, the last time we checked, a civilized place. Now would be a good time to prove this by releasing the dentists, whose only crime is fleeing for freedom.
I think there is a larger problem here. The Bahamas may fear Castro, sure. But it's also possible that Bahamians LIKE Castro (based partly on his shrewd playing of racial solidarity cards) and are fairly happy to co-operate with him. This is merely a suspicion on my part, but it's based on personal observations on Castro's popularity in Tobago.
I sent this response to OpinionJournal (reprinted here, scroll down to subhead "Fidel's Propaganda") regarding the article above:
There is a larger story here, one of Cuba's influence around the Caribbean.I was stunned on a visit to in-laws in Tobago a year ago to hear Castro mentioned constantly and favorably.
If you asked people -- newscasters, young students, dancers -- where they wanted to visit, they said "Cuba" rather than the United States. And Cuban arts groups were slated to visit Tobago -- there seemed to be a two-way interaction going on.
Not a soul had a bad word for the Maximum Leader or realized how he imprisons dissenters.
The experience made me think the United States needs to do a far better job of reaching out and spreading the truth in the Caribbean -- Fidel seems to be controlling his image a bit too well.
Of course, part of my thinking a year ago in Tobago, as I chewed over the problem, was daydreaming of how perfect I would be for the role of roving ambassador-at-large to the Caribbean. On my job application, I would note my qualifications: Love the United States! Articulated this love in my first book! Also love tropical weather, salsa music and watching parrots! Hit it off with island people quite well! Will shortly have TWO books with full details on THAT! You gotta appoint ME!
Once I had this cushy appointment, Ambassadress to the Islands, I really would focus immediately on having student, artist and journalist exchanges between the United States and Caribbean nations. Scholarships to U.S. institutions for college-age students. ESPECIALLY journalism fellowships for Caribbean journalists, to Stanford and Georgetown.
We'd market Orlando, Fla., and Las Vegas as cheap destinations for the Caribbean middle class. (Believe it or not, there is one, especially on Trinidad.)
Oh heck I am free associating here.
But my point is: The simplest solution to anti-Americanism I have found is to have people actually see the United States for themselves.
I recall my friends Roger and Joanne, from Zimbabwe and South Africa respectively. We worked together at a newspaper in Surrey, England, two decades ago. They were quite critical of the United States based on whatever tendrils of biased media reporting had managed to reach them -- until their first visit. After that, they contacted me, red-hot to do a job exchange or something that would allow them to live here, at least temporarily.
And for those who can't see the United States for themselves, let's have them meet American teachers and journalists. For example, my husband Lamont was quite a hit a year ago when he spoke to a large assembly Tobagonian students about how to do newspaper graphics. There was almost a Freedom School excitement to his presentation. The students were hungry for information on software, jobs, logistics, anything he could tell them. It can't have hurt the image of our country.
No sooner had I finished sending my note above to OpinionJournal than did I click over to National Review Online and read THIS: "Red China on the March: The People’s Republic moves onto Grenada."
Oh no -- let's review here. Both Cuba and China are moving aggressively to court Caribbean nations and the Bahamas (technically in the Atlantic), while we do nothing. This is seriously not good. One more time -- China, which is poised to be a countervailing world superpower (I devote a chapter to this in An Amateur's Guide to the Planet), is establishing its presence in our cozy little neck of the hemisphere.
Excerpt from Mosher's article:
In January 2005, Grenada established diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China, breaking off its longstanding relationship with Taiwan in the process. The sudden move followed a hotly contested election in which the ruling party won by the smallest of margins. The PRC has opened a substantial embassy in the tiny island nation — Ambassador Shen Hongshun and entourage arrived in April — and is rebuilding, at considerable expense, the national soccer stadium that was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004. Other aid has been promised, including funds for scholarships in China and the renovation of the main hospital.China's move into Grenada clones a pattern it has followed elsewhere in the eastern Caribbean. Exactly the same scenario was played out last year in the neighboring island of Dominique, and some years ago in St. Lucia. Each of these island republics now has a full-scale Chinese embassy, a completed or promised national soccer stadium, and is receiving continuing aid.
Here's the money quote. Author Steven W. Mosher gets to the heart of the problem -- the lack of a countervailing U.S. influence in this part of the world:
But this alone does not explain China's continuing aggressive and expensive efforts to bring these small nations — Grenada has less than 100,000 people — under its sway. With staffs ranging from five to ten people, these embassies are able to hold regular meetings and informal dinners with leading political figures, and to monitor the eastern Caribbean's political and economic environment on a daily basis.By way of contrast, the U.S. doesn't even maintain a single diplomat in any of these countries. Instead, the U.S. ambassador to Barbados is jointly accredited to the other island nations in the Eastern Caribbean and is a complete stranger to most eastern Caribbean figures in the public and private sector.
Mosher's solution, which doesn't sound as fun and concrete as my idea to sail around and set up arts and student and journalist exchanges, is to "stop taking the region for granted." He does note that the United States only reacted "after the fact, as we did after a communist coup in Grenada in 1983. That crisis, it is well to recall, would have been much worse if other Caribbean nations had not taken a firm stand against the Russian and Cuban-supported coup, and voted in favor of U.S. intervention. Would the new crop of politicians, so assiduously courted by China, come down on our side in the event of a similar problem?"
Good question.
I just finished reading Marie Arana's fabulous 
American Chica. She talks about growing up in Peru in the 1950s and sensing, like a scent in the air, local people turn against the United States. A fascinating passage talks about her American mother taking her to watch Vice President Nixon's plane land, and the ugly anti-Americanism in the crowd, including a nasty encounter with a strange man who left the young Marie crying.
Were not quite there yet in the Caribbean. It's time to wake up and just simply spread the truth of what the United States stands for, and is. There is no great distance, and less of a cultural gap, between Miami and Port-of-Spain. We can do this and it won't cost billions.
Update: Another OpinionJournal reader, David Paulin, responded that the situation in Jamaica is similar to that in Tobago:
Jamaica is another member of the British Commonwealth which has accorded similarly outrageous treatment to Cuban asylum seekers. One notable case occurred in late 2002 when I was working in Kingston, the capital, as a freelance journalist.One day, eight skilled Cuban workers in their 30s and 40s arrived in a rickety fishing boat and requested political asylum. However, they were promptly taken to a jail cell in Montego Bay. Two months later they were deported--just one day after their requests were denied. Much to the outrage of their Jamaican lawyer, human rights activists, and the local representative of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the men were not allowed the right to appeal the denial of their asylum petition.
In the past, similar fates were accorded other Cuban asylum seekers in Jamaica. Haitian asylum seekers, on the other hand, had been granted asylum after being allowed to appeal the initial denial of their asylum petitions. Jamaica's conduct prompted a letter of reprimand from the U.N.'s Commission on Refugees, reminding Jamaican officials of their obligation toward refugees under the U.N. charter.
Among Bahamian officials, the ill treatment of Cuban asylum seekers may indeed be motivated by fear of Castro. In Jamaica, I suspect the ill treatment is due to the esteem in which Jamaica's left-leaning and ruling elite hold Castro and his regime. Because of this, they're reluctant to do anything that puts a negative light on either. Such conduct is calculated and willful. As such it is far more odious than the fear that apparently motivates Bahamian officials.
- posted by jbelliveau at 9:04 AM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
- comments (0)
- permanent link
February 9, 2006
Missionaries, Brazil's tribes and 'cultural contagion'
An article in the Washington Post today, Evangelical Missionaries Move Into Amazon Villages, looks at wrangling between anthropologists, Indian officials and missionaries over who essentially "owns" members of remote Brazilian tribes.
From the article:
But [the missionaries] often lack the permission of Brazil's government, which is now trying to regain control of the activity. Many anthropologists fear the missionaries will harm indigenous people by weakening native culture and religion and by exposing them to new germs and illnesses.... But critics say a weak Brazilian state has left the 215 known tribes vulnerable to the outreach efforts of evangelicals, however well-intentioned they may be. They fear oral history, origin myths and native religions will be lost.
"The Surui no longer worship shamans because missionaries told them it was bad. That's a terrible, immense cultural loss," said Ivaneide Cardozo, a board member at Kaninde, a nonreligious group in Rondonia state.
Christian groups say the government is acting irresponsibly and that its policies prevent it from intervening even in life-or-death situations involving tribespeople. In an effort to protect indigenous culture, many government officials do not want to introduce outside influences in tribal villages including food and medicine.
"This relativist stance violates the human rights of Indian children all over Brazil," said Braulia Ribeiro, who heads the Brazilian chapter of the international missionary group Youth With A Mission ... .
This is a very complex topic. It's funny to me to see in this article the usual proprietary interest anthropologists take in indigenous peoples -- they often resent both missionaries and backpackers who "invade" their turf, even though the anthropologists themselves also bring change through contact with remote people, no matter how careful they are.
In my first book, An Amateur's Guide to the Planet, I looked at missionaries who visited the remote upcountry of Borneo. I'll quote a passage from Chapter 3.
Language, transmitted today by a world pop and computer culture dominated by English, ultimately exerts a much bigger influence than religion on a cultures such as that of [Borneo's] Dayaks.Lesson : Language may be a more irreversible re-director of thought patterns than the discarding of animism for Christian beliefs.
For example, Afro-Brazilians, despite adopting Portuguese and nominally Catholicism, fused tribal gods to saints to create the religion called candomblé. They use the Yoruba language for ceremonies to the present day, and thus preserve an important aspect of African culture.
Professor Jerome Rousseau of McGill University put it this way in an e-mail to the author:
"The main threat to local cultures, in Borneo as in Canada, France, the United States, or what have you, is probably television. It, not religion, is the opiate of the masses. [And] the the most significant re-director of thought patterns is the socio-economic changes of a society, e.g., moving from subsistence to commodity production, moving from the country to the city and changing educational patterns and media of communication."
Change wrought by missionaries, logging and emigration had already come to the Dayaks. Perhaps it had weakened their art, perhaps it had created a need for kerosene and 90-minute air transport to the coast that people had previously managed to cope without. Possibly this was bad. But as [medical anthropologist Sjaak] van der Geest pointed out, if one accepts change as a normal part of life, “it will be agreed that the prevention of change is indeed ‘change’ in another more complex sense of the term.”
The modern world was bound to reach the remote Apau Kayan, in the same way that Chinese bead traders, Javanese transmigrasi and people who enjoyed Redmond O’Hanlon’s book have also turned up.
Lesson: Explorers, adventurer travelers, anthropologists and missionaries alike bring change no matter how much lip service they pay to cultural preservation.
Van der Geest wrote of anthropologists and missionaries (he could have included travelers as well) that "their mere presence is in itself a formidable factor of change. The culture which missionaries and anthropologists carry with them is 'contagious.' "
Exactly! All contact with the outside world is contagious -- and inevitable. While one understands the beauty and mystery of premodern people and the value of probing their beliefs, it is ultimately patronizing to exclude them from the lives we choose for ourselves, free of superstition and with top-notch nutrition, health care, choices and ultimately ease.
- posted by jbelliveau at 8:52 AM in Culture
- comments (0)
- permanent link
February 2, 2006
Economics and mating behavior
I just finished reading the enjoyable 
The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg.
If a book can be both accessible and quite challenging at the same time, The Armchair Economist certainly qualifies. I felt like I was barely hanging on at some points and had to reread passages, but some of the points Landsburg makes -- especially about the moral neutrality of markets -- are quite intriguing.
On pages 168-170, at the start of a chapter entitled "Courtship and Collusion: The Mating Game," Landsburg posits that:
In the markets for sex and marriage, men compete among themselves for women and women compete among themselves for men. But men compete differently than women do, in part because men are more inclined to seek multiple partners. ... There are, of course, many people of both genders who fail to fit the pattern, but more often than not, there is a germ of truth in the observation that "a woman seeks one man to fill her every need, while a man seeks every woman to fill his one need."In societies that allow polygamy, it is almost invariably men who take multiple wives, rather than the reverse.
It follows, Landsburg observes, that for "each man with four wives, there must be three men with no wives at all." The upshot is that the competition for women in polygamous societies is quite intense.
Men in polygamous societies "are like spice merchants perpetually resisting encroachments from competitors. Merchants respond by agreeing to divide the territory. Somewhere back in history, the masculine gender decided did the same. By custom and by law, men have managed to enforce a collusive agreement to limit their attentions to one woman apiece. There is a lot of cheating on that agreement, but that is just what economic theory predicts."
In other words, men would love to be polygamous but this ups the competition for available women, so paradoxically they agree to be monogamous to lessen this competition.
In fact [Landsburg writes], the antipolygamy laws are a textbook example of the theory of cartels. Producers, initially competitive, gather together in a conspiracy against the public or, more specifically, against tehir customers. ... That story, told in every economics textbook, is also the story of male producers in the romance industry. Initially fiercely competive, they gather together in a conspiracy against their "customers" -- the women to whom they offer their hands in marriage.... Men have maintained that antipolygamy lawas are designed to somehow protect women. But a law that prohibits any man from marrying more than one woman is not different in principle from a law that prohibits any firm from hiring more htan one worker. I suppose that if such a law were enacted, firms would argue that it was designed to protect workers. Who would believe them?
OK, what do we think of this argument? I have just finished thinking a bit about the issues of marriage markets for my second book, Romance on the Road, coming out June 1.
First of all, think to harems in North Africa, the Sahel and the Middle East.
While the women in the household do hold some power to affect household decisions, as Claude Njiké-Bergeret, a colonial Frenchwoman who married a local ruler and joined a polygamous household, describes in her book 
Ma Passion Africaine, this does not begin to countermand the lower status of women in a place such as Cameroon.
Landsburg leaves out of his analysis the ability of wealthy rulers such as Njike to have his cake (many wives) and eat it too (he lords it over both the females in the household and the men in his province who presumably go wiveless due to his sizable harem). And that men form "cartels" to reduce competition for women in a way only further indicates their power in the mating game, that is, their attractiveness due to earning power.
In a way, the female sex tourism I describe in Romance on the Road does demonstrate the way markets correct for over- and under-supply. Which countries have the most love-starved Western women visiting? Places like Greece and the Gambia and Jamaica, where migration patterns, polygamy and/or the shunning of poorer men create a glut of fellows far more attractive to the visiting tourist than to local women.
Romance on the Road has extensive analysis of some of the economic and demographic factors entering into romance tourism by women. Maybe I should invite the engaging Mr. Landsburg to take a look at this phenomenon and provide his take on the matter!
April 4, 2006, update: I e-mailed Professor Landsburg regarding this point and received a prompt reply. His words:
Of course women only reap the benefits of polygamy when they're essentially free to make their own choices. You can go be the fifth wife of the sheik or the first wife of the peasant; in the latter case the peasant will be very glad to have her (after all, four other peasants are going wifeless) and will treat her very well.In this case, polygamy can't hurt her. It only gives her new options she didn't have before. But of course in a society where she's *forced* to marry the sheik, polygamy can be a bad thing for her. I'd contend, though, that even in that case, what's hurting her is not polygamy but her lack of freedom.
That's probably the bottom line, being forced to be part of a polygamous household. How often in all history has a woman such as Claude Bergeret actually chosen voluntarily to be part of harem of wives? Not often, we can be sure.
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:04 AM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
- comments (0)
- permanent link
