Douz, Tunisia

April 16th, 2009 by admin

We hired a taxi van and driver to take us around the south of Tunisia. We figured this would be the best way to see everything we wanted to see. The driver spoke English (and ‘ other languages- North Americans are lacking in language trainng compared to the people we have met on our trip). This gave us an opportunity to find out more about the Tunisian government, education and school systems and culture in general.

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We went to Tozeur and saw Troglodyte homes that are built into the ground to be invisible from the Romans. It was here that they filmed Star Wars (the original) -Luke’s Aunt and Uncle’s home. we also saw homes built out of the stones of the atls mountains (desert of rocks) that were also invisible to the eye until it was too late (Roman safety again). We then drove to Douz which is the start of the Sahara desert. We did the typical tourist thing and rented camels (dromider spelling? actually) for an hour and went into the desert and played in the sand. Morgan got a new nickname - Dune Dude - as he was decked out like a sheik with his nike shades to boot. My camel must have known it was my birthday as it kept kicking me in the foot as it walked. We figure it was giving me the bumps!

Berber house -Atlas Mountains
The sand was white, so although I didn’t have my normal white birthday I still had a white one. The sand is so fine that when it moves it moves like water. Its hard to explain.

We learned that a teqcher here makes about 850 TD (Tunisian Dinar) a month. 1 dollar CDN = 1.26TD. A police officer starts at about 350TD and if he is good and moves up he will earn more than a teacher a quite a bit. The taxi driver (who did not own the car) makes about 350TD a month. It is very difficult to get a taxi lisence. We asked about disabled

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people. The government saves 10% of jobs for them and if they are so disabled that they cannot work the government gives them a lisence for a taxi or to sell cigarettes. They can’t actually do these jobs due to their disabilities but they can rent out their lisence to earn their living. The divorce rate in the north is 12% and here in the South 1-4%.

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Berber house-Trogoldyte
We had a wonderful day. We are planning to stay here at least another week. I’m afraid I won’t post pictures though as it is a slow connection. We are looking forward to seeing you all soon. Keep emailing we love to read your letters.

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Posted in Africa, Nice place | No Comments »

Our Trip To Africa…continued; Last Posting On The Subject!

April 12th, 2009 by sam

April 19th, 2007 by Sue

At the risk of evoking an “Enough about your trip to Africa, already” response, I promise this will be my last posting on the subject.

Thought I would share some random observations…

People work really hard in the countries we visited. Whether it’s building roads, collecting sticks to sell as firewood, or harvesting a crop, the work is very manual. They don’t have many of the mechanical tools/machines we have that would make the work easier.

Soft drinks are served in glass bottles (not plastic or cans)!

Deforestation is a huge problem, especially in Ethiopia and Uganda. A number of things have contributed to the problem including the use of wood for fuel and construction, prolonged droughts, and forest fires. Deforestation has significant environmental impacts. For example, warmer temperatures, which in some areas has contributed to the spread of diseases like malaria.

Women wear beautiful colourful wraps in so many creative ways…around their waist as a skirt, above the chest as a dress, as headwear, as shawls, and as baby carriers.

It seems when children are old enough to walk, they actually walk! I don’t remember seeing a stroller in any of the countries we visited!! The other thing I don’t recall seeing were diapers on babies!

We each had two pieces of checked luggage. When we left home, three of the bags had plastic luggage tags with the Canadian Flag on them. Our luggage arrived safely at the airport in Addis Ababa but the three luggage tags didn’t! Instead of being upset, we actually felt kind of flattered that someone thought our country’s flag was so beautiful they wanted it!

One night in Dibate, Ethiopia we got up during the night to visit the outhouse. On the way back to our room, we stopped and looked up at the stars. Without electricity in the area, there was no other light to detract from them. The stars were so brilliant they looked like diamonds sparkling on black velvet! It was phenomenal.

In Uganda we visited landmine survivors who have set up small businesses with CPAR Income Generating Activity (IGA) loans. When asked “What is the best thing” about their IGA, there were two common responses…that it helped them regain their dignity because they could support their families again and that their children would have the opportunity of an education.

One of the fastest ways to get around Kampala, Uganda is by motorcycle (referred to as Boda Boda). They dart in and out of traffic and it seems very dangerous! To curb injuries, the government passed a law requiring drivers & passengers to wear helmets. Our hosts told us that has prompted some creative attempts to comply. I’m not 100% certain but I believe I saw a fellow whiz by with a colander tied to his head!

We visited Amuru, one of the largest IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps in Uganda where over 40,000 people live! At one point we stood on a road overlooking the camp and we could see row after row of mud/grass huts that seemed to go on forever. There are schools, health centres, and small businesses within the camp. As people become more confident that peace in the region will last, they’ll leave this and other IDP camps and return to their families’ villages, which were abandoned when rebels attacked. The conflict spanned 20 years though, so for many people these camps are the only homes they’ve known. That may slow the transition.

In the town of Gulu in Uganda, while having breakfast at the hotel on the balcony overlooking one of the main streets in town, I noticed a tall naked man walking around. People didn’t seem to be paying much attention to him. Later when I mentioned it to one of our CPAR hosts, she said “Oh him, he’s just the crazy guy who walks around naked.” Ha ha.

While on our way from Gulu to Murchison Falls in Uganda we stopped on the road to buy some bottled water and the truck was quickly surrounded by people selling all sorts of things. One fellow pressed a (live) chicken, he was holding by the feet, up against my window, which was just slightly (thank goodness) open. I smiled politely and told him I didn’t need a chicken. He laughed and persisted in pressing the poor bird against my window, I suppose in the hopes I may change my mind! Apparently lots of people, travelling on public buses will buy a chicken this way and then stuff it under their seat for the ride home. Poor little chickens!

Although they seem out of place, cell phones are widely used throughout the countries we visited, except in the most remote regions. However even in those areas, it is expected to come soon. Seems they skipped right over land lines to cell technology. Advertising of phone service providers is EVERYWHERE…outnumbering even Coke and Pepsi! While we were in Malawi, the largest of their two major service providers had a serious fire at their head office. This left tens of thousands of people scrambling to switch to the other provider who had some difficulty keeping up with the service demand. Don’t know if it is back to normal yet, but there was speculation it could take months to fully restore the service.

Malawi has one of the highest AIDS rates in Africa. We passed so many little shops with the sign ‘Coffin Makers’ outside them. Very sad. Our CPAR hosts mentioned there were so many funerals that there was almost always one underway during their weekly visits to programs. However, lately there seem to be fewer so perhaps the education and drug treatment work being done in the country is having a positive impact.

Peanuts are an important crop in Malawi…did you know they grow underground, kind of like carrots? I didn’t know that! I couldn’t get enough roasted ‘Malawi nuts’ when we were there. In fact, of the ones we brought home as souvenirs, only a few made it to the intended recipients. Sorry!

Over the course of our 8 hour layover at the airport in Amsterdam we heard this announcement a lot “(Passenger Name) flying to (Destination), YOU are delaying the flight. We will proceed to offload your luggage.” How embarassing would that be!

Okay, that’s it, that’s all. Hope you have enjoyed reading about our trip!

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Our Trip To Africa…continued; Padar, Uganda

April 12th, 2009 by sam

As I mentioned in my previous post, Uganda is recovering from a 20 year civil war. We spent one night in the town of Padar in a remote district (Padar District) of northern Uganda. This area was right in the centre of the conflict and the people there suffered greatly. Until the truce began at the end of August, it wasn’t safe for NGOs (charitable organizations) to work in the area but now there is a strong presence and the process of rebuilding is evident.

There is one hotel in town where NGO workers/visitors would usually stay. Although I didn’t see the rooms, I suspect they meet a basic standard for facilities and security that most Westerners would expect. Unfortunately, due to a reservation mix-up, no rooms were available when we arrived. We ended up getting the last room in a guesthouse in the centre of town.

It was dark by the time we checked in to our little bare room with twin beds. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling. There’s no electricity in Padar so generators are used in the evening when the sun goes down. The ‘lock’ was a bent nail on the doorframe, and ours was the only room without metal bars in the windows. Dwight, with McGyver like ingenuity though, fashioned a barrier out of plastic covered wire he had in his suitcase (go figure!) that allowed us to keep the window partially open. Thank goodness because even with it open, it was stiflingly hot in the room. On the plus side, the mosquito nets were in good shape!

The toilets were outhouses with key-hole shaped openings in cement that you perch above. I had gotten somewhat used to using these when we were in Ethiopia however these ones were not very clean. I decided I’d rather risk dehydration than use them more than necessary, so limited my beverage intake accordingly that night! The sign on the shower door, written in chalk…’DO NOT URINATE IN HERE’…spoke for itself. Water for washing was in a big rusty oil can that you dip a plastic basin in and carry back to your room.

We hadn’t eaten so decided to go look for food. At the front of the hotel we met two young women, one from England and the other from Australia who are in Padar for a lengthy stays. Having lived a pretty sheltered life, I am in awe of young women who bravely travel the world on their own like that. The one from England was writing a thesis on the re-integration of child soldiers, and the woman from Australia was in the area to oversee work with a charitable program she supports. They often ate at a little place beside the hotel and recommended the beans and pacho (sp?), which I think was cassava. It was good. Just as we finished eating, our CPAR host from the Padar office came by the hotel to see if we wanted to join him for dinner at a nearby restaurant. Even though we had eaten, we went along and enjoyed chatting with him. He’s a really nice, soft spoken young man who grew up in the region which, for almost all his life, was a war zone. The reality of that didn’t strike me at the time but now I think how amazing it is that such a lovely person can come from such a harsh environment…and there are so many lovely people there.

We went to bed around 9 o’clock. It had been an exhausting day. In the courtyard of the guesthouse a TV, apparently a new feature at the hotel, blared loudly. At the front of the hotel was a bar and pool table where a large group of men were assembled playing pool, talking, and laughing loudly. This went on until the generator was shut off at around 1:30 am. We didn’t get much, if any, sleep. Throughout the night every sound seemed to be right outside our room. I even heard continuous squeaking, coming from a large opening in the ceiling, which I think may have been bats. Again I was glad to have good mosquito netting! And interestingly, there was traditional chanting and the sound of drums beating in the distance for most of the night.

I have to admit I was a bit scared…in the dark without a sturdy lock on the door, in a remote area, in a part of the country where months earlier attacks by the rebel army were commonplace. You start thinking crazy things like…Do bats carry Ebola? Do all the rebels know about the truce…maybe they didn’t get the memo? Who would help us if something happened…why didn’t I ask our CPAR host for his cell phone number?

In the morning, everything looked a little bit better…except the outhouses! We woke up shortly after 5:30 am but had to lay in bed til around 7 am when the sun came up. It was too dark to see anything before that. After a “birdbath” in our room we were ready to move on to our next adventure!

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India Place Name Changes

April 10th, 2009 by admin

Since declaring its independence from the United Kingdom in 1947 after years of colonial rule, a number of India’s biggest cities have undergone place name changes as their states underwent a reorganization. Many of these changes to city names were done to make those names reflect the linguistic systems in the various areas.The following is a brief history of some of India’s most famous city name changes:

Mumbai vs. Bombay


Mumbai is one of the world’s ten largest cities today and is located in the Indian state of Maharashtra. This world-class city wasn’t always known by this name however. Mumbai was formerly known as Bombay, which has its origins in the 1600s with the Portuguese. During their colonization of the area, they began calling it Bombaim - Portuguese for “Good Bay.” In 1661 though, this Portuguese colony was given to King Charles II of England after he married the Portuguese princess Catherine de Braganza. When the British then took control of the colony, its name became Bombay- an anglicized version of Bombaim.The name Bombay then stuck until 1996 when the Indian government changed it to Mumbai. It is believed that this was the name of a Kolis settlement in the same area because many Kolis communities were named after their Hindu deities. By the early 20th Century, one of these settlements was named Mumbadevi for a goddess of the same name.

Therefore the change to the name of Mumbai in 1996 was an attempt to use the previous Hindi names for a city that was once controlled by the British. The use of the name Mumbai reached a global scale in 2006 when the Associated Press announced it would refer to what was once Bombay as Mumbai.

Chennai vs. Madras

However, Mumbai was not the only newly named Indian city in 1996. In August of that same year, the former city of Madras, located in the state of Tamil Nadu, had its name changed to Chennai.Both the names Chennai and Madras date back to 1639. In that year, the Raja of Chandragiri, (a suburb in South India), allowed the British East India Company to build a fort near the town of Madraspattinam. At the same time, the local people built another town close to the site of the fort. This town was named Chennappatnam, after the father of one of the early rulers. Later, both the fort and the town grew together but the British shortened their colony’s name to Madras while the Indians changed theirs to Chennai.

The name Madras (shortened from Madraspattinam) also has links to the Portuguese who were present in the area as early as the 1500s. Their exact impact on the naming of the area is unclear however and many rumors exist as to how the name really originated. Many historians believe that it may have come from the Madeiros family who lived there in the 1500s.

No matter where it originated though, Madras is a much older name than Chennai. Despite that fact, the city was still renamed Chennai because it is in the language of the area’s original inhabitants and Madras was seen as being a Portuguese name and/or was associated with the former British colony.

Kolkata vs. Calcutta

More recently, in January 2001, one of the world’s 25 largest cities, Calcutta, became Kolkata. At the same time the city’s name changed, its state changed from West Bengal to Bangla as well. Like Madras, the origin of the name Kolkata is disputed. One belief is that it is derived from in the name Kalikata - one of three villages present in the area where the city is today before the British arrived. The name Kalikata itself is derived from the Hindu goddess Kali.The name could have also been derived from the Bengali word kilkila which means “flat area.” There is also evidence that the name could have come from the words khal (natural canal) and katta (dug) which would have been present in older languages.

According to Bengali pronunciation however, the city was always called “Kolkata” prior to the arrival of the British who changed it to Calcutta. The changing of the city’s name back to Kolkata in 2001 was then an attempt to get back to its earlier, non-anglicized version.

Puducherry vs. Pondicherry

The most recent Indian place name occurred when the union territory (an administrative division in India) and city of Pondicherry had its name changed to Puducherry. The change officially occurred in 2006 and but is only recently being recognized worldwide.Like Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, the changing of the name to Puducherry was a result of the area’s history. The city and territory’s inhabitants said the area had been known as Puducherry since ancient times but it was changed during French colonization. The new name is translated to mean “new colony” or “new village” and is considered the “French Riviera of the East” in addition to being the educational center of south India.

The public opinion on these various city name changes is mixed. People residing within the cities often never used the anglicized names like Calcutta and Bombay but instead used the traditional Bengali pronunciations. People outside of India though often became used to such names and are unaware of the changes. Regardless of what the cities are called though, city name changes are a common occurrence in India and other places around the world.

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