Becoming a Maasai

I am considering my Africa travel plans for the rest of the year. Maasai Juma wants to take me back to his village for my "initiation". It will be a real treat even if certain aspects are a bit daunting.

I feel very privileged. Juma's father has already given me a cow as a sort of "herd starter pack". He has even asked if I want male or female. Juma tells me cattle are very cheap at the moment so I could build up my herd quite cheaply. He reminds me as well that the current going rate for a wife is 22 cows. Juma's father has also set aside a plot where I can build my hut.

Juma is keen that we drink blood together so that we become proper Maasai brothers. I think I can cope with that. I am imagining it will be warm and slightly frothy straight from the cow's neck. I shall pretend it's a strange herbal tea concoction. I don't like the idea of it cold and semi-congealed so I shall be quick.

The ritual area that does concern me is circumcision. Maasai boys and young men are circumcised in batches somewhere between early teens and early twenties. It is a crucial rite of passage on the way to becoming proper warriors. The circumcision is fairly public, done without any anaesthetic and with ritual rather than surgical instruments. Most importantly the circumcisee must not cry out -- to do so would be most unwarriorly and condemns the squealer to a lifetime of humiliation. Juma had his at twelve or thirteen (African are never very sure about their age). He spent the preceding months cutting and stabbing himself with anything that came to hand to practise the steely nonchalance of manhood. I am not sure I could do so well. I just have to hope that the old, fat msungu* is considered exempt.

OUCH!

* Swahili: Msungu = white person

More African Footie

Whilst Maasia Juma is ecstatic with the way the Premiership is coming to a climax, Gerrardi is distraught. As you may be able to guess from his name Gerrardi is a Liverpool fan. He is really called Mzee Mohammed Mzee.

Gerrardi is a good friend. I feel for him. He does a fairly miserable job on a cargo ship sailing out of Dubai. For less than £25 a week he works 11 months out of 12. The work is hard, bakingly hot, the hours long and he gets to sail to places like Iraq and Mombassa -- pirates or Al Quaida, take your pick. He is an intelligent, charismatic, lively guy and could really contribute to the world. But he has a job which in Africa at the moment is something and Liverpool FC keeps him going...even when they don't top the Premiership. A true fan.

TV Alzheimers

I watched the first few minutes of a BBC documentary last night. It was about an auction rooms and whether a son was going to take over running it from his father thus keeping a family business alive. So far, so good, reasonably interesting. But I soon got tired of being told what it was going to be about. In a feeble attempt to "hook" me and create non-existent tension the voiceiver track kept repeating "will he give up his own life and go home and save the family business...blah...repeat...blah...repeat..." Just get on with it.

Perhaps the producer was suffering from alzheimers and had got caught in one of those dementia conversation loops or is it that the BBC believes these days it is only broadcasting to a senile rump of viewers, too infirm to remember the past 60 seconds or indeed to change channels? Anyway I did, change channel that is. Sadly I will never know the fate of the auction house and its prodigal (?) son.

A Traveller's Tales

On the way up to London. Decide to sit in the Quiet Carriage. For once it is -- mostly -- just that. Except...we have one of those guards -- sorry "Train Managers" -- who is a frustrated broadcaster or something. Incessant bossy inane messages at full volume. I have complained about this before and was roundly told off that it was "for my own safety". I would happily sign a waiver to say that in the event of an accident I wouldn't sue FGW if I was unable to find the Braille version of the "Safety Information".

Gordon must go

It's brutally obvious but, just in case of any doubt, Polly Toynbee puts forward a convincing argument for the why, how and when here

Manchester United Maasai

My Maasai "brother" Juma has been in even higher spirits than usual with Manchester United's recent run of success. An avid, even obsessive fan, he has been substituting beer for his usual fresh blood tipple and I have been getting middle-of -the-night celebratory phone calls. Maasai are famed for their ability to stay awake.

Half a century ago Evelyn Waugh* visited the Maasai and remarked on how they had managed to retain their strong culture and customs. With characteristic hauteur they disdained almost everything the West has brought to Africa. The exceptions, Waugh noted, were tobacco, snuff and South African sherry. Not a lot has changed in fifty years but I think we can add Premiership football and mobile phones.

* Published as 'A Tourist in Africa' and highly recommended.

My new nephew

Teddy Keir Salkeld into the world

Expenses -- Who's the worst?

OK so we now know about our elected representatives. What about other professions?

Bankers, of course, are suitably secretive. It would be interesting to find out the things that Fred Goodwin didn't believe he should have to pay for out of his salary. The city crowd are but one example of those who feel they have scaled the heights - can we count MPs amongst these? - to Master of the Universe status. They believe, once there, they shouldn't have to pay the normal costs of life like the rest of us -- all those boring things like non-work travel, food, drink, parties, restaurants, laundry and clothing. Salaries are for banking, expenses for living. It is a strange irony that the more you get paid the less you have to pay for.

Journalists had a terrible reputation but I think the days of cleft sticks and collapsible canoes are over. Much like MPs they used to see it as an entirely honourable supplement to their "meagre" salaries. I had a mate who started on a Murdoch national in the 1980s and in his first month was taken aside by one of the editors and told his expense claims were far too low. His colleagues didn't want management thinking you could do the job on so little. I heard stories at the BBC about the glory days in the 60s and 70s and there were suspicions about some of the star foreign correspondents but I never saw it myself. The BBC chose instead to waste licence payers' money on management consultants and daft celebrity salaries.


There is one professional group, though, with an obsession for maximising expenses and fringe benefits that has shocked me. Not just shock with the egregious way they go about it but -- perhaps like MPs -- a further dose of horror because one had imagined said profession to be driven by vocation rather than pocket-lining. You may be surprised. I was. I talk of aid workers or development workers or whatever the current buzz name is. They are the sort of people you bump into in Africa, ususally in brand new 4x4s.

Now I realise Oxfam, UNICEF, DFID et al probably employ lots of wonderfully committed people putting up with great personal hardships to make the world a better place. I just don't seem to meet them. I meet a parasitic cadre -- usually self-styled consultants, economists or other "experts" -- living in some luxury (servants, long holidays, tax free salaries, colonial style accommodation ...) who write reports in air con offices*. Their "hardship" postings are in capital cities or at least large provincial towns, they socialise with other expats and most of the contact with the people they are "helping" comes from issuing orders to their African servants. With this bunch there is one subject you can always guarantee to launch an animated discourse... discussion of their allowances, expenses and perks. They will talk for hours about per diems, one-offs, hardship grants, education subsidies, air miles and club class travel. They will spend more time concocting elaborate expense maximisation wheezes than ever actually work. And boy do they go on about it. Ask about poverty and they will tell you off for talking shop.

Now when my coins clink into the collecting tin I also hear the business class champagne softly fizzing and the muffled click of laptop keys as another weary consultant labours over another expenses claim.


*Graham Hancock labelled them "Lords of Poverty" in his book of the same name. It is quite an old work now but if anything what it describes has got worse rather than better.

MPs' Greed

I had actually forgotten that Archbishop Carey was still alive -- well alive enough to write a sermon in this morning's News of the World. His outrage, along with everyone else's, is of course right but permit me not to be surprised at the revelations on MPs' perks. Three simple points are all I can add to the debate. They could have easily been noticed a month, a year, a decade ago, but they weren't.
1. When a system is open to abuse, people will abuse it. Really basic.
2. When a group of people, be they MPs, bankers, Hedge Fund managers, come to believe they are extra special, irreplaceable, in fantastically short supply or whatever, their greed will expand exponentially. This is the City bonus delusion. MPs have fallen guilty of just such hubris. I am so tired of listening to the bleating about politics not being able to attract the right sort of people unless it's very well paid. Bullshit. Do we want a bunch of ever more venal vermin running our politics? And look at the queues of people lining up to be selected in every constituency. Being a member of Parliament is a privilege in itself. Sure it's hard work but MPs aren't the only people who work hard.
3. Lastly there was a time when MPs would have compared themselves with the other public service professionals in their constituencies or even the average voter. Now many consort with the super-rich and over paid. The MPs feel poor and undervalued, hence the "making-up" on expenses. Unfortunately this is just one, small, example of the corrosive social and economic effects of the vast inequalities those self same MPs have been happy to promote.

Good News

I am an uncle again. Tom and Nikiki took delivery of baby boy this morning, provisionally named Ted.

Thought for Yesterday, Today

Dear Mr Woolas,

What a great impromptu press conference with Ms Lumley. How clever of you to look at once a] starstruck b] liberal and reasonable c] hard on immigration and d] like a little boy who has just been told off for peeing his pants. I wonder how much your Department spends on PR and "getting its message across"?

Best wishes

A voter

The Wire and Shakespeare 2 - Themes

OK so we’ve talked about the Shakespearean range and depth of Wire characters now the tricky area of themes. I hesitate. There are terabytes of web content out there on this subject already. But then again that in itself is testament to there being something worth talking about – as of course in dear old Shakespeare.

I think the most obvious parallel on the themes front is the number of them. Unlike so much we see on screens big and small The Wire doesn't spout a single, simple message. Its themes are layered and interlocking. Just like life, you can find different meanings all over. Shakespeare did that too.

At its simplest The Wire is about a modern American city, Baltimore. Over the five seasons it slowly zooms-out, revealing the interlacing communities, institutions, generations and moralities that make up modern urban life. To me that evocation of a polis or a kingdom is very Shakespearean. It could be Caesar's Rome, Henry's England or even Prospero's (remembered)Milan. It is place as an overarching character and place as ideas. Like Shakespeare's kingdoms Wirean Baltimore has dynasties that stretch back to a remembered golden past. When we look at this kingdom at a tighter level we come to the institutions - be they the Baltimore PD, labour unions, schools or local politics. The Wire explores in great depth the love-hate, nurture-destroy, structure-chaos of our relationship with institutions. Unlike so much screen fiction, bred as it is from the romantic adventurer tradition, here institutions dominate individuals however strong those individuals are as characters. To me, all this echoes Shakespeare's explorations of kingship, dynasty and the institutions of power in his time.

I don't have space for all the other themes nor Shakespeare parallels for each. The point I think is there are overarching themes, season themes, story themes and character themes, not to mention some plainly random ones. This rich mix is Shakespearean. To finish just two themes I value both connected and both around the drugs trade. First, The Wire uniquely, in my experience anyway, shows the drugs business as just that, a business. "The Game" as it's shown pits Barksdale, Bell et al as ruthless entrepreneurs first and criminals second. Look at their decisions, right or wrong, all motivated by commercial considerations. The second theme is the even darker side of the first. It is the agonising irony that the black drug-businessman have become 21st century slave owners (most of the "slaves" being black too). The slaves? Those lines of hopeless, faceless addicts chained to their next fix. They really are owned by those that supply their addiction.

More soon

The Wire and Shakespeare 1 - Characters

When the BBC started showing The Wire last month (only 7 years late guys -- good old BBC rapid response*) we had all the, now familiar, buzz about "the best TV series ever", we heard the Obama endorsements again but yesterday I heard someone say that it was Shakespearean.

Mmm Shakespearean. I would usually run a mile from such glibbery. I remember the late, and bashfully modest, Eastenders producer Tony Holland claiming that were Shakespeare alive "today" (this was in the 1980s) he would be writing for Albert Square. I can just see "Bill Stratford" (his nom de plume for Eastenders when he was moonlighting from the day job at Corrie) pops into the Queen Vic after filming had finished, he makes straight for his guiding mentor Tony Holland...

BS: Hi Tony fancy a drink?
TH: Yeah Bill mine's a pint of Churchill's
BS: Two Churchill's please Angie. Tony I wanted your advice on that new character Hammy I am working on. He doesn't seem to be able to make up his mind what to do...just found out his uncle Frank killed his old man, is shagging his old lady and Hammy thinks he's next in line. Just can't make up his mind whether to take a pop at Uncle or not.
TH: Look Bill when you've been in the game as long as me you'll know indecision don't put bums on seats. I'd write that out straight away. Have you thought about the old man coming back as a ghost? ... and where does Dot play in all this?


But despite my natural revulsion at Mr Holland's (God rest his soul) hubris and by association most of such claims, there is something in The Wire comparison. How come?

Health Warnings: 1. If you haven't yet seen The Wire I suggest you use your time to watch it rather than read this. 2. If you have seen it, be my guest although equally you might be better to watch it all over again rather than indulge in pointless Wiring and re-Wiring. 3. Finally I am in love with Omar Little (best character ever on TV according to Leader of the Free World - I'm in good company) so excuse any "little" indulgences in that regard.

I think we can find Shakespearean parallels in the characters, the themes, the language and in the overall humanity of The Wire. I am sure there are many more.

The Wire's shifting patchwork of characters could provide a lifetime's material for analysis. Not just because of numbers and range but -- like Shakespeare -- because of complexity. This is no haunt for the usual TV good or evil cutouts. Everyone displays a realistic mixture of traits. Like Shylock even the baddest Baltimorite would bleed if they were cut. This unflinching realism gives us real depth but it doesn't do so at the expense of the drama. Again like Shakespeare, The Wire's writers create a number of extraordinary characters and mix the mundane with the epic. Omar's cry of despair when he identifies his lover's body in Season 1 is the scream of a Greek tragic hero railing against Olympus. This is real drama. So is D'Angelo as our Hamlet playing out his moral confusion amid a wreath of family ties. So are the corrupt politicians and union bosses as they work through the ambiguities of power just like Shakespeare's kings. Even the fools have their depths and their clownish tears. It was certainly my own experience that leaving Wireworld is a bit like coming home from the spicy intensity of a trip to, say, India and finding everything too clean and bland. Mother's Pride after roti and sambal...Others have said the same. After all where else do we find an Omar Little?

Themes soon...

* I suspect we'll come back to that

Thought for the Day

Whatever happened to the Information Super Highway ? I think we shoudl be told.

Most Hated Man in America

The news on BBC Radio 4 this morning described the hate preacher Fred Phelps as a "Baptist" who has been barred for his "arguments against homosexuality". I hardly call "godhatesfags.com" an argument. The same goes for the protests at funerals of people who have died of AIDS , gay murder victims or US military personnel (apparently they get killed in Iraq or Afghanistan as a punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality). Arguments should have some reference to reason, some developed thought and show a willingness to persuade. Phelps hectors, bullies and insults in the cruellest way. The man was banned for fostering hate. Why can't the BBC tell it like it is. He isn't even a real Baptist minister. Perhaps the reporter should have watched the BBC's own 2007 programme about Phelps and his spawn. It was called "The Most Hated Family in America".