IT'S BEST TO BE HONEST AND "ALONG TIME BETWEEN DRINKS"

Ready for a new start  16th August, 2016

It's best to be honest  , so I am setting out below my Post from late 2014 showing my plan to educate myself about Africa - country by country . The plan had been to write about one Country per week and, by and large, it went fairly well until I "got" to Kenya! There the project seemed to run aground in about August, 2015 - just a week or so short of one year ago. To be honest I can't think why precisely - but initially it may have had something to do with not wanting to offend the views of a particular person. From there it descended to a surrender to laxity - wanting to avoid the discipline of completing my one a week country deadline. Whatever may be the case I am back at it. Kenya will have to get the treatment - my best effort right or wrong.

Of course I haven't be inactive in the interim and I have commenced another interesting series of  African studies - interesting to me at any rate - starting with http://butnought.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/mutual-understanding-tale-of-two.html and followed by:

http://butnought.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/mutual-understanding-tale-of-two_8.html and

http://butnought.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/mutual-understanding-tale-of-two_28.html

That series is yet to be concluded.

But now I intend to get back on track with my country by country trek around Africa. Let me see : Pith Helmet, Khaki clothing, Map, Compass, Mobile Phone, and hopelessly lost look and off I go .....But first, please read how I started on the project and why:  

  Me about fouryears ago before the Doctors got me.

Yes, it has been"a long time between drinks", as the saying goes. But all the medical cares of the fading year 2014 are now well behind me, and we are settling well into our fine new home. I even have a moderate sized and well-equipped "study" . So, time to get back to writing. 

To create a discipline around which other writing can re- develop, I have decided that for the New Year I will begin a systematic effort to correct a sizeable deficiency in my knowledge. Like most Australians, I have a very poor grasp on the geography of Africa. In fact, I have found that even beyond that, I have not even had a true idea of the size of Africa compared to Australia.

I want to correct that and, if you wish , you can come along with me through 2015 as I fill in the massive blank spaces in my knowledge of "Mother Africa" as the song calls her.

It has been my pleasure and privilege to actually get to know some African people, in real life and via Facebook during the last several years, and it has opened my eyes to many shortcomings in my world view, and in most Australians' relative ignorance of the giant across the Indian Ocean. 

I am looking forward keenly to learning so much from the rich history, reality, and activity of that energetic continent and her marvellous and varied people, and to correct even my stupid ideas about where various countries are on that Continent.

I would like you to come along with me, and perhaps - especially any African readers - to comment and correct any errors you believe I am  making.

My Africa

Here I am, closing in rapidly on 75 yrs of age. When I was a child, Africa was the "dark continent" of fabled literature, gradually emerging into the false light of Hollywood movies.

Here in Australia, we did not even have the steady flow of news and concerns the British had for their interests in Africa. After all, to them, we Australians were just another lot of convenient Colonials like the African settlers and their native populations. Nor did we have the continual flow of Colonial Administrators  going out and coming "home" with their tales of the lives they had led and the "knowledge" they had acquired ( or perhaps the prejudices they had formed and fed.) No, for us Africa was largely the impression we got from our Mercator Projection maps, literature and , as I say, increasingly from the false light of Hollywood movies.

So what was that all like? Well take a look at Mercator's projection of the world and it is obvious : particularly in the flattened out sphere projections our school maps provided, Australia was very nearly as big as Africa, but the truth is that Africa is about 2.5 times the size of Australia. 

Literature had tended to present Africa as an unending source of mystery and danger to the white man who carried the " burden" of opening up these strange lands to civilisation. The influence of novels , which exploded into popularity in the 1800s and early 1900s was tremendous . The works of H.Rider Haggard , Joseph Conrad and others set the tone. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" was particularly influential. At the same time the the tale of the finding of Doctor Livingstone  caused a sensation and every child knew the reporter's greeting "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" . The quest for the discovery of the source of the Nile - finally resolved by John Hanning Speke in 1858,  contributed to a romantic air surrounding the Continent of Africa. 

This romantic legend tended also to flourish as a result, of the very real commercial activities of the British Cecil Rhodes who was not only a mining entrepreneur , but an enthusiastic British Imperialist whose dream was to build a Cape to Cairo Railway to advance and cement British dominance over the African Continent.

Had we, children of my era, been taught about Africa in a systematic way, this Nineteenth Century preoccupation would have been more strongly founded in earlier history as we were taught it. But no, to us, Egypt was Egypt and not so much thought of as part of Africa (even the Romans were ahead of us there - Scipio Africanus for example - and of course, we were not taught why Africa (Egypt) was so important to the Romans ( grain supplies). We were not even taught systematically the importance of the early Church in North Africa with 160 Dioceses  (including Saint Augustine's Hippo)  Suffice it to say  that Mohammed wrote the Koran in A.D.625 and by A.D. 700 Catholicism in North Africa was wiped out in military slaughter.

Nor were we systematically educated about  missionary activity deeper into Africa or about slavery out of Africa and its extermination. The result was that we were left to absorb the Hollywood, therefore American, idea of slavery. That is that it was a racial, black phenomenon period. Of course that suited American political ideas as they had developed by the time of my childhood, but it did not have so much relationship to the whole history of slavery, which has more often been national based (as opposed to race) or later religion based with Christians being made slaves of Mohammedans.

So, I suppose I am saying that it is little wonder that my ideas of Africa, from my childhood became inadequately formed.

Actual contact with African people, strangely enough came to me at about 4 years of age. My Mum and my Aunt Nell were taking me to Manly Beach and we went part of the way by tram. Sitting opposite us were three American Servicemen all in uniform then proudly worn in war time , and all of them black. They very kindly and politely offered to hand me down from the height of the tram while they also helped the ladies. Well! What a surprising bit of courtesy in a time when Aussie men were painfully awkward about any display of gentility. 

                            Me to-day after the Doctors have done their best.

  I hope by now you can get some idea of the reasoning behind my enthusiasm for this project, and I hope that it will prove interesting to you also. For example it might provoke in some of my African  readers  thoughts about their actual first encounter with a white man, and how it went?

I shall give myself a short break before embarking on the project from the first week in 2015 , at the rate of one country per week, save for the tiniest , which I might deal with in the same week as a larger neighbor.  I plan to start in the North East of Africa and progress across the continent in broad bands coming back to the East each time I hit the the West Coast. Accordingly, my first country will be Egypt! A baptism of fire!

AFRICA FOURTEENTH STOP MAURITANIA

MAP OF MAURITANIA

AFRICA

BACKGROUND :

Africa covers 6 per cent of the surface of the Earth and provides 20.4 per cent of Earth’s landmass.   Occupying this massive  and significant territory there are 1.1 Billion people. Africa is the second largest and second most populous continent on Earth.

MAURITANIA

Oh What a lovely place! 90% is Sahara Desert, it is an "Islamic Republic", 4% of the population are formally slaves, Female genital mutilation is practised and child labor is the norm. Where else would you want to live?

Now i wrote the foregoing about three weeks ago. And it is true that other things have intruded, but , if I am totally honest I would have to admit that The information summarised in the above paragraph really put me off writing about Mauretania.  But I can't spend the rest of my days peering over the border into wretched Mauretania - no, I shall have to mentally go on in!


Bounded by Western Sahara and Algeria in the North, Mali in the East, and South and also by Senegal in the South , Mauritania has for its Western border the Atlantic Ocean.

The country is an Islamic Republic  with a population of approx. 3,500,000 including as we have said 140,000 official slaves - 4% of the population. Languages used include Arabic, French and a version of +Berber.+ The Motto of the country is : " Honor, Fraternity , Justice" - slaves are exempted from these tiresome privileges , as are genitally-mutilated women and child laborers.

The name Mauritania has its origins in the ancient Roman Province of Mauretania Tingitana which occupied most of present day Morocco and survived as a Berber Kingdom until the 7th Century A.D. From around A..D.1000 Arab invaders maintained continual pressure on the country and finally in a thirty years war from 1644 to 1674 Yemeni Arabs crushed the Berber peoples and assumed control. However in the late 19th Century, French forces from Senegal in the South integrated Mauritania into French territory. French rule brought an end to historic legal slavery in the country. But in 1960 the country was again given its independence.Slavery was restored. Its victims are largely sub-Saharan Africans. 

Severe drought in the 1970s- even by Mauritanian standards led to immense civil unrest.As many as 70,000 sub-Saharan African Mauritanians were expelled from the country at the time. A bloodless coup took place in July , 1978 .This has opened the way for a long period of internal instability with coups and counter coups becoming the routine way of life. Slavery has been banned and then re-introduced.

The last of the coups was in 2008, but the political climate remains unhealthy despite elections held.

Now I know where Mauritania is ...but I feel none the better for it!

AFRICA THE BEGINNING : EGYPT

AFRICA OBJECT OF MY STUDY

My AFRICA begins with EGYPT

Background: 

Africa covers 6 per cent of the surface of the Earth

 and provides 20.4 per cent of Earth’s landmass. 

Occupying this massive and significant territory there are 1.1 Billion people. 

Africa is the second largest and second most populous continent on Earth.

We begin by studying Egypt.

Set in the North Eastern corner of Africa, Egypt at once presents us with an anomaly – a significant portion of its territory –Sinai- is not in Africa but adjacent to it.

Unlike much of Africa, the recorded history of Egypt is exceptionally long and detailed by world standards, and is characterised by  super abundance of ruins, artifacts and written records. Although Egypt is largely desert, the rich fertile soil of the Nile Valley and the regularity of its annual inundation, provided the means to encourage and support a mighty civilisation thousands of years B.C. It was a civilisation that was to become the object of the keen interest of the Romans, because it held out the promise of abundant, regular grain supplies.

Egypt became familiar to Western civilisation not only through its interaction with Roman and Greek civilisation, but more importantly through its integration into the story of the Old and even the New Testaments. These associations created and kept alive a strong interest in matters Egyptian, whether it be regarding Joseph and his coat of many colours or Moses and the Exodus and the watery end of Pharaoh’s Army, or Kadesh ,and then finally, the Flight into Egypt which appealed as a  perpetual mystery as to detail. 

In the 18^th and 19^th Centuries exploration of Egyptian ruins and tombs exploded in the most unscientific way, further titillating the popular imagination. Then came the Corsican Corporal – the Emperor (self-styled) Napoleon Bonaparte  and his team of more scientific researchers and artists to record their findings. Egyptology had arrived! In 1799 the French soldier Bouchard discovered what has become known as the Rosetta Stone. This stele is rightly famous for with its triple inscription in Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Demotic Script and Ancient Greek, it provided the key to understanding ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs after Champollion perfected the translation. This in effect, unlocked the whole of millennia of Egyptian ruins and tombs and the civilisation that produced them, to our understanding. Later archaeological activities by the British and the Americans , each with their successive waves of wealth, saw the most intense levels of activity in Egypt. But no doubt the height of interest was achieved by the discovery of the still richly endowed tomb of the minor Pharaoh Tutankamen son of the “heretic” Pharaoh Akhenaten . Although the tomb had been disturbed in antiquity, it had been hastily but effectively re-packed with nearly all its treasures, sealed up and undiscovered until Howard Carter located it in 1922.

  

But the “modern” history of Egypt is something else again.

POLITICS

After a long period of relative stability under the successive Governments of Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak – all autocratic with strong military backing, the country was swept by a popular revolutionary sentiment sympathetic to the so-called Arab Spring movement. In fact the powerful Muslim Brotherhood was at work seeking to ensure that its interests benefited in the process. There was an interim Government for a year. The Muslim Brotherhood was pleased to see Muslim Mohammed Morsi elected as the first ever democratically elected Head of Government in Egypt’s long history. Their glee was short-lived when the Army forced him out promising fresh elections in the future. It is quite clear, even at the level of popular demonstrations that the country is strongly divided between Islamist and anti-Islamist opinion.

African though she is, Egypt has played a vital role in the Middle Eastern political scene following World War II and the establishment of the modern State of Israel  in 1948 by United Nations fiat. This action set off a chain reaction which continues until to-day. The action led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral homes. Their grievances and the sympathetic reaction of the surrounding Mohammedan States, including Egypt, led to many conflicts and reached a peak in the "Six Day War" of 1967 which was started by a pre-emptive strike by Israel against Egypt which was outstandingly successful and subsequently successful attacks on Jordan and Syria when they endeavoured to come to Egypt's aid. In 1978 the Camp David Accords brought a prolonged period of relative peace and Egypt and Israel became mutually wary but non- belligerent neighbours.

People

A surprisingly high proportion (91%) of the population is ethnically Egyptian – surprising given the cosmopolitan nature of much of North Africa and the Middle East. Some 923,000 Egyptians live in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, and 332,000 Egyptians live in Libya Egypt’s African neighbour to the West. In 2013 the Egyptian population was 84 Millions making the country the most populous in the Middle East and the third most populous in Africa.

Given its size and very long recorded history, Egypt is remarkable in having retained its integrity as a country through the whole time, having changed its religion three times –pagan, Christian and then in bloody conquest, Mohammedan.

Economy

The country has a reasonably diverse economy, but it must be remembered that it is heavily buttressed by United States foreign aid which in recent years has run at the rate of US 2.2 Billions per annum. Tourism has been a long term strength of the economy bringing in around US 10 Billions per annum. Egypt exports Coal – mined in Sinai, Natural Gas –of which she has large reserves, hydro electric power is generated from the great Aswan High Dam and the historic agricultural output of the Nile Valley remains a significant part of her wealth.

Summary

So much for Egypt! It was an interesting exercise, bringing together much that I always knew supplemented by research on the Internet for specific dates and numbers. The most important result, has been to fix firmly in my mind the actual geographic location of Egypt, which I "knew" but somehow never had fixed "photographically" in my memory.

Next we take a step to the West and look at neighbouring Libya - a very different kettle of fish!

Till next week!

AFRICA - THE GETTING OF KNOWLEDGE

AFRICA - IMMENSE AND DIVERSE

AFRICA - the challenge that confronts me for 2015.

As you might have read, I intend to start with Egypt , then move backwards and forwards across the Continent, country by country, learning what I can about each one, and how it relates to the whole, its present but also its past, its peoples and their religions, commerce and prospects.

I will use this map as a point of reference as we examine each country so that we have  consistency in the impression we develop.

It is an exciting, but I must say daunting project .....I hope I am not biting off more than I can chew!!

It will be a good test of my ability to use the Internet for research purposes in the most effective manner, and, as time goes by, should hone those skills quite a bit. So, I won't cheat by starting a day early....but tomorrow New Year's Day it begins -Africa starts in Egypt!

Ready for the work.

A LONG TIME BETWEEN DRINKS

  Me about three years ago before the Doctors got me.

Yes, it has been"a long time between drinks", as the saying goes. But all the medical cares of this fading year are now well behind me, and we are settling well into our fine new home. I even have a moderate sized and well-equipped "study" . So, time to get back to writing. 

To create a discipline around which other writing can re- develop, I have decided that for the New Year I will begin a systematic effort to correct a sizeable deficiency in my knowledge. Like most Australians, I have a very poor grasp on the geography of Africa. In fact, I have found that even beyond that, I have not even had a true idea of the size of Africa compared to Australia.

I want to correct that and, if you wish , you can come along with me through 2015 as I fill in the massive blank spaces in my knowledge of "Mother Africa" as the song calls her.

It has been my pleasure and privilege to actually get to know some African people, in real life and via Facebook during the last several years, and it has opened my eyes to many shortcomings in my world view, and in most Australians' relative ignorance of the giant across the Indian Ocean. 

I am looking forward keenly to learning so much from the rich history, reality, and activity of that energetic continent and her marvellous and varied people, and to correct even my stupid ideas about where various countries are on that Continent.

I would like you to come along with me, and perhaps - especially any African readers - to comment and correct any errors you believe I am  making.

My Africa

Here I am, closing in rapidly on 75 yrs of age. When I was a child, Africa was the "dark continent" of fabled literature, gradually emerging into the false light of Hollywood movies.

Here in Australia, we did not even have the steady flow of news and concerns the British had for their interests in Africa. After all, to them, we Australians were just another lot of convenient Colonials like the African settlers and their native populations. Nor did we have the continual flow of Colonial Administrators  going out and coming "home" with their tales of the lives they had led and the "knowledge" they had acquired ( or perhaps the prejudices they had formed and fed.) No, for us Africa was largely the impression we got from our Mercator Projection maps, literature and , as I say, increasingly from the false light of Hollywood movies.

So what was that all like? Well take a look at Mercator's projection of the world and it is obvious : particularly in the flattened out sphere projections our school maps provided, Australia was very nearly as big as Africa, but the truth is that Africa is about 2.5 times the size of Australia. 

Literature had tended to present Africa as an unending source of mystery and danger to the white man who carried the " burden" of opening up these strange lands to civilisation. The influence of novels , which exploded into popularity in the 1800s and early 1900s was tremendous . The works of H.Rider Haggard , Joseph Conrad and others set the tone. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" was particularly influential. At the same time the the tale of the finding of Doctor Livingstone  caused a sensation and every child knew the reporter's greeting "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" . The quest for the discovery of the source of the Nile - finally resolved by John Hanning Speke in 1858,  contributed to a romantic air surrounding the Continent of Africa. 

This romantic legend tended also to flourish as a result, of the very real commercial activities of the British Cecil Rhodes who was not only a mining entrepreneur , but an enthusiastic British Imperialist whose dream was to build a Cape to Cairo Railway to advance and cement British dominance over the African Continent.

Had we, children of my era, been taught about Africa in a systematic way, this Nineteenth Century preoccupation would have been more strongly founded in earlier history as we were taught it. But no, to us, Egypt was Egypt and not so much thought of as part of Africa (even the Romans were ahead of us there - Scipio Africanus for example - and of course, we were not taught why Africa (Egypt) was so important to the Romans ( grain supplies). We were not even taught systematically the importance of the early Church in North Africa with 160 Dioceses  (including Saint Augustine's Hippo)  Suffice it to say  that Mohammed wrote the Koran in A.D.625 and by A.D. 700 Catholicism in North Africa was wiped out in military slaughter.

Nor were we systematically educated about  missionary activity deeper into Africa or about slavery out of Africa and its extermination. The result was that we were left to absorb the Hollywood, therefore American, idea of slavery. That is that it was a racial, black phenomenon period. Of course that suited American political ideas as they had developed by the time of my childhood, but it did not have so much relationship to the whole history of slavery, which has more often been national based (as opposed to race) or later religion based with Christians being made slaves of Mohammedans.

So, I suppose I am saying that it is little wonder that my ideas of Africa, from my childhood became inadequately formed.

Actual contact with African people, strangely enough came to me at about 4 years of age. My Mum and my Aunt Nell were taking me to Manly Beach and we went part of the way by tram. Sitting opposite us were three American Servicemen all in uniform then proudly worn in war time , and all of them black. They very kindly and politely offered to hand me down from the height of the tram while they also helped the ladies. Well! What a surprising bit of courtesy in a time when Aussie men were painfully awkward about any display of gentility. 

                            Me to-day after the Doctors have done their best.

  I hope by now you can get some idea of the reasoning behind my enthusiasm for this project, and I hope that it will prove interesting to you also. For example it might provoke in some of my African  readers  thoughts about their actual first encounter with a white man, and how it went?

I shall give myself a short break before embarking on the project from the first week in 2015 , at the rate of one country per week, save for the tiniest , which I might deal with in the same week as a larger neighbor.  I plan to start in the North East of Africa and progress across the continent in broad bands coming back to the East each time I hit the the West Coast. Accordingly, my first country will be Egypt! A baptism of fire!