Ministers finger fags

Any day of the week, Samoa is definitely one of the greatest destinations in the world; awesome beaches, wonderfully lush mountains, natural water slides off the sides of said mountains, fantastic beer, relaxed vibe (bordering-on-coma) and a serious commitment to food (my kinda peeps).

There're also the wonderful, friendly locals; always joking, laughing, dancing and singing, that make the place so welcoming and so much fun. 

Hang-on, did I just say "always friendly"?  That's definitely not quite right ... for starters, Samoans – all of 'em, at one time or another - suffer from the "musu".  This is a cultural phenomenon which, for no apparent reason, turns your normally laughing, joking, cheeky colleagues/friends/partners/waiters/hotel staff into brooding, inpatient, aggressive ticking-emotional-time-bombs in the blink of an eye. 

Seriously, the musu can easily turn a happy, convivial conversation into a spiteful verbal barrage.  For example;

Donkey:  Thanks for taking me to the pub last night, I had a great time.

Mose:     Hey no worries, Donkey, me-ol'-mucka.*  Yeah, it was really fun.  You're pretty good a darts.

Donkey:  You think so?  Ah thanks.  Yeah, I really enjoy it.  Wish I hadn't drunk so much, though.

Mose:     Ha!  It was kinda funny when you downed 17 Vailimas and spewed all over the pool table before passing out on the sea wall.

Donkey:  Urgh!  Don't remind me – woke-up with a washed-up, fermenting coconut next to my face.  Still, good fun.  How 'bout we do it again some time?

Mose:     Fuck off!

And that'll be it for Mose for the next couple of hours.  Next time you see him, he'll be his old self again.  Ah, the musu.  It can make inter-cultural relationships pretty difficult to negotiate for the uninitiated.

So as I was saying, apart from the musu, Samoans are great fun to be around; very generous with their time, their praise, their food.  Great people; very open to newcomers ... oh, unless they happen to be palagi (foreigners).  For those of us who aren't Samoan, there's a special kind of Samoan Pride (read: arrogance) which anyone whose been there for longer than a week will have been exposed to at one time or another.  It's not too bad, really; no violence or hate crimes, just a very Samoan way of talking to make you feel that you're less than the dirt under their shoe ... um, sandal.

Actually, this pride (read: arrogance) isn't only reserved for foreigners, but for all who are considered beneath the speaker in question.  So in the hierarchy of Samoa, a man will display arrogance to a woman, who'll beat-up on the kids, who'll have a stab at the dog, who'll take-on the cat, who'll chase the rat.  And we palagis are right at the bottom (luckily there's no plague in Samoa!).

At the other end of the spectrum are matais (chiefs) and church ministers.  These morbidly-obese blokes lord it over everyone, as the next story demonstrates.

Now this story is completely true (I think ... at least, I've certainly told it many times as though it's a true story ... I've even made it slightly better from time-to-time with a few Donkey-specials, just to make sure my audience is on-board ... so yeah, it's pretty true).

Many years ago, some foreign anthropologists from The States were conducting an investigation into the origins of the Pacific races.  They spent many years researching in countries all over the Pacific, and many years in Samoa, particularly.  At the end of nearly a decade of research, they offered to share (in person) their findings with the various countries of the Pacific, and were invited to do so in Samoa, where they would address a gathering of the Council of Chiefs.

This was back in the days before PowerPoint, but they had lots of slides, and went to great pains to ensure the audience understood the rigour of their research, and the ultimate findings that the peoples of the Pacific, including Polynesians, all drifted east from what is now Southeast Asia, settling, then moving on, then settling again.  They described key evidence of language, art, cultural practices, mythology and DNA as supporting these findings.

After a day of talking, explaining, demonstrating and answering questions about their research, the Paramount Chief stood up, and in the spirit of fine Samoan oratory, went on a one-hour verbal bender which can basically be summed-up as follows;

"Thank you very much for coming here today to tell us about your work.  But we know that Samoa is the Cradle of Polynesia; God put us here and from here all the Polynesian nations were settled."

Nods all 'round.  Paramount Chief ... who's gonna argue?  The researchers (both inferior and foreign) hung their heads, packed-up and went home.

Donkey, too, has come up against this closed-minded, unquestionable Samoan arrogance.  I was running a consultative workshop about health promotion; how to do it better in order to meet the needs of Samoa's most concerning health problems.

I'd wanted to get a few young people along to discuss the cause, and possibly throw-around a few ideas towards a solution to the very high rate of youth suicide in the country.  When I asked the gathering of Church Pastors and Village Chiefs why no young people had come along, I was informed by one particularly large gentleman who, despite his profusely sweating brow, managed to pull-off a spotless white sports-coat with nary a blemish, "We are the representatives of God here on Earth and we speak for our communities, which includes our young people".

OK, so by this time I'm getting the message, loud-and-clear, on the high rate of youth suicide.  "So," I asked, "what can we do about it?".

"Our young people need to be more involved in the Church ... they need to pray more and be closer to their parents and leaders, and especially to God".

Exasperated, I looked to my practical, street-savvy, scientifically-minded, Health Promotion colleagues for a life-line.  All I got were beaming smiles and,

Nods all 'round.  Church Pasters and Chiefs ... who's gonna argue?  This health promoter (both inferior and foreign) hung his donkey-head, packed-up and went home.

And now someone else has come-up against the ol' Samoan Pride.  This time it's an international climate change summit to which, for no apparent reason, someone decided to invite a bunch of senior Samoan Church Ministers.  And the result?  What is the Number 1 root cause of climate change? ...

... wait for it ...

Homosexuals!  Ha!

I love the line in this article from The Register, "...Academics were apparently thrown off their consideration of "Arts in the Age of Global Warming" and "Ecology in Poetry / Poetry in Ecology..."

Nods all 'round.  Church Pasters ... who's gonna argue?  Those academics (both inferior and foreign) hung their heads, packed-up and went home.

* OK, so clearly Mose doesn't talk in cockney-rhyming slang – I was just translating from Samoan into some kind of cross-cultural equivalent ... I think I nailed it!

Wonder-twin powers...activate!  The white-coated Church Pastors from Samoa power-up to tackle climate change in their own, unique, homophobic way.  Pic: adventist.org.au

Give ‘em an inch…

It’s great being back in Melanesia again.  Apart from the joy in being able to communicate with people in [something resembling] their own language, I have come to remember a few of the wonderful, and occasionally baffling things about these people that I’d previously known and loved, but of which I had completely forgotten.

“What am I, hard-of-smelling?”

Within an hour of hitting Vila, I was waiting on the dusty roadside for a “bus” to come along to take me into town.  Beside me was an old lady with a massive ‘fro and a brightly-coloured, Mother Hubbard dress, unashamedly staring at me with a massive, toothless grin.  I nodded, smiled, said “Halo”, smiled again, nodded again, winked, smiled again … but she wasn’t done yet; there’d be no looking away from my amusing spectacle.

Eventually, a beat-up, rusting old van with clapped-out suspension and bald tyres rocked-up and the mad old hag and I climbed on board, squeezing into the remaining two seats.  From this you might deduce that the bus was packed, but in truth there were only two others - young guys - on board.  The rest of the seats, comprising the back half of the bus, were taken up with two ridiculously-sized woofers which bashed out gut-thumping, island reggae beats.  I settled into the groove, and sat back to enjoy the ride.

As soon as we pulled off the curb, I received Repressed Melanesia Memory #1.  It is a fact of island life that fresh water is a scarce commodity for many communities, and as such, it is not uncommon for people to bathe only once ortwice a week, and this rarely with soap (an unnecessary expense for poverty-stricken households).  And so, as I sat in the sweltering bus, I remembered the all-pervasive, musky tang of Melanesian body odour.

To be honest, though, this is not a completely unpleasant odour – it’s actually quite a sweet smell, which is rather odd.  How is it that Melanesians - women and men alike - despite rarely bathing, and even more rarely with soap, they still smell a damn sight better than those fat blokes in the Australian public service who, despite sitting all day in climate-controlled offices, still exhibit great, wet, yellowing under-arm stains and smell like turds rolled in ground cumin?  Same goes for those pot-bellied, balding types in stubbies and blue singlets you sometimes get stuck next to on the train – ew!  Never mind the “poor, primitive natives of the Pacific with their backward cultures and heathen ways”, maybe island hygiene (or the lack thereof) is still far-and-away more advanced than your average Australian male?

Strange misconceptions.

It must be all those Hollywood blockbusters like Hotel Rwanda, Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland, not to mention the harrowing footage we see on BBC World every night from regions as far flung as Sudan, the Congo, East Timor and Haiti.  Whatever it is, I am ashamed to admit that the sight of a Toyota Hilux racing along a dirt road with a spear-bristling pile of young, black, male faces staring determinedly over the cab fills me to the core with cold, mortal fear.

What a wave of surprised relief I experience, though, when these young men turn that menacing grimace into a big, white, toothy grin, and a laughing “Halo” as they make their way across the island to their circumcision/initiation ceremony.  This is Vanuatu, you idiot, not Sierra Leone!

Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.

There’s nothing quite so uncomfortable when, as a waetman (foreigner) with comparatively shitloads of money, you’ve just opened and are ready to tuck into a packet of Twisties (a luxury food item, given average household incomes) when the seventeen year-old guesthouse maid walks by for a chat.  Clearly she’s not in a hurry to get back to work, and the stilted conversation seems to drag slowly by as the Twisties waft their tantalizing scent throughout the room.

Giving into my cultural inclinations, and also as a result of the guilt this have, with my great, big bag of corny, deep-fried snacks, feels before this young have-not, I course extend the packet for her to share my tasty treat.  “Thank you”, she smiles as she reaches for the pack, takes it from my hand, turns, and wanders off into the guesthouse.

Oh yeah, Repressed Melanesia Memory #3, one doesn’t share, one gives away.  Bugger!  I really wanted those Twisties.

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

I arrived late in the day to the quiet town in the remote southern island, and all the stores were closed.  In the dark, I found my guesthouse, and was feeling a bit freaked-out at the grotty, shoddy surroundings which would be my home for the next ten days.  With nothing to eat, and only a cold pipe for a shower, I fumbled through the gloom to my sleeping bag, tired, hungry and miserable.

Sometime in the night I was startled awake by a group of staggering men returned from sloshing kava at the nakamal, and I lay quiet and still, fervently mouthing my prayers for deliverance from being stabbed in the night by a pack of wired, tribal warriors, and done up the bum while my corpse was still warm.

In the morning, I staggered out onto the guesthouse’s mouldy, crumbling balcony to see two fat, old, greying men sitting before a well-set breakfast table.  They offered for me to join them and shared their bread, which I gratefully accepted and ate quietly while they farted, scratched their protruding tummies and chatted away in their local dialect.

While cleaning-up in the disgusting kitchen afterwards, the third member of the party, who’d been making the breakfast for the others, informed me that one of the two sitting out on the balcony was none other than His Excellency the Honourable Minister for Foreign Affairs, here on an official government visit to meet with his constituency!  Let that be a lesson to all those who think that national budgets in the islands are all blown on five-star holiday resorts for corrupt government officials.

Lord Voldemort in a Penis Gourd?

Vanuatu, like a number of other Melanesian countries, remains one of the last great tribal cultures of the world, with many people still practicing and following the tribal customs and beliefs of their ancestors.  Rather paradoxically, it’s also staunchly Christian, but like many parts of the world where a kind of hybrid Christianity has sprung-up, much to the chagrin of missionaries both past and present, so too Vanuatu enjoys a rather bizarre mix of belief in both the magic of the Holy Spirit, and the magic of the mountains, trees, rocks and sea.

And to further add to this crazy soup of beliefs and practices, modern technology has been well and truly embraced by all, so that today even the remotest communities have access to satellite TV, internet and mobile phones.

The clash of these ancient beliefs and modern technology was brought to my attention one day while out in the field with one of the engineers responsible for bringing essential water and sanitation facilities to remote communities.  This wiry, weathered bloke is one of the few of his countrymen to have completed both high school and tertiary education, and for the last twenty years, has travelled to every province and island in the country guiding communities to implement these positive changes for their health and well being.

Did I say every island?  Sorry, that should have been ‘every island but one’.  It’s hard to get information out of this bloke sometimes; he being always on his mobile phone, banging away in a number of different languages to someone or other.  One day, I was standing by him when his phone rang.  He looked at the screen before swearing and muttering something in his own dialect, and then turned the phone off.  I realised then that I’d seen this happen quite a few times over the previous days, so asked him jovially whether an old girl friend had finally caught up with him.

Rather than smile at my joke, he gravely explained to me that he will not answer a call that the phone display lists as an anonymous, ‘Private Number’, as this, he said, is likely to be a local sorcerer trying to put a curse on him.

Surprised by this response, and the fear in his eyes when he told me, I asked a few more careful questions and came to learn that the reason he’d never, in twenty years, visited the island of Maewo, was because it is a place of black magic, and he will surely be cursed by a local sorcerer if he goes there.

With that, he picked up his bag and headed-off to church.

But mostly it's the people that make it great.  Pic: Hagas.

Bae mi laek fo drinkem wan fala cofi no moa

I’d not be the first to remark that Melbourne’s obsession with coffee seems to be getting a little out of hand.  T’was not all that long ago that, Lygon Street aside, if you wanted an espresso coffee, you’d have to go to one of those special Milk Bars (the ones with the somewhat perplexing, “Delicatessen” sign out the front), and even then it was only for a cappuccino or a flat white.  But now, especially in Melbourne’s Central Business District, you can’t turn around without some semi-trained dick with a portable espresso cart shooting a spray of steam in your ear, or without seeing jittery, ipod-ed students jumping about with a bucket full of latte in hand.

Of course, the rise of the espresso culture is proportional to the number of times a week one is subjected to one’s co-worker casually remarking (at 20,000 decibels across the open-plan office) to their nearest colleague, “Oh, I just can’t function without my morning coffee”.

Oh, pah-leez! Won’t you people just fuck off and leave the rest of us in peace?!  It’s just coffee you’re drinking – a legal, and very minor stimulant.  You’re not shooting-up heroin; it ain’t acid; it ain’t ice and it ain’t the ol’ nose-candy.  It’s coffee … and besides, you drink it with a pint of warm milk anyway!  So please stop carrying-on like the tough kid from down the road whose showing off to his BMX-riding mates with the pack of Alpine Lights he’s bought with the two bucks he’s nicked out of his Mum’s purse*, “What, this?  Nah, this is nothin’.  I smoke ‘em wiv me ol’ man all the time – don’t you?”.

This attention-grabbing, loudly publicized, faux-obsession with a steamy-hot beverage is not impressive; it just gives the rest of us the shits.  If these self-absorbed show-ponies would just pull their heads out of their own arses for a minute and look around, they’d notice that while they’ve been bragging about how “I can easily manage three before lunch time”, more than half of their colleagues, at any time of the day, have beneath their desk an over-flowing bin of stinking, slowly-congealing empty paper cups.

Like most obsessive types, we keep our habits to ourselves … even try to cover it up with unnecessary, old-growth-forest-destroying HP laser-printer test pages.  We are the truly obsessed, and frankly, we find your ridiculous theatrics offensive.

Now right from the outset, I wanna make it clear.  While I might be a tad on edge most of the time, my relationship with coffee is one of obsession, not addiction.  I … love … the … stuff!  And although this post might be tantamount to shouting across the office that “I just can’t start the day without my morning coffee”, it’s definitely different because I’m pretty sure no one is listening … and besides, it’s not even true … I don’t think.

OK, maybe it’s a bit true.  There could be something to be said for the fact that these days I actually like getting up early-ish on the weekend.  I have to admit that while there are two reasons for this, only one of them is to play with Hambones.  The other is to take my cheap, piece-of-shit espresso machine, and to bash it and squeeze it and gently rub it and squash it and rock it back-and-forwards and then hug it in an attempt to churn out the best possible, double-strength long black money can’t buy … and I don’t mind boasting that together we consistently produce the most exquisite thing to ever come out of such an abusive relationship.

Of course, one doesn’t just do this on the weekend … no, this is Donkey’s de rigueur start to any given day, so I’ve got the jump on my loud-mouthed colleagues long before they’ve even thought about interrupting the rest of us.  And this little morning pleasure of mine; both the drinking and the creation of the special brew, certainly keeps me going well enough until I arrive at my desk at 7.45, when I start looking around for something to drink.  A coffee’d be good, but from where?

Who else will take the kind of care I do?  Who else will obsess over finding, and then sticking to the right beans, the right roaster, the right grind, the right temperature (room and water)?  Who else will constantly worry about whether or not he’s got enough stock to get you through the weekend; who’s concerned about having enough cups on the warmer; about having all the various tamps, spoons, jugs, dirty sponges, clean sponges on hand?  Who else sees making a cup of coffee as a creation?

It’s not easy to choose.  As I mentioned, every cashed-up bogan within a hundred miles of the city these days reckons they’re obsessed with coffee, “and it has to be expresso” (sic), so as a result, every single food outlet, milk bar, convenience store, train platform, pub, street corner, law firm lobby, hospital, book shop - even McDonalds - bashes out lattes and cappuccinos at an incredible rate, and for a pretty reasonable price.  But that’s not to say they’re any good.

Now I don’t mind paying up to three dollars for a decent cuppa, but I will object to having to do so for a tasteless cup of brown water, or worse yet, the steaming mug of what I got served-up last week for the princely sum of $3.30, which looked and tasted as though a diarrheal-ridden Biafran kiddie had taken a squat over a porcelain cup.

This place was supposedly French, named after it’s proprietor, Jacque M, and located in a pretty trendy part of town.  Knowing what we all do about the French and their fastidious attention to fine dining, I thought I was probably in safe barista territory, but I should have known something was up when, as I waited for my long black, he answered the phone with, “Yeah, G’Day this is Jack Mole-ey-nooks … orr, how are ya, mate?”.

Fortunately the French redeemed themselves today … or, perhaps more correctly, some 100 years ago, when they brought culinary discretion to the South Pacific.  Today I crossed a dusty track in a five-ute, three-building, two-boat provincial town on a remote southern island in Vanuatu, and ducked-into a tin shack where I quaffed a cup of perhaps the finest, organic, locally grown and roasted espresso I’d ever sent south.  Vive la France – and jam it, Starbucks!

* - yeah, yeah, two dollars for a pack of fags … I know, I’m showing my age.

This cuppa saved my life.  Pic: http://tannacoffee.com/

Beaten by reality

FOREWORD: I drafted the following post last Thursday (12^th August), back when all was quiet on the inner city streets ... little did I know that my Hindenburg-like, pseudo-intellectual smugness was going to be deflated in a great, blubbery mess by the pointy-end of the real world, as Melbourne's gangland mobs geared-up for a whole new shooting spree.

While the ongoing northern suburban teenage knife fights and the cudgelling of Indian students keeps the blood-lusting Sunday paper readers interested past the Page 3 Girl, the rest of the city is starting to get a little twitchy that there hasn't been a decent shooting outside a suburban home, cafe or primary school for well over a year now.

For a while there it was looking promising that Carl Williams might be released before someone could knock him off in broad daylight outside Woollies (preferably at a home-value-inflating shopping strip near you), but alas, the grubby, tubby drug lord met his end on Her Majesty's watch, selfishly denying a salivating populous its opportunity to spend the next eight years driving by 'the spot where it all happened' and pointing at the pavement where one would claim that in the right light, you could just about determine the outline of his leaked cranial blood.

Such is Melbourne's obsession with organised, true-crime. Where the release of a ghost written 'auto-biography' of a notorious, nouveau celebrite gang lord can steal the front page from a politician's dastardly, late-night government takeover or a despot north Asian leader's preliminary steps towards nuclear world war.

And thanks to the good folk at Channel 9 bashing-out three series of Underbelly in as many years, the rest of Australia has followed suit and is obsessed with the seedy underworld of organised crime (not to mention soft porn and Matty Newton's arse!).

But while all eyes and cameras are firmly trained on the last known survivor of the Moran clan (poor, two-year-old Kitty is alleged to have signed a multi-billion dollar exclusivity deal with Murdoch's News Limited, to be paid in a lump sum on the release of Volume 1: the Primary School Years, should she be fortunate enough to live that long), the rest of the nation's established criminal families have been more-or-less free to get on with the business of drug-manufacturing and running, theft, extortion, protection racketeering, arms trading and illegal gambling, with narry a glance from the press or the cops.

Take my neighbours, for example. These folk aren't the types to be escorting high-end hookers and joining Eddie McGuire for the AFL's Brownlow Medal Count at Crown Casino in a few weeks time. They're not even the types to be seen playing at the high-roller tables of the same establishment. You won't see them hooning up and down Chapel St in Ferrari convertibles or spot them joining George Calombaris at table in one of his fine-dining establishments.

Rather, these fat, balding, tracky-daks-wearing, butt-crack showing, pitbull-walking, possibly excessively violent, but otherwise neighbourly types are more likely to be seen scoffing $8-parmies-and-a-pot-before-noon down at The 'Wick, throwing a few bucks each way on Race 6 at the Cranbourne Dish-lickers, or dropping twenty-cent coins into a slot after 3pm at the RSL. They're more likely to be driving a '96 HSV Commodore than a Ferrari, and the only thing high-end about their hookers is that when working the back alleys, their girls make sure they're not standing where the drain water pools at the bottom of the rise.

So while the three generations of criminals living next door won't ever grace the front page or be made the subject of a high-rating Australian TV series, you gotta hand-it to them for their diligence at keeping at it – a bit of a meth lab here, some movement of stolen goods there, a dabble in some illegal importation of tobacco products there – for decades, and all completely under the radar*.

I guess you'd have to liken them to former Prime Minister John Howard's Little Aussie Battlers. The kind of folk who will never be singled-out for their selfless and unrelenting contribution to society, but who, by their commitment to honest hard work, keep the economy on its feet.

That's my neighbours ... the Little Aussie Battlers of Organised Crime. They'll never be recognised for what they do, but with the media, the police and the hungry, true-crime-obsessed public's attention preventing the higher-profile crooks from dabbling in anything even slightly bent, my neighbours, and other, likewise established families are keeping organised crime alive.

The real Aussie Battlers of Organised Crime look more like David Wenham's character, Johnny Spitieri (Gettin' Square, 2003) than the slick, playboy types of Channel 9s Underbelly. Pic: http://www.oldmovies.net.au/top-10-funny-characters/

* - well almost completely, except if you count the incident which saw our neighbourhood wake up to view the late night handy work of one of our neighbour's grammatically-challenged competitors or disgruntled clients scrawled across their front fence in red spray paint; "DRUG DEELERS" (sic).

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign...

...Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

Five Man Electrical Band

Here I was thinking I'd come a long way since I was fifteen years old, travelling through Germany, and breaking-out in adolescent hysterics every time I saw a sign denoting an exit.

"Ausfahrt! You gotta be kidding me, Ausfahrt?! Hey! Hey! Pull my finger. Pull my finger ... I'll show you how an Aus Farts! Woo hoo! Yuk, yuk, yuk".

On my return to Australia, my teacher repeatedly asked me to bring my Germany trip photographs to school to share with the other students. In order to hide my embarrassment (given that every second shot was of me doubled-over in fits of hilarity beneath an exit sign), I conjured excuse after increasingly implausible excuse to throw her off the scent; "Our cameras were taken from us by East German border guards and they strip-searched me to get the negatives I'd hidden up my arse ... despite the stench, my substantial, numerous ausfahrts were still not enough to deter them from their merciless quest".

She stopped asking.

But anyway, those juvenile days are well and truly behind me now, right? Right? That's what I thought, until on a recent trip to Tibet.

It's bad enough having to prepare yourself, both mentally and physically, to visit a Tibetan toilet. For starters there's the negotiating one's way around the disgusting piles of steaming turds that accumulate over a year or so between cleans, but it really does make the experience completely inaccessible when one faces fearful confusion over which cubicle is for the fellas, and which is for the ladies.

Believe me, it can be quite an uncomfortable, and potentially life-threatening ordeal to have daintily picked your way through the stinking smears of nomad excrement, placed your feet carefully either side of the over-flowing hole in the ground, be squatting in vein-popping agony as you push-out last night's yak steak, only to have an attractive, young Tibetan village girl wander in on you as that brown bear pushes its way into the world!

Funny, maybe, but I can vouch for the fact that things can rapidly deteriorate into a public health disaster as you suddenly reach for your strides with one hand, accidentally twist sideways, slip on a fresh coat of gravy and reflexively reach to the floor with the other hand to steady your body's downward trajectory. Splat!

So it was a great boon to me on my most recent visit, to approach one of these fragrant, rural outhouses, and be provided with some assistance by [I suspect] local youths with a piece of charcoal.

Very helpful indeed ... and yes, I love the artist's impression of the gash! Pic Hagas

And while I'm in the middle of this incredibly mature missive about amusing foreign signs, I'd like to share with you a label I found about ten minutes after viewing this sign, in a local dining establishment characterised by the same standards of hygiene displayed in the bogs.

The label was attached to a most remarkable piece of Chinese engineering and manufacturing; a plastic, automatic toothpick dispenser in the shape of a German country house [there, ya see, this post's gone full circle], on which the pressing of a small button forces a single, clean, round toothpick into the hands of the eager consumer. A tremendous feat of modern, scientific research and development.

And the label read;

AUTO TOOTHPICK CASE. Design with meticulous care the external appearance beauty is generous usage convenience.

That's all very well, but you know what they say, "Self praise is no praise!".

Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!

Mrs Donkey's currently on the Indian subcontinent enjoying her fill of the leering eye and twitching moustache – ah yes, the South Asian male; small in stature, but large in virility!

Meanwhile, I'm holding the fort and attending to the (occasionally, unreasonably high) demands of Little Hambones. He's got this new, incredibly hilarious breakfast, lunch and dinner schtick goin'-on which sees projectile mush, toast, fruit and milk bouncing off the walls, table and floor to the soundtrack of hysterical infantile belly-laughs.

More and more, with each passing day, the house's interior resembles the blood-stained hands of Lady Macbeth; it seems no matter how well I scrub at the soiled surfaces, when I turn my back they are immediately smeared with a replacement coat of partly masticated foodstuffs.

So after a week of this, I figure the only way to manage the edible air traffic control in the dining area is to brave the chill and get the hell out.

Fortunately, the sanitary, public thoroughfares of the developed world are conducive to the recreational and safety requirements of young families, and there is a myriad of parks and public spaces to shoot for within a ten minute walk from Donkey HQ.

This was not the case for us a couple of months ago, when we were living in Samoa. There, the competing demands of poverty reduction, health care and a selective, user-pays education system selfishly consume government attention and public spending to the detriment of safe, public play equipment, leaving Hambones with little more to enjoy in his recreation time than a plastic bottle full of rice to shake, shake, shake.

But here in the land of milk and honey, where there is just too much money floating around to know what to do with (Heaven forbid that we'd ever put it towards a public health system!), one not only has a myriad of play options to choose from, but you can be sure that each one has a range of equipment that meets as many safety standards as it has won international industrial design awards. Hang the expense! - it's the safety ratings that are all important, especially given that the equipment is provided by local governments hell-bent on re-election and the avoidance of childhood injury compensation payouts. These multi-coloured, plastic pleasure palaces are so safe that you won't find a right-angle within 50 metres of them!

What you will find, however, are truly unique constructions erected on small green patches dotted across the urban landscape, and these are great for kids in most respects, except that they are all so incredibly Freudian; each piece of equipment resembles some kind of body part or function. Take that long, purple slide over there [womb], or those pendulous swings [breasts], or that weird, red plastic ring on rusting rollers that squeals when rotated [a giant sphincter after last night's dodgy curry] or that massive, purple and blue rocket [penis] or that dark, red, ominous-looking tunnel...

This is all well and good – I mean, no small child's ever going to notice, right? But it's not so much what the equipment resembles, but what they make some people do that's the problem. Take yesterday morning, for example. Hambones was driving me crazy with the Great Breakfast Tornado, so off we went into the bitter morning in search of a playground on which he could run it all out of his system. As we approached one of our favourite little haunts, the extra litter strewn around the place didn't register with me, as it's not uncommon for a few empty cans of rocket fuel to be discarded by the regular midnight teenage bingers.

So over to the playground we went, and I am just about to put Hambones into his favourite, yellow-swirly-cup-thing which, now that I think about it, looks suspiciously like a toilet bowl. I reached in to remove some paper from its innards when I noticed that the aforementioned litter all over the ground was white ... and brown. Bog roll! ... and ... urgh, Maaaaaaan!

That's right. Someone had taken a massive dump in the yellow-swirly-cup-thing-which-looks-suspiciously-like-a-toilet-bowl. One might immediately suspect the midnight teenage bingers, except that the evidence of toilet paper everywhere suggested that this had been no accident - no unfortunate octogenarian with irritable bowel syndrome accosted by urgent pains while taking a nocturnal constitutional around the park - but rather a pre-meditated act of defecation!

And I'll tell you something else for nothing. It is not easy to stop a curious Little Hambones when he's set his mind to picking-up an unusual-looking piece of litter!

My sharing this little story with you has been inspired by a similar one I read over at Burb Central. Clearly this is not an isolated incident, and yet, there is hardly a peek from the media concerning this most concerning issue. While travelling recently, I was accosted by a hotel cook demanding to know why Melbournians hate Indians enough to want to injure and maim them (he'd been reading all about it in the Indian press) and I have heard that news of late night, alcohol-fuelled violence outside Melbourne's nightclubs has reached the genteel folk of Sacramento, California.

So how is it that the international media can be all over these minority stories and painting them as typically Melbourne, while not one media commentator has even touched-on the out-of-control public pooing escapades occurring en masse during the dark hours across suburban Melbourne? Looking for an election issue to get people interested in State politics? There it is right there - certainly puts a new slant on the term, 'smear campaign'.

Did I not mention that the yellow-swirly-cup-thing looks suspiciously like a toilet bowl? Pic: Hagas

Churning and burning: tales of human butter, politics and religion

Know any good Kora stories?

I know a few stories; whether or not you think they’re any good might depend on your social or political point of view, but let’s see what you reckon.

First though, perhaps I should have a stab at enlightening those who are a bit lost.

The Kora.

A Kora is the circuit around a place, building or thing of Buddhist religious significance, which the faithful circumnavigate in a clockwise direction, as an act of spiritual devotion and cleansing. This thing can be a religious artefact, a religious building such as a temple or shrine, or even a natural place of spiritual and/or historical significance, such as a tree, rock or spring.

In Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, the most significant religious shrine is the imposing, Jokhang Temple; a huge, squat structure, perhaps the city’s oldest remaining building, lying slap in the middle of the city which has grown, fallen, been re-built, razed and re-built around it for centuries.

For over a thousand years, beneath the gilt spires and statues adorning the roof of the old temple, the complex has expanded from its original size to house the growing legions of monks and novices who came from all over Asia, from as far away as Bangladesh to the south and Mongolia in the far north-east, to live and learn from the great gurus and lamas, and it now occupies a space of roughly a square kilometre.

Sadly, the once-thriving monastic community within those metres-thick walls seems rather lack-lustre these days, but this is in tremendous contrast to the tides of humanity which circle the complex every day, lighting incense, murmuring their prayers, fingering their beads and leaving offerings for good fortune in this life and the next.

The narrow streets surrounding the Jokhang mark the Kora, along which a rushing torrent of furry-hatted and coated pilgrims, adorned with jewels in their hair, ears and belts, and regularly with babies lashed to their backs, work their way around the great walls. The unsuspecting, curious tourist needs to be careful as s/he manoeuvres for a closer look, as the rushing masses, from dawn to dusk, can literally sweep you off your feet.

Kora Story 1: The back-breaking road to Lhasa.

If you’re lucky enough to scam a permit which allows you to see something of Tibet other than Lhasa, your mind will be opened to vast skies; friendly (although very dirty) faces; unwavering, humbling hospitality; spectacular, high altitude vistas and a people with an almost super-natural commitment to their faith.

The latter can be viewed amongst the hundreds of pilgrims visiting any of the thousands of shrines, chapels and temples dotting the plains, mountains and gorges of the Tibetan plateau. But the most extraordinary demonstration of this devotion can be witnessed along the main highways within two or three days drive from the capital. Here you will see small groups of Tibetans ranging in age and demographic, from buff young men, to wrinkled, gnarled, stooped old women, making a very special pilgrimage to Lhasa.

For weeks they will make the journey on foot, through shrieking mountain passes, deep, frozen valleys and across dusty, rocky plains. And if the blasting, high-altitude sun is not enough of an impediment to their progress, consider that after every three steps, they raise their hands above their heads in prayer, drop down upon their knees, then lie flat on their stomaches with their hands still raised above their heads, before climbing back to their feet for another three steps!

One sees these pilgrims, covered in the filth and dirt of the land, sometimes with wooden paddles on their hands to save their bloodied palms, moving slowly along the shoulder of the highway as they make this agonising, exhausting devotion to their faith; each prostration taking them slightly closer to the blessings they will receive from the holy temples of Lhasa.

And so they go, surely with every muscle and sinew in their frail bodies shrieking to the highest heavens, until they reach their destination in the city, where they will circumnavigate the major shrines, three times each, maintaining their excruciating devotions with every third step. Their commitment is remarkable, and valued by all; the regular pilgrims undertaking their daily Kora take extreme care not to trample these revered folk mid-prostration.

But the weirdest thing for we outsiders, with our limited understanding of this ancient faith (and this amongst an enormous collection of very weird things), is that inside these most holy of temples, in which most pilgrims shuffle past the sacred icons and statues with a brief pause, and a murmured prayer at each, those who have taken the afore-mentioned, weeks-long, back-breaking journey (as distinguished by their being covered from head to toe in dirt and bloody gashes from their frequent clashes with the earth), literally run through the temples with barely a nod towards the most holies, before disappearing out the back door.

It’s quite remarkable – all the physical pain and torment they endure, not to mention the emotional toll their devotions must play upon them, in order to reach the holy shrines of Lhasa and complete their agonizing Koras, and they barely glance at the sacred relics on their way through the temples. Obviously, by the time they get inside, their work towards the next life is done, and they’re off for a much needed couple a’ dozen snorts of chang (fermented barley beer).

Kora Story 2: Taking the barnyard to church.

In addition to the sacred Kora surrounding the Jokhang Temple (known as the Barkhor), there is a much larger Kora which circles the other main, holy temples and monasteries of the old city. This Kora (known as the Lingkhor) marks the edge of what remains of Old Lhasa, and on the auspicious, fifteenth day of each month, it is not uncommon for the traffic to be ground to a halt by a flood of pilgrims rushing along the sidewalks and streets from as early as first light until dusk.

Now it’s hard enough to manage cycling along Lhasa’s streets when so many of the out-of-towner pilgrims know little of traffic rules and behaviours, so spare some sympathy for those of us trying to get to work in the dim light on a dark, icy, mid-winter’s morning, and having to negotiate herds of sheep and goats who are being dragged along with the rest of the family for an enlightened blessing. Fifteen goat bells certainly make quite the mockery of one's handle-bar 'ting-a-ling', I can tell you!

Not that I suffer from bell envy...

Kora Story 3: Make yerselves right at home.

Did I mention that these Koras are a pretty big and holy deal amongst Tibetans? Yeah, I thought I did. In fact, the Old City, which is surrounded by the Lingkhor, is considered so holy, that in a city which boasts a thriving, broadly located commercial sex industry, the Old City contains virtually the only streets where sex is not sold.

Now I’ve mentioned my thoughts on the Global Circus before; how smelly, self-centred back-packers believe their aimless journeys can be re-packaged and marketed to the rest of the world as some kind of international quest for enlightened consciousness, and how they believe that their 'unique' behaviours and values are the envy and awe of all.

Well I am sorry, you dirty, hairy, singlet-wearing bogan slobs! But wandering through the crowded, narrow streets of Old Lhasa with your scantily clad girlfriends, while necking imported beer from large bottles is not endearing yourselves to the local populous. And I don't think you need so much as a smattering of Tibetan language to notice that those young, Tibetan men shrieking agitatedly at you are not wishing you well on your spiritual journey ... they are telling you, and none-too-politely, to fuck-off back to whatever savage shit-hole civilization you squirmed from!

Kora Story 4: Private eyes, are watchin' you.

Remember SARS? Remember all those pictures in the papers and footage on the evening news back in 2003 of Asian people getting around in face masks? Well enter the throng of folk making their way along the Jokhang's Barkhor on any given day, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the deadly virus is back!

Thankfully it's not for protection from a fatal disease that Tibetan women and men wear masks while conducting their circular, devotional journeys around the great temple. In winter, one could be forgiven for thinking that the masks are protecting their faces from the extreme Tibetan cold, but when the masks are out and proud on a twenty-five degree (Celsius) summer's day, you know there's some other reason for it.

And that reason lies in a Tibet Government decree that workers in the public service are forbidden from engaging in rituals of Tibetan Buddhism (like climbing sacred mountains, burning incense or completing a Kora); to do so can result in severe reprimand and possible dismissal.

But the good news for those Tibetans unwilling (or unable) to denounce their faith is that it is very hard to distinguish the identity of a single, masked figure amongst a hundred others when viewed through the public security infrared closed-circuit TV cameras mounted on walls every twenty metres along the Barkhor.

Kora Story 5: A grave disturbance in the Force.

Another reason for the masks might relate to a regular disturbance to the clockwise flow of pilgrims around the Jokhang Temple since March 2008, when extreme military might was 'let loose' on the populous to quell city-wide riots. Since that time, every devotional, prayer-mumbling pilgrim meandering along the Kora has had their forward-looking view blocked by the cold, menacing stares of armed troops circling the same route in a most-unholy (and potentially insulting), counter-clockwise direction.

These hard, young soldiers make it their mission to stare-down the devotees through their riot shields, ostensibly to ensure that none of them (comprising mostly gnarled and stooped old people, children, nomadic graziers, rural farmers and labourers) don't rise up to disturb the peace of Lhasa's streets.

Armed troops traverse the Jokhang Temple's Barkhor against the regular, holy flow of pilgrims. Can you spot the sniper?

Hair envy on the islands

The last week of the last millennium saw the rest of the world gathering tremendous caches of canned food products and heading to ground in reinforced concrete bunkers in order to shield themselves from the effects of the treacherous Y2K.

By contrast, the Samoans, who are somewhat accustomed to having a holocaust-surviving collection of canned meat and fish under the kitchen sink at the best of times, and for whom the electricity was hardly ever operating anyway (thanks to fifteen years of ineffectual foreign technical assistance and ongoing, bureaucratic bungling within the Samoa Electric Power Corporation), were disregarding the global call for disaster preparedness, and were preparing instead for the biggest, f’-off fiafia (party) the country had ever seen.

Each day, as the electronic, Millennium countdown clock ticked off its last 604,800 seconds, the Samoa Observer was awash with double page spreads announcing a growing line-up of exciting events and performances, the hurried opening of new bars taking advantage of the anticipated relaxing of the usual midnight curfew on the sale and consumption of alcohol, and international donor assistance to ensure that the last millennium celebration on the planet went off with one of the biggest bangs of them all (quite literally, as it transpired, thanks to China’s kind donation of a NASA-sized payload of expired, unsafe fireworks, which left at least one Samoan citizen looking remarkably like The Thing – but that’s another story for another time).

And amidst all this exciting, noisy anticipation, an additional entertainment option slipped quietly into Apia Harbour one evening, completely under the radar of the Millennium Celebration Organising Committee, in the form of “Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa” boat.

Like the grand old travelling road shows of the American Midwest in the forties, Bruno’s steam vessel was painted in garish primary colours, complete with a striped, barber-shop smoke stack and a flapping pennant promising the “Greatest Show of the Millennium”.

No one really took much notice of the circus boat until, four days later when we’d all recovered from our almighty, nation-wide hangover, the local daily decided that as the world had not ended, they probably ought to resume production, and went looking for a story that wouldn’t require them to travel further than across the street. And the story they ran with was none other than the international scandal that was “Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa”.

Every day for well over a month, the Observer ran an ever-revealing expose of this nod to old-world family entertainment. First it was that Bruno kept animals in tiny cages in the dark hold of his floating menagerie. Later, it was revealed by an international animal rights watchdog (of which no one had previously heard) that Bruno and his floating extravaganza had been refused permission to dock in Fiji on account of alleged inhumane treatment of his performers.

Over the coming weeks, the opinion pieces and letters columns of the Observer moved from one spectrum to the other in support of, and against the travelling, magical circus, with as many prominent local celebrities and politicians throwing their popular weight behind the “great and magical Bruno” as those who renounced him as a shyster and exploiter of innocents.

And through this barrage of newsreel and opinion, whether for or against, there was one act within Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa which managed to captivate and thrill the entire population. It was not Bruno’s somewhat malnourished, leaping lions that stole the show, nor was it the Vitamin D-deficient Russian bear with the balancing beach ball on his schnoz. It wasn’t the clown with the narcotic-shrunken pupils and the visible twitch which so melted the hardened hearts of the naysayers, nor the hind-legged walking of the mange-ridden pig which had the supporters up on their feet at intermission. No, the act which really got Samoa talking was Bruno’s incredible enigma, known colloquially as the Hairy Man.

Was this creature man or beast? Was he some prehistoric throwback, or the result of a pharmaceutical company’s genetic experimentation gone wrong? Whatever the answer, it got all the tongues in the country wagging, and everyone, whether doctor or patient, banker or client, lawyer or accused, land owner or tenant flocked to the Magic Circus to view the follicular spectacle.

And like the freak shows of old, Bruno knew how to give a crowd what they wanted. The Hairy Man was available for viewing after every show, where screaming children would writhe in their parents arms in fear of the hairy arms reaching for them through steel bars as the camera snapped away into the night.

And then, perhaps after two or three months, after the crowds had finally lost interest in the Hairy Man, and just before all of the animals expired from the heat and cramped conditions, down came the big top one evening, and just as it had arrived, Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa boat chugged silently out of the harbour in the dead of night, never to be heard from again.

Or so I assumed in a world where cruelty to animals is less tolerated than it once was, where unusual looking people are free to participate in society along with everyone else, and where laser surgery exist for even the most hirsute. So imagine my surprise on Day 1 of my return to Samoa, when driving through town, my saucer-like eyes were drawn to a massive sign advertising … wait for it … “Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa Training Academy”!

Training Academy!!? What could anyone possibly learn there? Bruno’s circus never had acrobats and trapeze artists; it never had Houdini-types escaping from straight-jackets in glass water tanks; and there were no contortionists or fire eaters. Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa only ever showcased a small number of performing animals (which he’d presumably bought for a song after they were forced out of circuses in other countries with laws prohibiting such cruelty) and of course, the Hairy Man.

So what’s really going on up there on the hill, behind those substantial Academy gates? Is it simply an online booking service for acquiring circus animal cast-offs? Or is a somewhat greying and thinning Hairy Man running a whole bunch of new recruits through boot-camp style drills for effective comb-overs? Or perhaps more plausibly, is it simply an international training camp for like-minded entrepreneurs to master the art of media manipulation? - Lord knows that in this pursuit, Bruno has proven himself a true talent of magical proportions.

Samoa continues its fine tradition of superior tertiary education … and sign-writing! Pic: Hagas