Ways of Escape

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
(LP Hartley)

“[The travel book] is little more than a licence to bore…the lowest form of literary self-indulgence: dishonest complaining, creative mendacity, pointless heroics, and chronic posturing.”
(Paul Theroux)

“Travel writers have often come to be seen as outriders of colonialism, attempting to demonstrate the superiority of western ways by ‘imagining’ the east as decayed and degenerate.”
(William Dalrymple)

“In an age when journalism is becoming more and more etiolated, when articles are becoming shorter and shorter, usually lacking all historical context, travel writing is one of the few venues to write with some complexity about an alien culture.”
(Rory Stewart)


For my final dispatch of 2009, I thought I would take yet another trip down memory lane to revisit some of my old haunts. I was a bit reticent in starting this blog earlier this year. Whether it was my technophobia, my consternation over what I possibly had to say, or my fear of drifting into an overly self-indulgent solipsism, I wasn’t sure if I would hack it, or at least keep up the pace. I must admit that, at times, I’ve felt the burden of expectation from my legions of fans who goaded me into this nascent endeavour and it’s been tough to motivate myself. But at other times, I’ve had a blast and thoroughly enjoyed regaling all my readers with the tales of my shenanigans abroad. I only hope that come 2010 I’ll be able to keep up the pace, for in late January I start full-time [student] teaching. These postings may dry up a bit, though I shall do my best to churn out as many diatribes as possible.

So, now, I delve back into my pre-blogging days and provide the original accounts from some of my adventures over the years. In the interests of transparency, I’ll list the approximate date I originally composed the piece. It will also give you a chance to see how – or if – my writing has evolved over the years. Unless otherwise noted, all the excerpts below were sent as group emails to a select audience. For those of you who didn’t know me before any of the events I’m sharing…well, I don’t really know what to say.

As an added bonus, where I’ve seen fit, I’ve added a few bits of contemporary analysis, or a quotation or two that I’ve dug up out of my notes.

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‘Nigeria is not a great country. It is one of the most disorderly nations in the world. It is one of the most corrupt, insensitive, inefficient places under the sun. It is one of the most expensive countries and one of those that give least value for money. It is dirty, callous, noisy, ostentatious, dishonest and vulgar. In short, it is among the most unpleasant places on earth!’
(Chinua Achebe)

I’m deep in the heart of the oil-rich Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria, working for one of the most frivolous development organisations that I have ever come across…

In light of recent developments down here - militant rebel youths in Port Harcourt are supposedly waging an insurgency against all the big oil multi-nationals, kidnapping westerners, shooting indiscriminately on the streets and in restaurants, etc. - I thank the few of you who have recently written with concerns over my safety and well-being. Even though I am based in Yenagoa, capital of Bayelsa state, I am rather close to Port Harcourt and I do spend a fair amount of my time there. But please don’t fret: the problems are probably overblown (standard fare for this neck of woods), directed towards those in the oil industry and for the most part it’s all localised. If there is a positive to the organisation I work for, they do put a high priority on the safety of staff…

Yenagoa has charm, a city built on sand in the flatlands puddled with mangrove swamps. It is much like I pictured it, something right out of Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter or VS Naipaul’s A Bend in the River. Houses, food kitchens, stalls and dingily-lit supermarkets crowded with imported goods cling to an impressive road built by the Germans and paid for - at double its worth - with redistributed oil money. Palm groves lace the background, and beyond them the tragically beautiful sight of the ubiquitous gas flares light up the night sky for miles. The sunsets are among the most immaculate I’ve ever seen, especially lately as the rainy season dies down and the clouds slowly make way for increasing amounts of blues, reds, oranges and purples in the early evening sky. I am not sure whether I will miss the rainy season. At times, it bucketed down incessantly for days on end. But at least it kept things cool. Now it’s slowly getting drier and therefore hotter and steamier…

The day-to-day situation down here is depressing: billions of dollars of oil money go directly into the coffers of federal and state government officials who then lavish gifts upon their friends and family; really, the corruption is utterly ridiculous and in my dealings with the state government I see it on an almost daily basis. In the meantime the majority of the people remain impoverished. The income inequality is unbelievable; there is no middle class…

There is no escaping the pothole-lined roads, the sight of charred vehicles (and the occasional body) every few hundred meters, not to mention the constant army and police presence and omnipresent roadblocks. I’ve given up trying to keep track of the amount in bribes I’ve had to dish out since my arrival. And we can’t travel after 6pm on any given day due to the constant high risks of armed robbery. Great fun, I’m telling you…

The food thing: I may seem to miss a lot of the home comforts but I’ve managed to delve right into some of the local delicacies. Because of the aforementioned lack of variety and choice, you really have little option but to eat the same delights as the locals (I was tempted to say natives there…). I hesitate to ask exactly what constitutes the bush-meat stew, but it tastes great so I plug away. Fried snails look delicious but are a bit on the rubbery side. ‘Beef’ means the whole cow: nothing goes to waste. When ordering beef, you can expect skin, guts, even some lovely tufts of hair. Absolutely delectable. I must say, however, that for the most part I’m consuming more basic sundries like roasted fish (probably from the heavily oil-polluted local waters), plantains in various forms, okra and rice dishes…

(October 2004)

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Postscript: in the summer of 2005, whilst teaching at summer school in Uxbridge, my friend Aoife visited from Cambridge for the day and I dragged the poor girl, against her will, to New Cross in south London for a Nigerian meal. I enjoyed it and was fine; after all, I made it through my stint in Nigeria with hardly any stomach problems, which is astounding considering the levels of hygiene and the amount of street food I indulged in. Poor Aoife didn’t fare so well. She’s barely spoken to me since.

Postscript, part 2: I re-visited that very same restaurant in August 2008. I tried to dupe Grant into going with me, but he wisely refused. So I made the solo trek and once again, enjoyed an exquisite Nigerian dish. My stomach didn’t forgive me for over a week and I had a small Nigerian running around in my belly for days. It was agonising, but that was that. I haven’t back since. So there you are Aoife: I got my come-uppance.

(December 2009)

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You see the thanks I get? This was from one my students in Nigeria:

Hi Daniel,
It was so bad that d devil used u as his instrument to deprive me of my Ph.D studyfellowship thro yr ill pieces of advice like including my bank statement.Regards.
t.t.t

(Sometime in early 2005)

And this, I feel terribly guilty for sharing. People somehow managed to get hold of my email address and send me letters like the ones below. These are all snippets from one particular boy, all received after I left Nigeria and was living in Belfast. I don’t intend it as dark humour, more as a sign of just how desperate some of the people there are. I did my best to help as many people as I could, but for various legal reasons I can’t divulge exactly what here.

Daniel,

How are you doing bro, I've been send mails but you are not replying. What's the problem. I do really care for your health. Are you sure that you are alright? pls tell me what happened so that my mind can rest or so i can start looking up for solutions.

Is it cos i told you to send me things? Pls don't send me anymore, Your brotherhood is enough and I only want you around.

Send me a proof that you are alright by replying.

PLs danny, I've never been at rest since your inability to reply my mail.
Just reply this one.

Danny,
How are you doing. What's up with the job you're looking for. Hope are getting well. How's your groundma's health.
It's really hard here. I'm in a hell of frustrations and i really need your help in any kind. Advice, Finance, lots of them. Please reply at once because your are my bro who will help me now.
Danny remember, No father, No elder Brother and in nigeria's frustrations.
Offer me any help you can at the moment. I need some clothes and footwears, if you can send me ones you no longer use, I'll be most gratteful.
Good luck in you life and to good health to you and your friends and family.

Hi Danny,
wish you all happiness of life. How are you doing? How is your Groundma and all your family members? Hope that you're coping good. Well it's just as if you have forgotten me, but nevertheless, i still understand. Sorry i've kept off contact, it's because of too much poverty that is hanging on my neck.
It's not been easy with me, the toughness of my going is under a constant increment. Infact, i need all the lucks in the world to carry on. Less i forget, what are you up to now? Have you gotten the job i've been praying for? Tell me about your new realm and dimension.
Well whenever you pick up your qouran, please remember my own case to God as i do remember yours in my prayers. Please Daniel, if you have anything to help me on, just don't hesitate to send it to me. You know i told you that i want to write a movie, but it's too tough with me now financially that i can't even pay for the typing.
Please danny, any how , but please send a small something to me, even a note of a Hundred pounds Bill. wrap it with a paper and send it to as a letter to…

(emails received over the course of early-mid 2005)

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Chinua Achebe, probably Nigeria’s most well-known writer, whose Things Fall Apart is part of the curriculum in many schools, had this to say in his slim tome, The Trouble with Nigeria:

‘Look at our collapsing public utilities, our inefficient and wasteful parastatals and state-owned companies. If you want electricity, you buy your own generator; if you want water, you sink your own bore-hole; if you want to travel, you set up your own airline. One day soon, you will have to build your own post office to send your letters!’

‘My frank and honest opinion is that anybody who can say that corruption in Nigeria has not yet become alarming is either a fool, a crook or else does not live in this country.’

‘It is a measure of our self-delusion that we can talk about developing tourism in Nigeria. Only a masochist with an exuberant taste for self-violence will pick Nigeria for a holiday; only [someone] seeking to know punishment and poverty at first hand! No, Nigeria may be a paradise for adventurers and pirates, but not tourists.’

(December 2009)

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I never really sent out much during my time in Riga. I was too busy reading, whingeing about my poorly foot, getting beaten up in dodgy ‘clubs’, and doing lots of research and writing about education policies in Latvia and the effect that this had on ethnic Russians. Here I’m sharing my ‘creative’ side. A few of my more buffoonish friends – you know who you are – were the lucky recipients of the following haikus.

Part I: on a good day (rare)

Glorious Riga
Beautiful ladies, hello!
'Tis delight to meet

Part II: standard day (the norm)

Ladies of the night,
Gentle, promising, lovely
No: whores, sluts and tramps

Part III: special occasions (every now and then)

How much for you dear?
Why for you, big boy, nothing
Why so cheap? You man?

(November 2007)

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Lviv is probably a good example of simultaneous poverty and splendour in grandeur. This place has untapped potential, lots of it, but it seems to be more Russian poor than East European poor. It’s constantly compared to Krakow and is even audaciously called by some a ‘poor man’s Prague’. I say it’s still a ways from such lofty comparisons, even if it does have a heavy central European feel to it. Despite the dear old grannies selling rotten, withering bunches of flowers and rancid bags of apples on street corners, despite the open drains releasing waste water onto the cobbled streets, despite the crumbling, deteriorating yet magnificent architecture, despite the statues with missing legs and noses, despite the insolent and often non-existent customer service in all the charming cafes, and despite the thick coat of grime and dust that seems to cover every edifice, this place has immeasurable, almost indescribable allure. A lot of the city is remarkably and miraculously well-preserved: Lviv (Lvov/Lwow/Lemberg) has a long and tortured history of being traded between the Russians, Poles, Germans and Austro-Hungarians and there seems to be that surreal look characteristic of a city that has been bandied about too often. There’s really not much of a Russian or Soviet feel to the city itself – save for one or two of those stark, realist statues paying homage to the great defenders of years past - although the outskirts do tend to remind one of those bland, featureless Soviet conurbations that grew impressively from nothing in just a few short years and dishearten by their sameness and banality. But for the most part, Moscow thankfully ignored Lviv.

Have I mentioned the great public transport system? There are the usual trams and trolleybuses characteristic of most European cities, albeit circa-1950s, but the most common and fun mode of getting around is by marshrutka. It’s nothing more than a minibus that stops on demand, akin to the kinds you find in most lesser developed countries in places like Africa and the Caribbean, bursting to the rafters with way too many people, violating every safety regulation known to mankind. Now I understand that when you get a congregation of old, fat, sweaty bodies who haven’t showered since the cold war in heavy overcoats you can expect a rather foul and putrid stench but I find myself longing for the good old days of Nigeria where the only odours on offer were those of dead chickens and excess sweat. Here you get a myriad range of wonderful scents, mostly consisting of various fart-like fragrances. I really can’t convey to you the amazing gamut of smells you get: I thought I’d been exposed to many different types of farts over the years but every day I get another new and pleasant surprise. And nobody seems to notice and/or care: old men let rip with grandiose farts of artistic proportions and people don’t batter an eyelid at any of these signs of anal loquacity. I even had a student whose sonic blasts throughout class often meant that other students’ comments were barely audible at times. He was admittedly a weak student but any time he opened his mouth and attempted to speak the sound would come out the wrong end: a direct link seemed to be established between him opening his mouth and his bottom opening up. He was lucky to get out any coherent words, but when he did, they were usually accompanied by a chorus of approval from his backside. I could hardly contain my laughter but the other students just sat there glumly, seemingly oblivious to this mayhem. I was even proud of myself for telling him that his arse had indeed put forward a very compelling argument after one beauty of a ‘remark’ but I’m afraid this comment was lost on the majority of the class. Thankfully he only actually showed up to 3 classes and hasn’t been seen since.

(November 2005)

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Another gem from the recent book on Communist jokes I’ve been reading:

Grandma Hanacka enters the tram in Prague with a heavy sack and a suitcase. While stowing her baggage, she does something that no lady in polite company would normally do. The Germans in the car hold their noses in disgust. Granny turns to her Czech fellow travellers: ‘They’ve shut our mouths but they can’t do the same to our arses.’

Now here’s a guy I’d love to meet: Jerzy Urban, a Polish satirist, described as ‘the sort of man who ostentatiously and deliberately breaks wind in living rooms and watches the reaction of other guests’. My kind of man.

(December 2009)

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The future: the next few weeks ought to be fun. I’m now finished at Keene and can look forward to a month-long hiatus from the education world before I take up my teaching placement in Manchester. In a few short days Emma will be descending upon these cold and frosty shores – her first trip to the US - and after Christmas, the two of us are setting off on a 2-week road trip across the Midwest and down into the deep South for a gumbo-fuelled odyssey of fun and adventure. In early January, our dear friends and frequent Layman’s Guide guest stars Brian and Kristen are tying the knot. I certainly can’t wait.

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“As my body continues on its journey, my thoughts keep turning back and bury themselves in days past.”
(Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to his mother, 23 Nov 1849)

Those who forget the past...

Recently one of my classes met at the Cohen Centre for Holocaust Studies at Keene, where we were treated to a presentation by the director of the centre. Without going into any specifics, the class revolved around how to teach the Holocaust in American high school history classes. It was a fascinating, thought-provoking discussion which I may share more details of at a later date. There were things I agreed with, but some which I found more contentious. But never mind all that.

Inevitably, the subject of Holocaust denial – and how to handle it in the classroom – was raised, and it turns out that this, tragically, is an issue that comes up all-too frequently in New Hampshire schools, which on first thought is awfully surprising, but on second, not so much. Again, a sensitive topic for a later discussion, perhaps.

I thought this was an apt time to pluck out an old, festering post I put together whilst in Bishkek. In the interests of transparency, I’m providing this disclaimer, and I’ve decided to include it, more or less unedited, below. I wrote about 95% of it in Bishkek and then struggled with a fitting conclusion, which I haven’t tried to rectify now. Conclusions have always been a weakness of mine, and though I’m not too happy that it ends somewhat abruptly without a heartfelt wrap-up, I will leave it as is and offer up a light-hearted epilogue in lieu of.

This was originally composed sometime in March 2009:


Political [in]correctness gone mad?

Although I’ve promised myself – in order to maintain my sanity – not to delve into too many stories regarding my teaching, this one is just too good to pass up. It is also quite shocking and tragic and has left me bitter in so many ways.

The last thing I want to be accused of us naivety. I’ve been to a few places around the globe and have encountered prejudice and racism in many different guises. Most of the time I attribute it to ignorance or bad education, but after some time a pattern emerges and one comes to realise that this truly is an endemic phenomenon all over the world.

I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist, though I did go through a brief phase where I doubted the truth behind the moon landings. Thankfully I’m well past that, and am now happy to toe the party line when it comes to accepting historical events.

No myth

It was in Riga where I first encountered the overwhelming reluctance to accept the official version of the events of 9/11. Most readers are undoubtedly aware of the various conspiracy theories that have been bandied about, but I have to admit that until I went to Riga I had never actually met someone who fell for any of these. But then some of my students – all Russian admittedly – asked me whether I actually believed 9/11 had happened as had been reported and I thought to myself, ‘uh oh, where is this going?’ Sure enough, I was soon facing a barrage of questions and accusations: how could I be so gullible, how could I be so naïve, how could I not see that the whole thing was fabricated by the government/the Jews/aliens/whomever? Not in Nigeria, not in Ukraine and not in Spain had I encountered such antagonism, such an onslaught of questioning as I then faced in Latvia. And again, not to sound like a Russophobe, but it was only the Russians who attacked me on this point. My Latvian students were staunchly pro-American and merely sat in quiet disbelief as their classmates sallied forth with a torrent of abuse and sheer disdain for my opinion on the matter. I was stunned, a bit flustered and deeply mortified.

I could go on with this point, but it came up just a few days ago in one of my classes here. I should have known better than to say, ‘You know, some of my students in Latvia actually believe 9/11 was a massive conspiracy perpetrated by the American gov-’ ‘YES, YES, IT IS TRUE, IT IS TRUE…’ chorused half the class in raucous approval of their Russian cohorts thousands of miles away. Damn these fringes of the former Soviet Union! I quickly dropped this line of thought and moved on.

But this is not the source of my recent angst. What happened the other day was, in my opinion, far worse, far more disturbing and is unfortunately all too widespread an occurrence all over the world. It will no doubt be offensive to some, but I am choosing to report it all the same.

Every Wednesday, the school runs what is called Talking Club, and once a month two teachers get to sacrifice their day off to spend 3 hours running conversational lessons. Myriad topics are on offer, and last Wednesday another teacher and I ran a session with the topic of ‘Politically Incorrect Jokes’. After my colleague’s opening 20 minute monologue where he proceeded to list every known racial epithet that existed in the English language, we turned the floor over to the students to discuss, in small groups, whether it was ever acceptable to tell jokes making fun of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. You can see where this one was headed. It got ugly fast.

‘The solution would be to have slavery again…it would be better that way’

Yes, that line was uttered by a student. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Another argued that there was nothing wrong with ‘porch monkey’. Another suggested that if they can call each other n------ then so can we. When I explained the racist origins of this word, I was told that ‘we should go back to the slavery days then so that we can use that word without getting into trouble’. I heard many more that I did my best to vanquish from my head as soon as the class was over. In all fairness, in a class of some 25 students, only a handful (4-5) were forthright in their opinions, and there were plenty as aghast as I with these statements.

A wee while later, the topic was off-limits jokes. In other words, what subjects are completely taboo? Funnily enough, not many; in fact, none that I can remember. Now, the object of these talking clubs is to initiate discussion, so it was my job to provide some talking points, warmers, a bit of bait even. So I asked one particular group of university-age women whether any of the following topics were no-go’s:

“Communism?”
“No, that’s okay, we can laugh about Communism.”
“Other ethnicities, like Russians, Estonians, Kazakhs?”
“No, that’s okay also, we like these jokes.”
“Mother-in-law jokes” (a popular one amongst Russians which I like)
“Oh no, those are funny, those are okay.”
“Jokes about other religions?”
“No, those are fine, no problems with those.”
“Even the Holocaust?”
“No, of course that’s okay, it’s not real anyway, it didn’t even happen.”

!!!

This never fails to flummox me. I just never know what to say in response. Needless to say I was flabbergasted, but the next few minutes are somewhat of an incoherent blur. I tried to reason and rationalise with them in as diplomatic a way as possible, but in the past I have lost my temper a bit and I was determined not to this time. When I realised I was up against it, and there was no winning this argument, I bit my tongue, conceded defeat, and moved onto another group. Thankfully Holocaust denial didn’t come up this time, but then I didn’t give it the opportunity.

I can’t think of a way to end this. Saying ‘this bothers me’ just isn’t nearly strong enough.

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Epilogue, 14 December 2009:

I’m currently reading Hammer & Tickle: A History of Communism Told Through Communist Jokes (by Ben Lewis, who is Jewish), which I’d heartily recommend. There are so many gems inside, and I thought I’d share with you a couple that really made me chuckle:

One day Jacob, a Russian Jew, slipped on the wet river bank and fell into the water. Unfortunately, he could not swim and was in serious danger of drowning. Two Tsarist policemen heard cries for help and rushed over. But when they saw that it was a Jew, they laughed and just stood there watching him drown.
‘Help, I can’t swim,’ shouted Jacob.
‘Then you will just have to drown,’ they replied.
Suddenly Jacob shouted out with his last breath: ‘Down with the Tsar!’
The policemen immediately rushed into the river, pulled him out, and arrested him for troublemaking.

I’ll end it with an encore.

What do freedom of speech and oral sex have in common? One slip of the tongue and you get it in the arse.

How genius thinks in the wee hours

For the past couple of months, twice a week I’ve had to make a roughly 6 mile round-trip journey on foot to get to the local high school where I observe and occasionally ‘teach’ lessons. As an avid walker, I usually enjoy these walks, though setting out at 6am on a cold winter morning isn’t the most ideal time for this kind of fun. By the time I get to school, it takes me about 15-20 minutes before I can properly utter a coherent word seeing as my jaw and cheeks are so frozen. Temperatures at that time of morning have lately been in the 15F/-8C range, which is more or less what I’m used to from the past few years of living abroad, though until now I’d never really walked quite so far at such an ungodly time of morning.

This morning, on my way back from school for the last time, I was walking along the pavement, minding my own business in a residential neighbourhood, when a man came out of his house. The following dialogue then took place:

Man: ‘Hey, can I help you find anything?’
Me: (a bit perplexed) ‘Um, no.’ (I certainly didn’t look lost at all, and I wasn’t weaving and stumbling into the road or anything.)
Man: ‘Are you lost? Do you need directions?’
Me: ‘No, I’m fine, just on my way home. Thanks.’
Man: ‘No problem, just want to make sure you’re okay.’

It took me a few minutes for this exchange to register, but then it got me thinking (what else am I supposed to do on a 50 minute walk?). In general, outside of bigger cities in America, people generally don’t walk to get places, especially when longer distances are involved (Yes, you’ve heard this one before, it’s yet another one of my diatribes about the lack of public transportation and how nobody around here walks – but bear with me here, this is important!). This guy had probably seen me a few times and thought I was casing the neighbourhood or something: they’re not used to idle walkers round here.

The first time I showed up at the school, when signing in at the visitor’s desk, I left the spot for license plate number blank. The secretary noticed and asked me to fill that out. When I told her I didn’t have a car, she was absolutely astonished: ‘Where do you live? How did you get here? You walked? All that way? Are you crazy?’ Whilst walking home one day, a classmate driving by noticed me and offered a lift: ‘Where’s your car?’ he politely inquired. Three teachers, on separate days, have all asked me: ‘Was that you I saw walking this morning?’ whereupon, instead of answering ‘Yes, you numpty, thanks for offering me a lift!’ I meekly replied ‘Yeah, so what’. Cue same incredulous looks and cross-examinations.

So, generally, people in these parts (by that I mean the US, of course) tend not to walk long distances unless they are doing it for purely exercise purposes. I constantly see people, often two plumpish middle-aged women, power walking, clad in their pink and lime green designer workout gear with reflective patches interspersed amongst their outfits, feverishly waddling their hips and swinging their arms. Then there are the frequent joggers as well. But I never see people out for casual strolls. This was one thing – there weren’t many, mind – that I liked about San Sebastian, the couples, the families, the groups of friends, out meandering aimlessly along the promenade or boardwalk with no real purpose in mind. I realise that I don’t exactly do that when walking to and from school, but there’s still a certain overlap in MOs here.

That’s not all. Today I had an amazing revelation. This is what an over-active/over-analytical mind does to a man; either that, or the lack of sleep and the bone-chilling cold and the hazy state of mind. All that, combined with the fact that I’m an aspiring social studies teachers, and I suddenly started ruminating and drawing all sorts of parallels between the power walkers/joggers – not something nearly as prevalent in other countries, I’ve found – and the pace and frenetic nature of the American way of life in general. To crudely generalize, and without going into too much arcane detail, America is certainly more hectic and cutthroat a society than many other countries, and I’m thinking business-climate here. Everything moves at a faster pace, everyone is in a rush and life will quickly pass you by if you stop and linger for too long. It didn’t take me long to bring politics into this, and the thought popped into my head that in America, politicians run for election, whereas in Britain they stand for it. What fascinating and profound insight! How on earth this popped into my head, I don’t know, but that’s what tends to happens to warped masterminds like myself.

I’m not making any connections to Britain in this case, but it was just the first thought that sprung to mind. And now, dear readers of other tongues, I ask you this: what verb do you use in your language in the context of running/standing for election? I genuinely don’t know what other languages use, but I’m suddenly dying to find out. I want to know what the rest of the world uses, so I’d much appreciate it if all of you could let me know. I shan’t sleep until I find out.

I just had to share this within 12 hours because otherwise I would’ve banished it to the back of my brain where it would have rotted away for an eternity, lost to the world forever. But there you have it: the power of early-morning, over-active thinking. Try it sometime. At the very least, it’s good exercise. For the legs anyway.

So what have the losers got to say?

“It is universally well known, That in digesting our common Food, there is created or produced in the Bowels of human Creatures, a great Quantity of Wind.
That the permitting this Air to escape and mix with the Atmosphere, is usually offensive to the Company, from the fetid Smell that accompanies it.
That all well-bred People therefore, to avoid giving such Offence, forcibly restrain the Efforts of Nature to discharge that Wind.
Were it not for the odiously offensive Smell accompanying such Escapes, polite People would probably be under no more Restraint in discharging such Wind in Company, than they are in spitting, or in blowing their Noses.”

Benjamin Franklin, A Letter To A Royal Academy, 1781

According to my good pal Jeff, there are two universal truths in life:
1. Girls are sexy.
2. Farts are funny.

But this begs the obvious question: why are farts so widely thought of as impolite, foul, fetid, unpleasant, ill-mannered actions? Why is it so taboo to even discuss farting in polite company? Fortunately it’s not like this in all societies. When I lived in Germany, our landlord used to call round to our house and in her heavily-accented English, politely inquire of us on many a morning, “Now, how is your stool?” Fine, thank you, oma! That’s politeness and consideration for you.

However, it’s not my intention to delve into the pros and cons of farting in public, and I’ve already digressed from my main point here. I’m more curious about the above quoted passage from that finest of American statesmen, Benjamin Franklin. This is not a side most American schoolchildren are exposed to in school. We instead are taught that Ben was a fine statesman, orotund (and rotund) orator, magnificent inventor, and charming raconteur known for his acerbic wit (somewhat the ladies man, too, allegedly). It just saddens me that there’s another side to this great individual that very few of us are fortunate enough to have gained wind of. This is surely a heinous crime.

[and yes, of course that pun was intended!]

I recently had to take a social studies certification exam for my course. Because the scope was so wide and varied – from US and world history to economics to geography to civics to sociology – I had lots of brushing up to do in many areas. Including American history, which I hadn’t really studied in any great depth since high school.

It’s one of the oldest adages that history is written by the victors. There are, of course, notable exceptions in English – the Spanish Civil War springs to mind – but for the most part, we’re left with the winner’s versions. So I thought it would be interesting to read The Penguin History of the USA, written by Hugh Brogan, a former Cambridge historian: what a terrific find. Though the prose is somewhat turgid and bombastic in parts, and though Brogan has a puerile proclivity for ridiculing the early American colonists as pettifogging and petulant whingers, the book presents a fascinating take on American history. I certainly learnt a lot that I hadn’t before. (And no, I don’t think he’s bitter or anything.)

Booze, burning and bacchanalia

There are a few recurring themes in American history, one of which is the mighty impact of booze. Whisky, for example, ‘was regularly adopted to cheat [Native Americans] of their land and fair payment.’ Alcohol was a regular part of early American society, a fact to which the author devotes considerable attention. Boston was a major exporter of rum, in direct competition with the Caribbean variety, primarily because ‘it was much cheaper, which was a decisive consideration with the poor and frugal consumers of North America’. Apparently, Bostonians ‘sat tippling and sotting for whole evenings, or perhaps for whole days’. Aren’t these the guys who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

Burning as a punishment was widespread, the reasons varied. Many years after the Salem Witch Trials, insubordinate slaves were often burned to death. This is generally glossed over but in this case, it was the footnote that caught my eye: ‘The British must not make too much of these incidents. As late as 1763 a white woman was burned in England for murdering her husband.’ Well in that case…

A bit of tarring and feathering for a laugh

Sometimes his disdain for America’s founding fathers is subtle, at other times glaringly blunt: he doesn’t mince his words. John Hancock, Boston’s richest merchant and leading smuggler, was a ‘mixture of vanity, pique and cowardice.’ Samuel Adams, that purveyor of fine beer, was ‘incompetent at just about everything’ he did, except for politics; that somehow isn’t very comforting. And here’s a side of America we never get to read about in the textbooks. In the days just before independence, there was all sorts of squabbling amongst the colonists. Adams said that justice and liberty in America were being subverted by ‘pensioners, placemen and other jobbers, for an abandon’d and shameless ministry; hirelings, pimps, parasites, panders, prostitutes and whores’. This kind of excessive sexual abuse was supposedly profuse from Adams and his cronies. John Adams once compared England to imperial Rome, both being the prey of ‘musicians, pimps, panders and catamites.’ James Otis called members of the House of Commons ‘a parcel of button-makers, gamesters, pin-makers, pimps and whore masters’. I don’t remember such evocative language in the textbooks I studied. And is being a button or pin maker such a bad thing? Maybe it’s not very manly. Accusing them all of being a bunch of hapless haberdashers would be a far greater insult in my book.

Brogan takes an especially keen interest in the Mormons. Amongst all sorts of lucid description of Mormon religious practice is this valuable nugget of insight: ‘Looked at in detail, the intricacies of Mormon polygamy strikingly resemble those of twentieth-century American divorce, especially as to wife-swapping.’ I’m not sure what kind of light that paints wife-swapping in.

And what of the South, and its magnificent standard of education in the 1800s? ‘The colleges of the South remained jokes until the twentieth century. Instead of science and Greek, the young gentlemen learned to hold their liquor, or at least not to mind getting blind drunk; how to use a knife in a brawl; how to handle dueling pistols and to play cards; how to race and bet on horses. They were provincial, ignorant and overbearing: excellent cannon-fodder, as it turned out.’ I now feel somewhat cheated with my college education. All those loans, all that debt, and for what? I’ve got no idea how to duel.

If we fast-forward to the 1950s, to the height of the anti-Communist hysteria, we see many suspected of having red sympathies being given the old heave-ho. In New York City, a public washroom attendant was dismissed for past membership of the Communist party. ‘No doubt he would have corrupted his customers with Soviet soap or Communist lavatory paper’. (This brings to mind the old popular Communist-era joke: Why, despite constant shortages, was the toilet paper in East Germany/Czechoslovakia/Hungary always two-ply? Because they had to send a copy of everything they did to Russia. It also recalls fond, yet painful, memories of toilet paper in many parts of the developing world, especially the former Soviet Union: that brown, sand-papered consistency stuff that leaves you in a constantly chaffed state. But at least it’s dirt-cheap.)

And the old curmudgeon takes a few pot-shots at 60s youth: ‘it is easy to be unkind about youth in the 60s…these ignorant, provincial, conceited young people…[who] turned out to be quite as unpleasant and as stupid as what they condemned.’ Though it ‘was nevertheless a great mistake to dismiss them all as no more than middle-class hooligans’.

And did you know that in 1760 King George II ‘died at stool in his closet’. The author handily provides a translation in his footnotes: ‘In modern idiom, on the lavatory.’

This stuff is important kids. It’s history! And it will be the kind of history that I will no doubt focus on; my students are in for a real treat.

Not much of a choice, really

As far as recommending the book, initially I’d say yes, though with a few caveats. There’s no doubt that Brogan’s heuristic approach is a major draw; once I was sucked in I couldn’t stop reading. But his attitude towards America at times is convoluted, soaked in layers of optimism and obsolescence, hubris and delusion, and it’s hard to discern his actual attitude. I was never sure whether it was one of calculated condescension or bemused indifference (and yes, that does make sense), and this bugged me for one reason or another. There’s no way in hell something like this would ever be used in an American high school classroom, though I would argue that certain excerpts from it could be used as a counterweight to your average, soporific high school textbooks. The problem with all textbooks, and the ones taking a survey approach to American history in particular, is that they are drenched in provincialism. But I think that reflects more on American education than American society, and these textbooks are evidence less of provincialism than of the intellectual orientation that downplays the importance of aesthetic criteria. It doesn’t matter how it’s written – though the blander the better – as long as it presents the [sanitised] facts in an orderly, coherent fashion. To my mind, this only demonstrates that indifference to aesthetic value inevitably shifts the whole culture back into provincialism. Thus, what we read in school, and the way it’s written, does matter.

But really, what do I know?

Time for a quick multiple-choice exam

Which of the following would you consider to be the most quintessentially and stereoptypically modern American phenomena?

A. Nascar (or, for the uninitiated, stock-car racing). A truly eye-opening, revelatory experience was going to a Nascar race, the New Hampshire 500 back in September. The amount of Confederate flags was staggering and I’m surprised I didn’t get assaulted for wearing a Stone Roses t-shirt adorned with the Union Jack. Honestly, what was I thinking?
B. The other day in the high school, I overhead two students discussing their weekends. I heard ‘five-pointer’ and ‘six-pointer’ and I started thinking, when did they change the scoring in basketball? when it dawned on me that they weren’t talking about basketball, but about hunting, and who had bagged the biggest deer.
C. Cars honking their horns at me as I walk along the parts of the road without any pavements, one guy shouting out the window, ‘where’s your car, buddy?’
D. In a coffee shop the other day, a woman, adorned in a fleece top, seemed flustered when complaining to the woman behind the counter, ‘I’m in a bit of a rush, I have to run and get Caitlyn from soccer practice, pick up my dry cleaning and then get home to get the stuff for the bake sale, then go to the P[arent] T[eacher] A[associaton] meeting.’ I didn’t see what she was driving but if I were a betting man, I’d say an SUV.
E. Not only attending a post-Thanksgiving Day holiday parade, but actually participating in one. While my father was a huge hit in his converted fighter jet go-kart, which he spent weeks working on, I was inveigled into following behind in the support vehicle - his minivan - wearing a Santa hat, Christmas music blaring from the speakers, while hundreds, if not thousands, of people lined the streets of Salem, NH waving at me, wishing me a Merry Christmas (they don’t go for the politically correct ‘Happy Holidays’ around here).

My old man doing the community proud

[P]arting thoughts from Ben

He that is conscious of
A Stink in his Breeches,
is jealous of every Wrinkle
in another’s Nose.

Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1751