On a hill overlooking the small town of Banaue in northern Luzon sits a rickety shack, cobbled together with random timber left-overs and a corrugated iron roof. Improvised wooden seating around two sides of a hard packed, dirt floor arena hold an eager crowd of local men, anticipating today’s action in the cockpit, as the cock fighting space is known. Naturally there’s more to the event than just the sport, or Sabong as it’s known here, it’s a…
The dead may be gone, at least from this earthly plane, but they certainly aren’t forgotten. Death is a transformation rather than an end in traditional Vietnamese culture. Ancestors continue to play an important role in everyday life and if you don’t treat them well they are liable to make your life extremely difficult. The most sure way of upsetting the dead, so that their displeasure manifests itself in the world of the living by dishing out liberal portions…
To truly appreciate the early morning calm of dawn in Hanoi you really need to endure the full frontal assault of the night before in the old city. It is here that the full gamut of bars, restaurants and nocturnal services endeavour to lure the abundance of tourists and locals alike into wallet emptying rapture. Terms like hustle and bustle don’t do justice to the relentless hard sell from personnel stationed outside each venue. Menus are thrust under your…
My new book Toilets of the Wild Frontier is out now. A celebration of
Although modern forms of art and design are being used more and more, the traditional hand painted signs for shops are still common in much of Africa. Benin has largely retained the distinctly African style of commercial shop painting developed during the last century, whereas in Ivory Coast for example, you see a lot more work that seeks to portray people and objects in an overtly realistic fashion, as is more typical in the West. Although some would describe the…
What Africans have been telling me about Covid this year The arrival of the Omicron variant has finally, although rather unfairly, brought some of the focus in the pandemic onto Africa. There is at least now more discussion of the inequalities in the system that is putting profit before people, leaving Africans at the bottom of the vaccine supply chain. Having spent this year living in Africa and I ought to add, living with Africans, entirely disconnected from any expat…
While propaganda is best sold to people who don’t realise what they’re being sold, its also best sold by people who genuinely believe what they’re saying. The immense, sophisticated system used by the establishment to guarantee the public succumb to its narratives, creating consent for its otherwise unacceptable actions, is so effective that many professionals are completely taken in by it. Although journalistic failings should be called out, a lot of nuance and complexity is often thrown out in many…
The first thing you need to know is that anyone who tells you they know exactly what is going on in Tigray and northern Ethiopia is probably not the sort of person you should be listening to. If you’ve been paying at least passing attention to events you’ll know that there has been fighting between the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian Army since last November. Numerous accusations of crimes against humanity and human rights abuses have…
Any brief glance of current British headlines will confirm that my sorry excuse for a nation is taking a headlong dive back to the 1970s, at least economically speaking, there remains the stubborn refusal of flares to come back into fashion. Politically speaking, the 1870s seem more of a guiding light for our government, bathed in its imperial arrogance and racist entitlement. Apologies of course to the Welsh and Scots who bear little responsibility for the almighty clusterfuck Brexit…
After ten days of scanning the coverage of China’s potential role in Afghanistan, it’s clear that there is one voice missing from western media reports: the Afghans themselves. In no article did anyone consider the concerns of the Afghan people, what they might want or expect from a future where China will certainly play a prominent role. This only echoes the US led intervention, where, as always the local people only ever play a walk on part in a plot…
