The art of Kolam

Brightening up the roadsides of some of my travels around southern India were a multitude of colourful, geometric patterns that appeared around the time of festivals such as New Year or Pongal, Tamil harvest festival. These decorative, religious images are an ancient, Hindu tradition designed to invite the goddess Lakshmi to bring prosperity into the home and protect from evil spirits. Traditionally they were made of edible materials such as grains, rice, flour and vegetable dyes, as they would provide…

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Hit me with your rhythm stick part 4 – the gardens of Japan

Recent travels had alas, taken me nowhere near the destinations mentioned in Ian Dury’s classic tune, hit me with your rhythm stick to further my pointless quest to visit all of them. Although Japan had always been on my somewhat nebulous list of places I ought to get around to visiting one day, I’ve never been a Japan obsessive, as many who celebrate particular aspects of its culture can be. However, being in the region made it a more reasonable…

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Cock fighting in the Philippines

    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…

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The shop art of Benin

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…

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Village life in Ivory Coast

  Why would you want to stay in an African village in a country like the Ivory Coast? There’s little immediately evident appeal: no big sights to see; limited or no electricity and certainly no plumbing –  your shower will come out of a bucket and if you want a crap you’ll have to squat over a pungent hole in a dingy shack that’s steaming hot in the day and roach infested at night; you’ll get to sleep on an…

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Bread is life

In Egypt, bread is so much more than something to eat, it is life itself and plays an essential role in Egyptian culture. Most days on Nasr street you can find a few old ladies begging and they are always polite and grateful for whatever modest offering I leave them. One morning recently, I apologized to one lady I’d given to before that I didn’t have any change to offer, but as I was going to the stall at the…

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An English extremist in Egypt

I have to say I was a trifle surprised to learn that our building manager considered me a potential member of Isis. Given that the number of middle aged, white Englishmen who had left our green and pleasant land to wage violent jihad in the Middle East has consistently hovered around the zero mark, at least no one could accuse him of ethnic profiling. Having already passed a pleasant two months in the apartment with my friend Ziad, that had…

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Africa as a destination for history

Apart from North Africa the continent is rarely seen as a destination for lovers of history, that needs to change. Like me you’re probably enduring the interminable state of lockdown, wondering when it will ever end, perpetually scrolling through social media in search of more crumbs of distraction. Well, help is at hand travel fans. The BBC have kindly posted to YouTube a fifteen part documentary on the history of Africa that will comfortably use up over eleven hours of…

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Black women travelers and why you should hear their experiences

What’s so important about black, women travelers you might ask? For starters, recent years have seen a lot more of them, either bloggers, journalists, YouTubers or Instagrammers. Irrespective of their identity there’s plenty who are simply good at what they do, covering the whole range of travel styles, from back packing to luxury. Many are westerners but Africans are also adding their own insights into the subject. There’s simply no reason to imagine that what they’ve got to say is…

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