Ramdas Iyer's- World Traveller Blogs

Nearly four decades ago my college mate, Rupak Swali used to tell me about his family’s fabled presence in Zanzibar for over 200 years, until the 1940s, as advisors to the Sultans of Oman who ruled this famed 'Spice Island". Despite being Hindus, his family took the name Swali for the Swahili language spoken by the Bantu peoples of east Africa. His amazing ancestral home in India's west coast, Bhuj, is testimony to the trade and wealth amassed by Indian merchants as they followed the trade winds from the State of Gujarat in India’s west coast to the African continent.
Fascination with such tales and my travels across Africa eventually inspired me to write about the African dispersal into the Indian subcontinent, a subject of much scholarship lately. In preparing this article my research on the subject included the works of African and Indian scholars on this subject in order to gain a proper perspective.

The history of African arrival into India is complex and broad, however, it started with oceanic trade. The Africans came in two separate waves to India. The first wave came from the Abyssinian empire of Aksum between 4th and 8th century mostly as Ethiopian traders, settlers and along with a few who were sold as slaves. They were the old order and were called the Habshis, meaning Abyssinian in Arabic. They were mostly Christian and despite conversions to Islam, many still maintain their original identity. The second wave arrived between the 13th and 18th century mostly extracted from Tanzania and the Somali coast to become soldiers or servants during the Muslim conflicts in India at that time. As North and Central India was invaded by Islamic rulers between the 12th and 19th centuries, they accelerated the import of Africans to India.

Although Africans have been crossing the Indian Ocean for over a millennium, most of those who make up the Afro-Indian population in India came in the past five hundred years. Not all of them were brought as slaves as India's caste-based society provided ample cheap labor for the ruling elite. Some arrivals were fortune hunters, herbalists, musicians, sailors, job seekers, merchants and even conquerors. The largest concentration of Africans was found in the western part of India, particularly in and around port cities facing Africa. It is reported that there were about 40,000 soldiers and 12,000 artisans of African origin in Mughal Delhi alone in the 14th century.
African immigrants, who are locally known as Siddis, presently live in various geographical pockets of India forming their own ethnic enclaves amidst their host societies. A recent chromosomal analysis of a comprehensive group of Siddis from different parts of India indicate a 67-72% Bantu Sub Saharan markers while the balance shows an inherited ancestry of Indian and Portuguese Europeans.

Many agree that the main source of slavery among the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa were the prevalent wars among the various tribal peoples of the African continent. War captives were often enslaved and either retained to work for their new masters or sold to other parts of the world including India. The enslaved Africans were taken across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden to the Arabian Peninsula and then onto the Indian subcontinent. In time, the descendants of Afro-Arabs would become among the leading sailors in the region. Guiding dhows propelled by seasonal winds, these mariners transported and traded a range of commodities, including slave cargo, between Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Gujarati merchants used to trade in Africa, selling Indian commodities and buying in return African raw material that was required in India. The most important item sought by traders was African ivory, but importers faced difficulties transporting from the inaccessible inland Africa to the coast.

It was relatively easier to buy slaves who would carry the ivory from the interior. This also provided an opportunity to earn an additional profit on both the cargo and the carrier after arriving at the coast. As the demand for labor grew in several rising Asian empires, the trade in humans became more lucrative than the trade in ivory or other items. The profit margin of the slave trade increased tenfold in the 19th century.
The profit margin of the female slave trade was more than that of the males. In Islamic India, unlike in the case of the Americas, slaves were mainly needed for domestic labor, as midwives and inside the harems and not for plantation labor, thus creating a greater demand for females.
Despite the dark side of human cargo transport, Africans rose to prominence in an India which was liberal towards assimilation of foreigners. From Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the northeast to the Deccan in central India, the immigrants vigorously asserted themselves in the country of their arrival. As foreigners and Muslims, some of these Africans ruled over indigenous Hindu, Muslim and Jewish populations.
Malik Ambar remains the greatest of the habshis in India. Born in the 1540s into the Oromo tribe in Ethiopia, he was captured and enslaved by the Arabs and eventually sold in India. His buyer in the 1570s was the peshwa or minister of the sultan of Ahmednagar, also a descendent of slaves. Malik Ambar’s capability as a military leader, his diplomatic skills and land-reform policies contributed to his success in keeping the Deccan free of the mighty yoke of Mughal imperial rule. Eventually this slave-soldier would become king in all but title, thwarting the ambitions of such mighty Mughal kings like Akbar and Jahangir for the conquest of Deccan for decades.

East Africans distinguished themselves in India as military commanders, admirals, ministers, and sometimes rulers. Theirs was a story unparalleled anywhere in the rest of the world — that of enslaved Africans attaining the pinnacle of military and political authority not only in a foreign country but also on another continent.

The Siddis have also left an impressive historical and architectural legacy. As rulers, city planners and architects the imposing forts, mosques, mausoleums, and other monuments that they built nearly half a millennium ago still stand as a testimony to their ingenuity and hard work in north and central India. From humble beginnings, some Africans created their own princely states — Janjira and Sachin — complete with their own coats of arms, armies, mints, and stamps. They fiercely defended their principalities from powerful enemies well into the 20th century when, with another 600 princely states, they were integrated into the Indian State.

Most Indian Siddis are Muslim or Christian, while a small number have adopted Hindu practices. With the disappearance of Indian princely states in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Siddis retreated into their own communities and now live in pockets along the coastal states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa.
The Siddis of Karnataka primarily moved into the unpopulated forested areas and lived off the land, in a rather impoverished condition. After years of appeals the local government has legitimized them as Scheduled Tribes of India, which helps them obtain governmental assistance.
Other than these two communities, a small community of African descent is also to be found in the city of Hyderabad, descended from guards employed by the erstwhile Nizam of Hyderabad until 1948. They still live in their original but ramshackle regimental buildings of the African Cavalry (AC) which at one time housed over 300 African guards.

In Gujarat where most Siddis live, music remains the enduring link to Africa. Some Gujarati Siddis look upon Malik Ambar as a patron saint of the community. In the Gir National Park, home to the last population of the Asiatic lion, the Siddis are the keepers of the forest while many are guides. This was an accidental development since the Nawabs of the state (land owning nobility) who had employed them as slaves during the 1700s assumed that their African ancestry would make them familiar with managing lions. Due to the popularity of the park, the Siddis have cashed in on their African lineage by creating exotic performances that involve fire breathing, gymnastics and dancing to the beat of the drums. Tourists are regaled by what they see as authentic African dances performed by Africans.

Many Siddis, who now consider themselves as African-Indians, are slowly giving up their unique identity as a result of their adoption of either Indian or Arab identities. This is mainly as a result of assimilating through intermarriage and cultural integration.

Ababu Minda Yimenean, an anthropologist with the Max Planck institute of Social Studies in Germany and an expert in Siddi history writes in his book Dynamics of Ethnic Identity Among the Siddis of Hyderabad :" It is more probable that those young Siddis who emigrated to Middle Eastern countries in search of jobs will identify themselves as Arabs rather than Africans. However, identification with Africa and its people will continue among Siddis who still physically resemble Africans. This endogamous section of the community does not or cannot identify itself as anything other than African.
The End.
All photos taken from the Web. This is a non profit article to spread knowledge. If there are any objections please write to [email protected].

GALLERY:

On the flight from Calcutta to Jorhat, Assam I was seated next to a very attractive woman with whom conversation ensued following take off and did not stop for nearly two hours of flying. She insisted that I must visit Shibsagar, her beautiful home town sometime during my travels but did not quite explain the significance of that place. I asked my local guide to take me to Shibsagar but other than showing beautiful buildings and architecture the history of the place had still eluded me.
Upon return to my lodging I quickly combed the internet to do further research on the place. While 2000 words are not enough to highlight an empire, its mere absence in normal conversations outside of Assam was an object of dismay for me. Having a thick veneer of knowledge in Indian History, the chapter of the Ahoms was completely missing from my knowledge base Not knowing its rich history I deeply regretted not spending enough time especially to see the World Heritage Site: The Burial Mounds of the Ahom Kings. I felt the need to tell the story of the Ahoms and used the quiet time provided by the pandemic to present to my blog readers a comprehensive 600 year history of an amazing kingdom: the Ahom Kingdom of the Brahmaputra Valley in North East India.

The ancient kingdom of Kamarupa once covered the present state of Assam. Pragjyaisha, the capital, was located near Guwahati. Kamarupa is mentioned as a frontier kingdom and tributary of the Gupta Empire in the Allahabad inscription of Samudra Gupta (A.D. 330-375). The Kamarupa -Varman empires (350-650 AD) of the great ruler Bhaskaravarman and his contemporary Harshavardhana ranged up to present day Bangladesh, West Bengal and North Bihar. The Chinese traveler Hsuan Tsang( 602-664 AD) visited the capital of Kamarupa and has written about it. He recorded Bhaskaravarman as the King of Eastern India.

The ancient Kingdom of Kamarupa eventually became the Kingdom of Ahom ( 1228-1826) of Assam being physically distant from the center of India it was ruled by tribal kings for many centuries until the early 19th century. The Assamese tribes today numbering over 106 is what makes it a very interesting place with a variety of cultures melded into mainstream Hinduism.
The Kingdom of Ahom remained virtually cut off from the rest of the world for a long time partly because of its geographical location, separated as it was by numerous hills and rivers interspersed by deep valleys, and partly because of the deliberate Ahom policy of isolation. Most of the inhabitants settled along the fertile banks of the Brahmaputra or on the banks of its tributaries. The journey to and from Assam was extremely long and tedious.

To understand the history of the NE of India one must familiarize them with the Caste and Tribe based system that still dominates India. Scholars have argued that during the Aryan settlement in the Indo-Gangetic plains from 1500 BC onwards, the creation of a Hindu state replete with caste system and the usage of the Sanskrit language were considered mainstream. Since Ahom were never in the Sanskritised part of the Indo Aryan people its importance after the Varman Empire was diminished. It was more connected with the hill tribes from north east India, Nagaland, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Yunnan province's non Han Chinese people.


Origins of the Ahom People
The Ahoms were a Tai speaking people came into prominence first in the Yunnan province of China , from where they moved to mainland Southeast Asia in the middle of the 11th century after a long and fierce battle with the Han Chinese. The Tai-Ahoms are traced today to either the Mong Mao Tribe of South China or to the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar.
According to chronicles kept by the Ahoms—Sukaphaa, a Tai prince of Mong Mao, accompanied by his family, five nobles and many followers, mostly men, crossed the Patkai hills and reached the Brahmaputra valley in 1228. They came with a higher technology of wet-rice cultivation then extant and a tradition of writing, record keeping, and state formation. They settled in the region south of the Brahmaputra river and to the east of the Dikho river; the Ahoms today are found concentrated in this region. Sukaphaa, the leader of the Tai group and his 9000 followers established the Ahom kingdom (1228–1826 CE), which controlled much of the Bramhaputra valley until 1826.
Tai-speaking peoples are widely distributed in southern China, mainland Southeast Asia and the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam. For ethnographic and linguistic purposes many subdivisions are recognized, the most important of which are the Chuang in southern China, the Tho, Red Tai, Black Tai and White Tai of northern Vietnam, the Lao, the Siamese or Thai, the Shan of northern Burma, and the Ahom of Assam. The greatest Tai empire to exist till date is that of the Siamese kings of Thailand( Tai Land).
The Ahoms believed that they were divinely ordained to bring fallow land under the plow with their techniques of wet-rice cultivation, and to adopt stateless shifting cultivators into their fold. They were also conscious of their numerical minority. As a result, the Ahom polity initially absorbed Naga, Borahi and Moran, and later large sections of the Chutiya and the Dimasa-Kachari tribal peoples. This process of Ahomisation went on till mid-16th century when the Ahom society itself came under the direct Hindu influence. That many indigenous peoples were ceremonially adopted into Ahom clans are recorded in the chronicles. Since the Ahoms married liberally outside their own exogamous clans and since their own traditional religion resembled the religious practices of the indigenous peoples along with Hindus, the assimilation under Ahomisation had a little impediment.
The Ahom occupy a rather exceptional position amongst the Tai peoples. In the first place, they have remained relatively isolated from other Tai speakers, their contact with Shan (The Burmese Shans can be found in my 'Peoples" album in RamdasIyerphotography.com) and Khamti groups of northwestern Burma being via long, difficult and hazardous trails, and apparently interrupted for centuries at a time.
When the Ahom conquered a small corner of the Brahmaputra Valley at the beginning of the thirteenth century, they probably brought with them their own script, apparently based upon a Mon example. They maintained historical records throughout the centuries, various versions of which have been preserved until today. Although it is possible that the Ahom may have taken note of the Buddhist traditions which were adhered to in some of the regions they must have crossed on their way to Assam, there is little or no evidence that they had been influenced by Buddhism when they entered Assam. Recent research suggests instead that they brought with them their own indigenous sacrificial religion, traces of which can still be found in the modern Hindu Ahom culture of today.( The famous Kali temple of Kamatakiya in Gauhati which I visited sacrifices animals regularly. For many hundreds of years human sacrifice was common here).

Alas the Ahom people found themselves in a different situation from most Tai in that they had discovered a valley of immense size, further to the west of which were mighty kingdoms and elaborate political organizations.
Gradually, step by step, the Ahom extended their grip over the easternmost part of the Brahmaputra Valley, especially at the beginning of the sixteenth century when they conquered the Kachari and Chutiya kingdoms. Later in that century, and during the seventeenth century, the Ahom kings further extended their influence and gradually became masters over the whole of the Assamese valley. This was the time when the gradual "hinduization" of the Ahom upper classes accelerated. The unified country under Ahom rule was soundly defeated by Muslim invaders in 1662, but a few years later the foreign yoke was thrown off and a new, invigorated Ahom rule was born with Shibsagar as its capital.
In the 17th century, the intellectual elite took the sophisticated Bengal culture as the ideal model. From this time onward the Ahom were firmly set on the path towards full assimilation of Assamese Hindu culture and the Ahom tongue became obsolete. Assamese script took over from the old Ahom characters. Only in a few isolated pockets were the old traditions still remembered; amongst the traditional Ahom priestly families the ability to read the old books and the observance of Tai religious ceremonies were perpetuated.


Ahom Religion and Society
The Ahoms worshipped their own tribal gods. However, Brahmanas (one of a class of Hindu sacred writings composed around the 9th to 6th centuries BC and devoted chiefly to the instruction of Brahmins in the performance of Vedic ritual) during the first half of the 17th century achieved a great influence, further giving rise to Hinduism. The rulers started assuming Hindu names since that time. In the reign, the Sib Singh, Hinduism became a predominant religion. However, the Ahom kings did not completely let go of their traditional beliefs to some extent even after adopting Hinduism.
The Ahom society was very sophisticated. Poets and scholars were given land grants. Theatre was encouraged. The Ahom state was completely depended upon forced labor and was forced to work for the state known as paiks. Near about a census of the population was taken and each village was supposed to send a number of paiks in and by rotation.
Majority of the people from the densely populated areas were moved to the thinly populated areas – further leading to the break of the Ahom clans were. However, the administration had become quite centralized by the first half of the 17th century.
The Ahoms society underwent many changes due to a large state being built. The influence of Brahmins increased. The land was given to the temples and Brahmins by the king.

Mughal Incursions & British Rule:
With the successful capture of the Kingdom of Bengal by the Mughals, their eyes were set on the North east of India. The states of Koch and Dhaka were traditional rivals of the Ahom Kingdom were now under the sway of the Mughals. 17 battles were fought between the Ahoms and the Mughals in which the Mughals suffered many defeats due to the tactical guerilla warfare and river battles fought on the Brahmaputra.
These small skirmishes reached the ears of the powerful Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. The Mughal army commanded by Raja Ram Singh I tried to capture the Ahom State but failed miserably at the hands of Gen. Lachit Borphukan ( A source of great pride even today)commanding the army of the Ahom Kingdom. Even though the Mughals could capture Guwahati for a brief period, the Ahom wrested control in the Battle of Itakhuli in 1682 and the Mughals could never recapture it again.
Around 1800 there was a small rebellion against the Ahom King Gaurinath by the Ahom nobles which was eventually quelled with the help of the East India Company. When the company eventually withdrew, there was a lot of infighting within the nobility thus opening the doors for the expansionist King Mindon of Burma.
In 1817, the Burmese took advantage of the rivalry between the Ahom chiefs, invaded Assam, and established political control. The Burmese presence threatened British commercial interests. In the first Burmese War (1824-1826), the British drove the Burmese out of Assam. Under the Treaty of Yandabo, the territory was annexed by the East India Company in 1826.
The year 1826 saw the final collapse of the Ahom monarchy which ruled for over six- centuries and marked the entry of the British who stepped in to fill the political void in the region due to depletion of state funds as a result of the many wars waged. It was the beginning of the transition from the medieval to the modern age. When the East India Company appeared on the scene, they were heralded by the Ahomese as saviors and were welcomed with open arms.

The East India Company desperately needed the gold from Tibet to finance its growing China trade. Hence, an alternative route to Tibet became an urgent necessity. They believed that such a route might be possible via Assam. And the fate of Assam was to be decided by them only. Assam was governed as a part of Bengal by the East India Company till its collapse in 1858. The British (United Kingdom) government administered the state from 1858 until 1947. India achieved independence in 1947 and Assam became a state of the Indian Union.

The End
References:
History of India-Romila Thapar
"Mission Assam"- Gen. S.K.Sinha
"Ahom and the Study of Tai Cultures"- Barbara& Jan Tewibl, Australian Nat. Univ, Canberra.

PLATES:

Common introduction to the blog series planned:

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has a long history when it comes to human settlement. However, it is still a relatively new nation in the eyes of the modern world. For centuries, PNG was a mystery to the outside world and, even today, there are areas of the country that Western civilization has yet to encroach upon, making PNG one of the most intriguing frontiers of the modern world.

The culture of Papua New Guinea is many-sided and complex. It is estimated that more than 700 different cultural groups exist in Papua New Guinea, and most groups have their own language. Because of this diversity, in which they take pride, many different styles of cultural expression have emerged; each group has created its own expressive forms in art, dance, weaponry, costumes, singing, music, architecture and much more. To unify the nation, the language Tok Pisin, once called Neo-Melanesian (or Pidgin English) has evolved as the lingua franca — the medium through which diverse language groups are able to communicate with one another in Parliament, in the news media, and elsewhere. People typically live in villages or dispersed hamlets which rely on the subsistence farming of yams and taro. The principal livestock in traditional Papua New Guinea is the oceanic pig (Sus papuensis).

The Sepik River Cultures:

From above, The Sepik River resembles a serpent meandering its way through lush greenery in gentle coils and curves. As one of the World’s greatest river systems and the largest unpolluted freshwater systems in PNG, the Sepik River plays an integral role in the lives of the inhabitants that live along its riverbanks. Come a little closer however, and you will witness the magic of the rich and diverse culture that is knitted along the longest river on the island of New Guinea. Each twist and bend has a story to tell, as The Sepik is the soul of Papua New Guinea (PNG) sustaining life for an abundance of flora and fauna. At 1,126km long, The Sepik is to the Papua New Guineans what the Ganges is to India.
The culture of the people along the Sepik is a reflection of their vast history, and is heavily influenced by their association with the river itself .More than just a river, The Sepik is home to more than 250 languages, woven together by means of trade and cultural interactions. Tribes are defined by ritual, genealogical and cultural knowledge but all shares a common bond in that their lives revolve around The Sepik. They are genuinely surprised to see you as they are scarcely contacted by the outside world and their remarkable lifestyle has remained virtually unscathed for thousands of years. Arguably, one of the most fascinating aspects of The Sepik are the haus tambaran or literally ‘spirit houses’ which you will find for each clan along the river, located at the centre and highest point of the village. This central location serves as a focal point for the villages’ men, where social and ceremonial acts take place. Once upon a time, it was in the haus tambaran where men prepared for war, however today you are more likely to find the men chewing betel-nut while conversing with each other, perhaps over issues regarding their clan or village. The spirit house itself is a very impressive structure with some reaching heights of 25 meters. Inside, carvings of masks, statues and various figures are held with the purpose of being inhabited by the spirits. While each tribe will vary from the next, these intricate carvings usually serve the purpose of either fending off evil spirits or to help people with specific challenges. Many of the carvings perform specific roles in important ceremonies or life stages. As each tribe has its own beliefs and connections to different spirits, the artistic style from one village to the next varies.

During my travels there not too long ago, I was able to observe both with great interest and sadness the waning of this primitive culture in the face of modernity and Christianity. In the words of the great travel writer Pico Iyer "....the fact that reality is our creation, and that we invent the places we see as much as we do the books that we read. What we find outside ourselves has to be inside ourselves for us to find it. Or, as Sir Thomas Browne sagely put it, “We carry within us the wonders we seek without us."
Having seen the Iatmul, Kwome and the Abelam during my trip there, I felt the need to write about my experiences along with the many photographs taken during my stay.

I have included maps of PNG and that of the tribal areas of the Sepik region. The novice reader not familiar with these parts will find it difficult to envisage the relative geographical areas within which they dispersed and have lived over time. Nevertheless, the traveler in me needs to identify those areas for any future travelers to the area.

The Abelam:
Why have I chosen to write about the Abelam? Two things immediately come to mind. First they may well be the world’s most accomplished yam growers, specializing in the display and exchange of “long yams” Two species of yams are commonly grown: waapi, and ka (jaambe). Ka yams are raised for food, but a few varieties of waapi are grown to gigantic size in special gardens tended by Abelam men. These yams, which have great symbolic and ritual significance for the Abelam people, are exchanged in competitions with trade partners from rival groups. Specimens of the premier waapi variety, the maambutap, can attain lengths of ten feet or more.
Secondly, I was quite blown by the ceremonial haus tambaran and their initiation ceremonies. The ceremonial houses of the Abelam people , in the writings of anthropologist Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin of the University of Gottingen, rank as architectural masterpieces. "The impressive buildings, built on a triangular ground plan, often reached heights of up to 30 meters, towering above even the tallest coconut palms. One of their hallmarks was the richly painted façade. They were constructed completely without nails, all elements being held together with the aid of vines and liana ropes. During initiations they became the place of stupendous ritual installations. The novices entered the house through a low, tunnel-like entrance before they were confronted with dramatically staged cult images inside. Following this revelation they were led out through a narrow exit at the back on to small, hidden ceremonial ground where they remained in seclusion for several weeks".
In my time spent along the Sepik, I spent more time on the river than on the mountainous hinterland where the Abelam moved to avoid wars with the more powerful Iatmul, a few hundred years ago. From fish eaters they became Yam cultivators.

A recent blog by Steve golan shares many of my sentiments;'As we delve deeper into the unknown we lose ourselves. Every kilometre, every hour everything changes. What were once paved roads become bumpy dirt tracks, manicured forests grow wild like a scene from the prehistoric era. Even the looks the locals give us when they notice a truck full of foreigners driving into the unknown are unnerving. Papua New Guinea’s Sepik region is not for the faint of heart, it is a raw, lawless, tribal land that explorers dream of. As the jungle gets thicker, and the sun begins to set you can almost hear the beat of the tribal drums along the Sepik River. Welcome to Papua New Guinea and the Sepik River."

The Abelam people” today number around 250,000. Their traditional territory extends from the grass plains of the Sepik River to the foothills of the Prince Alexander Mountains in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. According to the 2000 census, over half of the people are below the age of 25. There are three distinct dialects of the Abelam; language, kamukundi, mamukundi and samukundi, but the language actually varies from village to village. The Abelam people” today number around 250,000. Their traditional territory extends from the grass plains of the Sepik River to the foothills of the Prince Alexander Mountains in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. According to the 2000 census, over half of the people are below the age of 25. There are three distinct dialects of the Abelam language, kamukundi, mamukundi and samukundi, but the language actually varies from village to village.

In my time spent along the Sepik, I spent more time on the river than on the mountainous hinterland where the Abelam moved to avoid wars with the more powerful Iatmul, a few hundred years ago. From fish eaters they became Yam cultivators and their ultimate unique identity.
The administrative center of Abelam territory is Maprik, roughly 30 feet above sea-level and about 70 km inland from Wewak, the coastal provincial headquarters which is where the airport is located.

I was given a complete tour of the ceremonial house along with an elaborate performance by all the elders of Maprik Abelam community, who are trying to instill in their youth the value of the spirit house culture.


Arts: Abelam art is rich, with the emphasis on painting. Paint is seen as a magical substance that gives life to a piece of wood (carving). Only then do the figures become powerful and active. Paint is a metaphor for a magical substance used in sorcery, which in this case is not life-giving but life-taking. Throughout Abelam territory different art styles can be recognized, although there are also many commonalities. Since it was my last part of my Sepik visit and it was late in the day I had no time to visit the area to collect artifacts.

Money: Many things for an adventurer came true in PNG. It is the first time I have seen shell money used for local transactions. I myself bought and used shell money to buy warm beer in a coastal village. While not a major tender, shell money is recognized within villages for small transactions.

The Abelam, since moving inland primarily use rings (yua) fashioned from the hard, marble-like shell of the giant clam. They were, and to some extent remain, the primary form of wealth among the Abelam people. Ceremonial valuables, yua were displayed or exchanged as part of most major rituals and rites of passage. At birth, a ring is presented to the child’s maternal uncle, who later will help guide him through the complex male initiation all offerings to their spirits Ngwalandu, is made with shell discs ( You can see in my photographs where the large statues are worshipped)
At marriage, the groom presents yua to the bride’s parents, the number he is able to give becoming a lifelong source of pride. At death, gifts of yua to maternal relatives help ease the passage of the spirit to the afterlife. Shell rings also play an integral role in ceremonial life. They are displayed during male initiation, the dedication of men's ceremonial houses, and other occasions, as symbols of the strength and wealth of the community. The rings are so prized that a man, wishing to emphasize another man’s status or his affection for him, will address him as wuna yua (my ring).

Religious Beliefs. Ceremonial houses (korambo) and Ceremonial grounds (amei) are the focus of most rituals connected with the life-cycle events for men and women. For girl parts of the first-menstruation ritual as well as the presentation of shell rings as marriage payments take place in front of the korambo. During the death ritual, the corpse is left there for one night. The korambo is also important for its mere presence and does not really serve as a meeting place. It is mainly for housing those spirits ( ngwalndu ) who visit the living temporarily before going back to another world. In a ceremonial building the huge carved ngwalndu figures may be stored until they are used for an initiation. The large painted facade of a korambo is visually dominated by big faces associated with ngwalndu spirits. The soul of a man is thought to live after death with an ngwalndu.
Ceremonies. Initiations of boys and men into the secrets of Abelam religion are divided into many stages, the first taking place when the boy is 5 or 6 years old, the last between 30 and 50. In each initiation boys are acquainted with one category of spiritual beings. This begins at an early age with the least important, and as adults they learn, after they have seen ngwalndu, the last secret beyond which there is only a boundless void.
Important parts of initiation ceremonies take place in the ceremonial house where artists arrange elaborate compositions of carved, painted, or plaited figures, decorated with shell rings, feathers, flowers, and leaves. No explanation is given to the initiates. The aim of these rituals is to show them the secrets rather than to verbalize a meaning. For each display of artifacts in a ceremonial house there is an associated dance. In these dances men are painted and decorated all over—thus they are transformed into beings from another world.

Death and Afterlife. There is almost no "natural" death recognized, apart from those old people who had been sitting already for a long time "at the ashes of a fire." All other deaths are attributed to magic and sorcery mostly performed in other villages. Symbols of people's life souls are kept in specialized villages. As soon as a lethal illness is suspected these are checked in order to find the cause and origin of the Sorcery performed. After death the corpse is displayed in front of the haus tambaran.

This belief in sorcery still pervades the entire island. Everyone's illnesses are attributed to their rivals doing, through sorcery. So the next act in the cycle of revenge is violence through murder. This cycle of revenge killings progresses into a tribal warfare with rampant killing and maiming until both parties are satisfied.

As a result of the endless cycle of wars, war art; weopanry, make-up and dances have had a major cultural impact. Today such wars are limited but the violence continues with guns and modern weaponry. It is unfortunately a land of violence with many troubled spots and many tenuous journeys for travelers.

Contact between Abelam and Europeans began in the 1920s and 30s, but it was not until after WWII, in the 1960s, that colonialism began to have a considerable impact on Abelam culture. Government influence increased, and Christian churches, including the Roman Catholics, AOG (Assemblies of God) and SDA (Seventh-day Adventist), began to attract converts. The 1970s-80s also saw an increase in business and commerce with the Maprik District becoming one of the country’s largest rice producing centers. Conversion to Christianity increased dramatically during the 1980s, and traditional culture went into a decline. One of the purposes of this article is to increase knowledge and understanding of traditional Abelam culture and beliefs.

References:
Ramdas iyer [email protected]
Ramdasiyerphotography. com
Richard Scaglion-UCIS Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.
Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin- University of Gottingen- Architecture of Abelam
http://www.gudmundurfridriksson.com- Blogs
Brittanica Encylopedia

Photo Gallery;


001.jpg]

My quest to seek ancient cultures and its people has become more difficult since globalization took root these past two decades. What made ancient tribes and communities very special; their myths, traditions, rituals, garb and house building techniques are fast disappearing. The yeoman's effort of anthropologists to preserve some of the hundreds of tongues that are becoming extinct every day, music and verbal traditions have been praiseworthy.
The Babongo “Forest people,” or Pygmies, inhabit the rainforest of Gabon in West Africa and have an estimated population of around twelve thousand people. The landscape embedding the Babongo villages is characterized by dense tropical rainforest intersected by large river courses, rugged terrain and by hot and humid climate. Access to the villages requires the crossing of the broad Ngounié River by pirogue or embarking on the local ferry which is occasionally out of order. Once on the other side, when transport is available we followed logging roads, crossing numerous precarious wooden bridges. The access road has been carved through the forest canopy by an Asian logging company operating in the area and is maintained only where passage of logging trucks is needed. At the river crossing the watercourse represents the physical divide between forest-dependent, hunter-gatherer communities and the cash economy led “modern” world. After crossing the river communication is cut back to the minimum - phone, radio and TV signals get weaker the deeper one ventures into the jungle. Soon, the only “connection” rest with the sounds and smells of the forest occasionally fended by roaring logging engines. Babongo people have been occupying these areas for centuries, although migrations occurred during colonial times.
It was late in the day when after 10 hours driving through muddy logging roads, dangerously weak bridges built hastily over fast waters, we were approaching some pygmy settlements deep inside the Waka Forest, a 26000 Sq.KM rain forest turned into a National Park in the 90's. Marcel Bombe a Pygmy leader who escorted me along with Antonio Anoro of Gabon Untouched my tour leader and friend, Paul Mbombe a Bantu Bwiti Shaman, and I stopped in front of the tallest and largest tree we had seen that day in utter amazement. Paul and Marcel immediately proceeded to approach the mighty tree( Moutambi-the unsurpassed one) to pray to their god Komba, the supreme creator of everything. Added, they also invoked Jengi, the spirit of the forest. I joined them in their reverence to a great tree which is not too different from our own Hindu worship of Banyan, Peepal and need trees.As we looked up at the canopy, a large Blue Morpho (morpho pelides) butterfly circled above our heads. Paul mumbled to me that this was a forest spirit and would choose to sit on his lips shortly. Lo and behold within a few seconds the butterfly chose to sit on Paul's lips for a while and eventually flew away. The spirituality of this moment can be questionable to some but the event was nevertheless real. I was utterly shocked by this event which well documented by Antonio who was having fun with the camera whilst we were praying. Marcel was moved by that event and bestowed on me the pygmy name Moutambi, which is how everyone addresses me till this date in Gabon.

Getting here was not easy. Heavy rains, much to my dismay had stopped us from visiting another settlement at a different location, which was more remote requiring porters and an 8 hour uphill trek. Antonio reached out to his friend the great Tatayo, master of Iboga medicine in Libreville. Tatayo dispatched Marcel Bombe, chief delegate of all indigenous people (pygmies) in Gabon, Congo and Cameroon to come to our rescue. Marcel, a very small, slight fellow with sparkling eyes traveled for 10 hours, using buses and share taxis to reach us in our lodge located on the banks of the Ngonie river in Fugamou, where we waited patiently. In the course of waiting for him we called for a taxi to take us to dinner to a 'western "restaurant. The taxi that arrived was a late model SUV much to our surprise. The driver a well groomed and well spoken personality joined us for 'Pizza" a southern European mainstay poorly attempted in central Gabon. Paul Mbombe is a well built Bantu shaman and fearless. His father was a government functionary who was assassinated in a purge by the dictatorship of Gabon a decade ago. He asked the taxi driver if he was spying on us on behalf of the secret police.The driver replied that they are aware of a Spaniard, American and Gabonese checking into the local hotel and the hotel personnel were instructed to keep tabs on us and yes he was indeed assigned to us. The conversation eventually turned cordial, yet the policeman asked us to visit the precinct the next day to register since we were going into territory not quite policed. In the interim Marcel arrived from Libreville tired yet eager to escort us the next morning. He set about organizing a Toyota pickup that would take us into the forest along with Bantu businessmen who traded with the pygmies.

Like in most of Central Africa, indigenous peoples, the so-called ‘Pygmies’ are often treated as second-class citizens. Few have birth certificates or identity cards; they lack access to education or healthcare and are frequently subject to exploitation and mishandling when exposed to the “outside world”. Like other indigenous peoples scattered across the Congo Basin, the Babongo have a unique and rich knowledge of the natural resources on which they depend. The practice of Bwiti rituals and the use of Iboga, a powerful hallucinogenic root bark, lie at the heart of Babongo culture, and make members of the tribe renowned for their spiritual and healing powers. The Babongo are surrounded by Bantu people, some of whom regard the first peoples as little better than animals. Babongo people are generally independent of formal authority and they keep their own traditions and decision-making structures. The Babongo have a powerful reputation as sorcerers, and inspire awe in the Bantu neighbors for their knowledge of the forest and of the Ibogha - the sacred plant central to their beliefs and rituals. Exposed to outside forces and authorities, the Babongo are struggling to retain their identity and traditional institutions. When living in the jungle, their hunting skills and knowledge of fauna and flora are unmatched. When exposed to the cash economy or drawn outside the forest, the Babongo risk losing not only their most valuable skills but also their own sense of history, culture and identity (BBC, 2008). The Babongo are hunter-gatherers and live substantially off wild resources in the forest. They usually hunt using wire traps, nets, bows and arrows or guns, often loaned from Bantu neighbors in return for a portion of the valuable bush meat they catch. Men also fish and gather honey from wild bees. Since some years, because of the unsuccessful policy to settle them engaged by mostly all the states in the region, Babongo Women people sometimes grow banana, maize, manioc, peanuts and sweet potatoes on small slash and burn patches. Children catch crabs and freshwater prawns. At the time of our visit the elephants had wreaked havoc on their manioc plants.

The earliest known reference to a Pygmy—a "dancing dwarf of the god from the land of spirits"—is found in a letter written around 2276 B.C. by Pharaoh Pepi II to the leader of an Egyptian trade expedition up the Nile. In the Iliad, Homer invoked mythical warfare between Pygmies and a flock of cranes to describe the intensity of a charge by the Trojan army. In the fifth century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of a Persian explorer who saw "dwarfish people, who used clothing made from the palm tree" at a spot along the West African coast.
More than two millennia passed before the French-American explorer Paul du Chaillu published the first modern account of Pygmies. "Their eyes had an untamable wildness about them that struck me as very remarkable," he wrote in 1867. In In Darkest Africa, published in 1890, the explorer Henry Stanley wrote of meeting a Pygmy couple ("In him was a mimicked dignity, as of Adam; in her the womanliness of a miniature Eve"). In 1904, several Pygmies were brought to live in the anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Two years later, a Congo Pygmy named Ota Benga was housed temporarily at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City—and then exhibited, briefly and controversially, at the Bronx Zoo.

There is no one Babongo language, but three. In the central regions variations of Tsogho are spoken, in the South East it is the same but with Teke and Kaning’i as the starting languages. Interpretations of these vary between groups dependent on historical and cultural differences such as contact with Bantu speaking neighbors. Only a very few speak broken French. As a result we had a Bantu and pygmy in our group to be able to communicate and exchange ideas. Pygmy to Bantu to French to English

As far as it is possible to tell the Babongo have always been hunter gatherers living in bands of up to twenty people, a situation suiting a traditionally nomadic lifestyle in a bio-diverse environment. Some Babongo are famed for using nets in their hunting activities, snaring bush meat to complement the plant stuffs provided by Babongo women and their knowledge of rain forest flora. The Babongo have historically traded with Bantu farmers exchanging forest goods such as honey and meat for metal tools and guns to aid them in their hunting. Though in some respects this relationships has proved advantageous for the Babongo it has also left them open to exploitation at the hands of the Bantu as a recent UNICEF report shows.

The Bantu often do not share the Babongo’s view of themselves as the first people of the earth, yet they are often fearful of them. The Babongo are renowned sorcerers and boast a vibrant animistic tradition called ‘Bwiti’ which centres around the use of the psychedelic Iboga plant which some Bwiti experts believe to be the tree of knowledge. According to the Babongo, Iboga can facilitate soothsaying, healing, and communion with the dead by liberating the soul of the body for a time.
Our journey was getting fraught with serious problems. Many of the bridges, seven in total, did not have wooden slats to make river crossings. We scampered for lumber often substituting with ones in front of us for use in the rear. At that moment I had given up all hopes of moving ahead, especially with the thought of our pickup truck plunging into the river. The 5 pygmy passengers who had hailed us along the way immediately got to work collecting logs for our move forward leaving me holding my heart in my hand.( see video link).
Driving through thick vegetation I realized that it will not be too long before the vegetation completely swallows this ever narrowing road. Out of nowhere I could see children rushing from a far away village towards the car. The sound of our vehicle had given this quiet corner some excitement about the arrival of strangers. Suddenly we were surrounded by two dozen adults and children looking at us with large eyes. The young children became extremely shy as I emerged from the vehicle and actually started looking down trying to avoid my eyes.They were delighted to see us and I was ecstatic to finally meet the pygmies in their heartland.
A fact not lost to us was the knowledge that that this was also Marcel Bombe's home village from which he had left as a child to the city. His mud house consisting of three rooms was made available to us during our stay. Since we arrived in darkness, I could not quite understand the layout of the village. Other than our headlamps the only other source of light was a powerful tree resin used by the locals to illuminate the darkness that surrounded us.
As we settled down the villagers arrived to come and watch us go about our ways like a movie that was playing in front of them. The chief welcomed us and helped unload all our supplies and the many gifts that we had come to exchange with them. Congyani, our neighbor and a very determined and aggressive lady was assigned the role of caretaker. She washed vessels, brought water and prepared our meager meals. The chief asked us not to leave our area for the evening since the village was having a ceremony in the communal hut. It is a well known fact that pygmies keep their rituals secretive and only show the outside world a decoy version of the real thing. Later that night a series of chimpanzee hoots and shrills were made by the villagers which penetrated the quiet darkness of this mountain village. Upon investigation I was told that they were gathered in a ceremony involving the spirits of wisdom from the chimpanzees. The chimpanzee howls were so amazing that when I came home I read up on the evolution of the communication sounds of the pygmies.They were one of the progenerators of spoken languages as we use them today
"When hunters are getting themselves fired up for the Duiker hunt. They clap and do a call-and-response type of chant. Louis Sarno, an American who has been living with the Pygmies for more than 25 years, explains: “It’s a hunting song that calls out to the forest spirits asking for success, although the song is more about the musical rhythm than the actual words.”
The night passed with hundreds of cockroaches and an occasional rodent scurrying on the floor. Being tired, I quietly closed my eyes, quite horrified but yet managed to get some sleep in an unpleasant surrounding. Not a fan of extreme darkness, I had brought with me battery operated bulbs that hangs with a carabiner that kept burning all night. This kept the creepy crawlers on their defensive!.
The village was a large clearing in the middle of the forest. I suppose this village must be in existence for at least 20 years, it was clean and unpolluted except for their waste lagoon that ultimately melds with the rainwater. With over twenty homes I expected the population to be under 100 while another nearby village constituted another 20 homes. Walking past each family and meeting members of their families took up most of the morning.These villages were set up during colonial times when pygmies were 'encouraged' to set up settlements near logging roads.


A formal meeting was arranged with the villagers regarding the purpose of our visit. As an exploited people the villagers were always on alert often demanding exorbitant 'gifts' in return for access to their village , their rituals and dances. All the men and women were gathered along with my contingent of Antonio, Marcel and Paul. With drama and fanfare our pygmy friend Marcel Mombe introduced me to the gathering." Our fathers were pygmies, our fore fathers are pygmies and we are now the proud Babongo. Among us is a visitor who has crossed two oceans, several rivers and forests to come to visit us. He must be a pygmy too since the universe was begun by pygmies. Let us show our hospitality to him. We have brought gifts for all to show our gratitude.....'.
Outside the hut were two strong men carrying two basket loads of gifts, almost worth $300, one for the men folk and other for the women. An equality system that had been established by the forest dwellers long before the west thought that it may be a necessity.
Each basket contained two 5 liter bottles of palm wine, three bottles of Pernod Pastis( Anise liqueur), 12 packs of soda and beer, two cases of cigarettes, match boxes, cooking oil, rice, sugar and candy for the children. Thereafter Congyani, the leader of the women's contingent expressed her dissatisfaction at the gifts offered. Knowing this is the normal course of negotiation, a bucket was brought in, another bottle of palm wine emptied into it and served to the women, who then excitedly started lighting up cigarettes and began warming up to our gestures of reconciliation.
The men had two factions, one reasonable and the other with a completely out of control leader. He mentioned that BBC was there a few months ago and gave them a lot of money and what we have brought in those baskets was an insult. Again the negotiations went back and forth with Paul using his Bantu skills and position explaining to them that the BBC is a rich organization whereas M0utambi( myself), here was acting on his own capabilities. He went on to describe a large hunt versus a small hunt as an analogy. Yearning to lay their hands on the alcohol the men agreed reluctantly .A few CFAs( Central African Francs) exchanged hands that amounted to a few dollars.
Within a matter of two hours the whole village including anyone over 12 years of age were drunk and happy. The women started getting dressed and for two hours gave us an amazing performance of drum and dance. It was expected that the men would do the same after dusk but they conducted a very interesting ceremony with initiated boys performing a ceremony for us. The men still held back and agreed to perform late in the night. These initiated performers who also take the iboga root as a trance inducer can dance all night but nothing in reality happened; the recalcitrant faction did not put out. Around midnight Paul Mbombe an Nganga master gathered the willing and we had music, storytelling and Bwiti dancing all night but with less fanfare. Sleep was scarce that night.


With rain clouds looming, we decided to get out of there lest we get stuck in the forested gauntlet that we had to cross, especially those scary bridges. The send off was very warm especially with all the villagers coming to say goodbye.
On reflecting on my trip the following thoughts came to my mind. If this were 100 years ago, entering their realm and disturbing their quiet life of oneness with nature would have been a gross violation. But today with resettlement, commercial mixing with Bantu villages and the need for modern produces of convenience our trip should have been one that they should have accepted wholeheartedly, especially given that we were encouraging them to practice their culture which has been on the wane. Instead they behaved like spoiled children with ridiculous demands, with the ones with access to the outside world acting as adults on their behalf. It was sad to see their plight. Their land was being deforested steadily, they had no access to schools or health care, while alcoholism was not common they imbibed it with no constraints.
Commercial logging is rapidly depleting Gabon’s rain forest with thirty percent already cleared. As a result of the vast roads bulldozed through the forest many Babongo have experienced the traditionally damaging effects of contact with the outside world, disease, violence and 'governmentality'. Mortality rates have risen as the result of deforestation whilst the governmental contribution has been to begin a resettlement program to move the Babongo to villages beside the roads flayed from the forest. Here, considered as the backward remnant of Gabonese society, the Babongo suffer discrimination in the form of pitiful levels of access to healthcare and education. In socio-economic and political spheres, the Babongo people are not seen as equal to the Bantu villagers. They rely on the farmers for trade opportunities. They exchange some of their primary goods (fruits, wild nuts, medicinal plants etc.) for money and industrial goods. The farmers are the Babongo's only connection to the Gabonese bureaucracies. Because of this, they often work as indentured servants to the farmers.

Gabon covers an area of approximately 26.7 million hectares and maintains some of the largest remaining rain forest in West Africa. Although the actual extent of forest cover is unknown, experts estimate between 17-22 million hectares, or 85% of the total land mass (Christy et al 2003). Indigenous hunter-gatherer communities (known variously as the Baka, Bakoya, Bagama, Babongo, Akoa, etc.) are located throughout Gabon, and include numerous ethnic groups separated by locality, language and culture. According to the most recent census (Massandé 2005), the Pygmy populations number as many as 20,005 out of a total national population of approximately 1,400,000 (previous estimates 7,000-10,000).

Despite the threat of assimilation there are hopes that the Babongo have a brighter future than the negative developments of recent years may suggest. Logging is being rapidly restricted as national parks are established across the country to encourage eco-tourism. Efforts are being made to enable the Babongo to take their future into their own hands given this potentially beneficial transition. One way in which this is being attempted is through the innovative grassroots use of Participatory mapping technologies which have allowed some Babongo groups to commune and mark out their traditional territories, safe guarding them for future generations.

The End
contact info: [email protected]
WWW.RAMDASIYERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

Sources:
Smithsonian Magazine: Pygmies Plight By Paul Raffaele, DEC 2008
National Geographic/ BBC
Gabon Untouched NGO: Antonio Anoro

PHOTO GALLERY:

]

The name Azerbaijan derives from the Middle and Old Persian Adar-badhagan and Atur-patakan meaning protected by fire. The region is known for its continuously burning natural gas fires, which to the ancients must have seemed like the miraculous phenomenon of an ever-burning fire - a symbol of special importance in Zoroastrianism. In ancient texts, Azerbaijan was known as the land of fire and burning hillsides.

As we entered the many rooms of the Surakhani Fire temple ( Surakhani Atash-Gah), former residence for priests and traders alike, we heard an eruption of Hindu Vedic chants of Om Ganapataye Namah float out of one cell, while another housed a Nataraja bronze. Little had I read about this World heritage sites history until I started pouring into the many articles available on the web especially from many Indian publications.
Traveling in this Caucasian country to celebrate my wife's 60th birthday, how we ended up in front of a natural fire pit in a Hindu Temple in an Islamic republic was indeed a welcome surprise.
Jonas Hanway commenting in his, An Historical Account of the British Trade Over the Caspian Sea, 1753 CE states "The Persians have very little maritime strength... their ship carpenters on the Caspian were mostly Indians... there is a little temple, in which the Indians now worship: near the altar about 3 feet high is a large hollow cane, from the end of which effuses a blue flame... . These Indians affirm, that this flame has continued ever since the flood, and they believe it will last to the end of the world. ...Here are generally forty or fifty of these poor devotees, who come on a pilgrimage from their own country."
Fire is sacred in many spiritual traditions, and has been used in religious rites for thousands of years. Along with water, earth, air and space, fire is one of the five essential elements.

No stranger to fire worship I have grown up with reverence to, Agni (Sanskrit: “Fire”) the fire-god of Hinduism, second only to Indra in the Vedic mythology of ancient India. He is equally the fire of the sun, of lightning, and of both the domestic and the sacrificial hearth. He is also the guardian deity of the southeast direction, and is typically found in southeast corners of Hindu temples.
An important deity since the Vedic times ( 1800-1200BC) when Aryan migration into India brought the mythology of Agni along with the rest of the Hindu Pantheon from the Ural steppes region and central Asia. The Zoroastrian Persians, a splintered Aryan community from that which entered India also worship fire, similar to the Hindus. Both religions share beliefs, mythology and a common set of values as written in the Rig Veda of the Hindus and the Zoroastrian holy book, The Zend Avesta.
So it is no surprise that Hindus would worship in Baku, an ancient Persian city which also happened to be a Zoroastrian fire temple. The Vedic worship through fire is different from the Mazdayasnian (Parsee-Zoarastrian worship). In the Mazdayasnian religion the fire itself is the divine presence.
In my travels within Iran in 2016, I visited the only active Fire temples in Yazd and in Chak, Chak in central Iran. However Agni is less worshipped as a mainstream deity in India but rather as a keeper of the hearth in every Hindu home where his favors are evoked during the Homa fire pit rituals conducted to mark important occasions like, birth, marriages and other religious rites. Agni for Hindus is the communicator between mortals and the lords of the heaven. All chants are done in his presence, by feeding the fire with ghee for the messages to be relayed to our lords and keepers in heaven.
Yes here in Baku I chanted mantras for my wife Pushpa's long health and happiness and hopefully it was conveyed to our Hindu Gods above.
The Baku Hindu trading community is thought to have originated primarily from Multan located in the Punjab region of the Indus valley (in today's Pakistan) and who plied their trade along the Grand Trunk Road, part of the old Aryan trade roads.

The Surakhani complex as it stands was clearly used as a Hindu temple. The single inscription mentioning Jvalaji/Jwalaji may refer to the equally rare uses of the term in Indian places of worship. In the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, there is a Jvalaji/Jwalaji temple constructed over a natural gas fire as is the Surakhani temple. The place is called Jalamukhi/Jwalamukhi. 'Jwala' means 'burning' or 'blaze of fire' and 'Mukhi' means 'mouth'.
However, the Baku complex is quite unlike other Hindu temples. Instead, the pentagonal perimeter structure consists of cubicles much like a caravan-serai and in the centre of the enclosed courtyard is a chahar-taqi building whose design is entirely consistent with the chahar-taqi Zoroastrian atash-gah of ancient and medieval Persia. There is a strong possibility that prior to its use as a Hindu temple, a predecessor structure existed that was a Zoroastrian fire temple. With the decline of the Zoroastrian community and an abandoned structure would have been a candidate for occupation and use by the growing Hindu trading community. The present structure could have been modeled on a previous Zoroastrian structure. Alternatively, the present structure could have been built over the ruins of a Zoroastrian atash-gah or it could be a renovation of a previous Zoroastrian atash-gah. Even today, local tradition holds that the structure was a Zoroastrian atash-gah.

Professor A. V. Williams Jackson (1911 CE) while commenting on the observations of Jonas Hanway (1753 CE), left open the possibility that Zoroastrians may have worshipped alongside the larger Hindu community at the shrine. The Sikh community must also have worshipped alongside the Hindu community.

In the 1800s, the population of Hindus and Sikhs in Azerbaijan declined. Sir Jivanji Jamshedji Modi (1854-1933) in his book My Travels Outside Bombay, Iran, Azerbaijan, Baku (1926) (translated from Guajarati by Soli Dastur) notes: "the original trade routes and customs changed and the visits of the Hindu traders diminished. And from the original group of the Brahmins, some passed away and a few that were left went back to their original home land." By the time of Modi's visit in 1925, the Surakhani atash gah had been abandoned.

According to authors from the 1800s, between the times when the atash gah was abandoned by the Hindus and at the time of Modi's visit in 1925, the Surakhani atash gah was briefly under the care of Zoroastrians.

James Bryce, in Transcaucasia and Ararat: Being Notes of a Vacation Tour in the Autumn Of 1876, noted, "...after they (the Zoroastrians) were extirpated from Persia by the Mohammedans, who hate them bitterly, some few occasionally slunk here (Azerbaijan) on pilgrimage" and that "under the more tolerant sway of the Czar (Azerbaijan was then part of the Russian empire), a solitary priest of fire is maintained by the Parsee community of Bombay, who inhabits a small temple built over one of the springs." (We do know that in the 1800s, the Parsees of Bombay lent their assistance to the Zoroastrians of Iran and sought to ameliorate the suffering of their co-religionists in their ancestral lands.)

A few years earlier, in 1858, French novelist Alexander Dumas (1802 - 1870 CE) had visited the atash gah and noted: "...the whole world is aware of the Atash gah in Baku. My compatriots who want to see the fire-worshippers must be quick because already there are so few left in the temple, just one old man and two younger ones about 30-35 years old."
There are twenty inscriptions embedded in the stone walls of the complex. Eighteen are in the Nagari Devnagri script, one is in Punjabi using the Gurumukhi script and one is a bilingual inscription in Sanskrit and Persian. The Devnagri portion of the bilingual inscription is dedicated to Lord Ganesh and Jvala-ji. It is dated Samvat 1802 (1745-46 CE). In Sanskrit, ज्वलति (ज्वल्) / jvalati (jval) is one of the many words meaning 'burn' or 'burning' even 'light' ['fire' is 'अग्नि' / 'agni'].

The transliteration of Persian/Farsi inscription - a four-line (quatrain) verse is:
Atashi saf kesheedhe hamchun dak
Jeeye bovani reside ta baudak
Sal-e no nozl mobarak baad goft
Khaneh shod ru sombole sane-ye 1158

The translation is:
The blaze (of fire) has drawn (came directly) like a dak(?)
From Bovani ( Bovan , Iran)* until it reached Baudak** (Baku?)
Blessings, he said, on the New Year
It was housed on Sanomad*** (in the) year 1158 (1745 CE).

• There are several places/towns named Bovan in Iran - in the provinces of Azarbaijan, Kermanshah, Isfahan and Pars. The line in the inscriptions appears to state that a fire was brought directly from Bovan to Baudak.
• *Baku is said to be a shortened form of the older name Baudak. Baudak is in turn a shortened form of Bad-Kubeh meaning 'wind-pounded' otherwise 'windy city'.
• **Sanomad may be a corruption of Sombole, the month when the Sun is in the house of Virgo, the sixth month (August-September), in which month Nowruz - New Year' day - fell according to Zoroastrian Kadmi (Qadimi) calendar.

This verse seems to indicate that a fire from Bovan was brought to the Surakhani temple and housed there, perhaps in the alcove above which the inscription is found. It is quite possible that if the natural gas fire at Surakhani could not be consecrated in its making according to orthodox practice, another duly consecrated fire brought from Bovani, could have served that purpose.

The Punjabi language inscription is a quotation from the Adi Granth.

The other inscriptions include an invocation to Lord Shiva. Taken as a set, the dates on the inscriptions range from Samvat 1725 to Samvat 1873, corresponding to the period from 1668 CE to 1816 CE. The present structure is relatively modern and the 17th century is a possible date for its construction. One report states that local records exist that the structure was built by the Baku Hindu trading community around the time of the annexation of Baku by the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian War (1722-1723 CE).
I salute the UNESCO World heritage organization for preserving such magnificent, historic and cultural properties, the world over. Such sites are truly an integrator of the myriad cultures and peoples of this world.
Sources:
heritage Institute.com/ Zoroastrianism
Tizianstupa.com
ahymsin.org
Wikipedia

THE END

Ramdas Iyer can be reached at [email protected]

Inhabitants of this small and arid island nation of Malta have been digging cisterns for water storage for eons, but in 1902, while laborers worked on one, they stumbled into one of the most remarkable and well preserved Neolithic sanctuaries yet found.
Buried only 10 meters beneath the city streets lies an incredible network of elliptical chambers and winding corridors cut into the limestone. It is the only prehistoric burial site that is open to the public and is recognized by UNESCO. . Everyone knows about the magnificent temples of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, but Malta contains some of the oldest and best-preserved temples in the world gets comparatively little attention. Yet on this small island country, there are literally dozens of ancient sites, eleven megalithic temples, and seven of them are UNESCO World Heritage Listed. Although debatable, UNESCO describes Malta's prehistoric temples as the "oldest free standing monuments on Earth".

It is believed that its first chambers were cut into a small natural cave as early as 4000 BCE or earlier. Two even deeper levels are believed to have been finished centuries later, between 3000 and 2500 BCE. For context, the first megaliths at Stonehenge are thought to have been raised around 2500.The temples date from 5,500 to 2,500 BC, making them older than Stonehenge and older than the Pyramids of Egypt (according to current perspectives). The dating of the site was done using radio carbon testing of pottery and bones found around those temples in Malta.

It has been calculated that between 6,000 and 7,000 individuals had been buried in the 32 chambers and passages hewn out of the living rock and covering some 500m². of the Hypogeum complex.( Hypogeum = underground chambers, in Greek). Certain walls reveal that the complex was excavated by drilling the walls with antlers and then using stone (obsidian, flint, and chert) tools to break away the rock. Excavation of the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum ( derived from Saflieni Temple period 4000 BC) produced a wealth of archaeological material, including numerous human bones, which suggests that the burial ritual had more than one stage. It appears that bodies were probably left exposed until the flesh had decomposed and fallen off. The remaining bones and what appear to be some of the personal belongings were then gathered and buried within the chambers together with copious amounts of red ochre. The use of ochre seems to have been a part of the ritual, perhaps to infuse the bones with the color of blood and life. Individuals were not buried separately, but piled onto each other.

Artifacts recovered from the site include pottery vessels decorated in intricate designs, shell buttons, stone and clay beads and amulets, as well as little stone carved animals and birds that may have originally been worn as pendants. The most striking finds are stone and clay figurines depicting human figures. One of the most striking figures is the Sleeping Lady of the Hypogeum. This statuette shows a rotund female lying on her side on an elaborate woven bed. She is clothed in gathered skirts, and her hair is dressed in a small, neat bun.( see photograph).
Since the moment I landed there I made it a point to visit all the megalithic temples especially the burial site of Hal Saflieni, for the week I was to spend in Malta. Entrance tickets to the Hypogeum are sold out 3 months in advance, especially since the site was reopened after 11 years of preservation work in 2017. Getting friendly with cab drivers can sometimes be very useful((I had penetrated the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem in 2000, during when non Muslims were not allowed after the first intifadah. I evaded deep questioning by Israeli soldiers and reported my name as Ramdan- a foolish move that could have landed me in trouble. I also wore an Arab jalaba, made possible by my Muslim cab driver. I was inspired by Dan Rather's penetration of Mecca in his halcyon days as a celebrated reporter.)

My regular Maltese cab driver knew someone inside the museum and I was promised an entry in the event one of the ticket holders would cancel. It was not to happen. Since 2000, after its first major preservation efforts, Heritage Malta limited site tours to 80 individuals per day.
With 8 sessions a day with only 10 people allowed at a time to keep CO2 levels low in the chambers, ticket supply was obviously scarce.
I finally I learned that 10 tickets per day were allotted to the general public, that too for use two days after purchase This was available at an obscure office if I lined up at 6:00 AM near the harbor. One cold morning I was out there for three hours with a medley of other history fanatics at 6:00 AM and was the first to obtain a ticket. I have never worked this hard for a ticket in all my life, and the result of which is well registered in the annals of my travel achievements .

The Hypogeum provides insights into Malta’s Temple Culture and its contemporary above-ground structures. Several chambers are still decorated with black and white checkerboards and red ochre spirals and honey-combs, the only prehistoric paintings found on the island. Corbelled ceilings hint at how the ancient people of Malta supported roofs on the abundant above-ground buildings, now in ruins, found throughout the islands. Techniques used included 'fish-eye' carving, the same technique used to make the Parthenon appear straight, only several thousand years earlier, underground and out of solid stone! Architecture aficionados must note that it is the very first instance of sculptured architecture by human beings on record. Like other megalith structures in Malta, the Hypogeum fell out of use by 2,500 BCE as the religious control of the cults fell out of favor as a result of other influences, or famine caused by increased aridity of the land.

The Hypogeum’s newest preservation efforts include both passive and active measures, from improved insulation to better control humidity and temperature to modernized technology for studying microorganism growth and tracking real-time changes to the site’s microclimate. I must remark that the lack of respect for UN organizations, especially UNESCO and UNICEF, by the Trump administration despite being apolitical organizations administration can cause serious damage to the preservation of our cultural heritage. While EU has stepped up to provide funding protection to many monuments around the world it is time for China to play its part as a patron of global cultural heritage; to protect "the Patrimony of Humanity" pledge by UNESCO and enhance the work done by Western institutions for the past few decades.

Sources:
Scientific American
Smithsonian Institution
Ceramica Liska- Timeline drawing
UNESCO

Contact: [email protected]
Ramdasiyerphotography.com

Other Photos:

A big fan of Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim", Borneo had always stuck in my mind as the ultimate frontier. In 1838, British adventurer James Brooke arrived to find the Sultan of Brunei fending off rebellion from warlike inland tribes. Sarawak ( Malaysian Borneo) was in chaos. Brooke put down the rebellion, and was made Governor of Sarawak in 1841, with the title of Rajah. This event led Rudyard Kipling to create" Man Who would be King" and Conrad" Lord Jim"; two colonial classics that ring in me as an amateur historian and adventurer.
Borneo is the third largest island in the world after Greenland and New Guinea. Straddling the equator, it covers 750,000 square kilometers (290,000 square miles), more than twice the area of the British Isles or more than Texas and Louisiana combined, and measures about 1290 kilometers (800 miles) from north to south and 800 kilometers (500 miles) from east to west. The northern 25 percent is occupied the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, and the Islamic sultanate of Brunei; and the southern 75 percent is occupied by the Indonesian state of Kalimantan.
My penchant for Island cultures has resulted in a few articles involving island cultures in this magazine: Madagascar, Bali, Papua New Guinea and nine articles covering Indonesian islands including Borneo.
Borneo is part of an archipelago called the Greater Sunda Islands. It is thinly populated and covered by mountains and rain forests. Most of the cities and towns are along the coast. The soil is poor. Large areas of the coast are made up of marshes and mangrove swamps. Most of the interior consists of rugged mountains interspersed with deep gorges. This area is laced with clear and whiskey-colored streams. The highest point 13,455-foot-high Mount Kinabulu in Sabah. In Kalimantan few areas rise above 3,000 feet. The highest point, in the central range there is 9,582 feet.
The rain forest on Borneo covers an area about the size of France

In 1996 I landed in Banjarmasin, Kalimantan ( Indonesian Borneo) with great visions of seeing long houses, Dayak head hunters and raw jungle infested with proboscis monkeys and Orangutans. Much to my naiveté and ill preparedness (I was an expat serving in India and did not have the right resources, including internet which was in its infancy, to plan) I ended up with coastal communities who were totally Islamic and displayed little ferocity from those mentioned in Victorian tales of yore.
Despite these shortcomings I made my way to the pier straight from the airport and negotiated with some seedy folks to travel the mighty Barito river that flowed 400 km into the dark interior. I wanted to see long houses but they were 4 days away and my short trip did not allow me, nor was I adventurous then to partake on a perilous journey such as that. After 6 hours in the water facing the most thunderous rain storms ever experienced while on a boat, I finally arrived at a place were there a few proboscis monkeys. With my basic 35mm Pentax SLR I captured whatever that moved with a blur in the wetness of the surrounding rain forest.

Later next day an interesting sight in the streets of Balikpapan led me to a small art shop where a native Dayak was selling his Mandau- hunting sword. It was made of amazing metalwork, its hilt bone finely embossed ( human femurs were used at times) with its finely woven rattan handles frayed after a few years of use. The shop keeper arranged for a trade and worked on it that night to 're-rattan' the handle and varnish it. I would never know if any heads were taken with it, but the highly designed entrails separator at the top section of the sword with gold embossed design was enough for Indonesian customs officials in Djakarta from trying to prevent me from removing a national treasure. ( Photos attached)
But that experience left me longing for an adventure that would get me to the long houses, Dayaks and their interesting villages. Why Dayaks ? you may wonder. I have a morbid fascination for cannibals, head hunters and mortuary rituals. In my previous articles in Travellerspoint, I have elaborated on cannibalism and head hunting in Irian Jaya and Papua New guinea, funeral traditions in Sulawesi, Bali, Iran, India and Madagascar. Here I will attempt to combine headhunting practices alongside interesting funeral traditions of the Dayak people.
The Dayak or Dyak are a people indigenous to Borneo. It is a loose term for over 200 riverine and hill-dwelling ethnic subgroups, located principally in the interior of Borneo, each with its own dialect, customs, laws, territory and culture, although common distinguishing traits are readily identifiable. Dayak languages are categorized as part of the Austronesian languages in Asia. The Dayak were animist in belief; however many converted to Christianity, and some to Islam more recently. Estimates for the Dayak population range from 2 to 4 million. Dayak population estimated at about four million spread over the four Indonesian provinces in Kalimantan / Borneo, the Malaysian territories of Sabah and Sarawak and Brunei Darussalam.
In the past, anthropologists described the Dayak as the "legendary natives of Borneo" who lived in longhouse and engaged in head-hunting. Today, they form a small minority, the loser in an era of swift change and modernization.

In 2015, a good two decades later I finally returned to Kalimantan. This time, after an elaborate photographic trip to record the wonderful Orangutans in Tanjung Putung, I allowed myself to reach the interior.
The Beconsu puyan dayaks live a good 6 hours upstream on the Lamandau river from the river town of Pankulunbun, where boats to Tanjung Putung National Park travel on the Sekoyner river. Like all rivers near the coast, the Lamandau is close to half a kilometer wide and slowly closes in to about 200 meters upstream where we were headed. I was surprised to see the small 4 seater speed boat, something Pierce Brosnan used to navigate the canals of Saigon in the pursuit of world order. All our luggage , gasoline tanks and my angry Dayak guide sat on the bow of this boat. After two noisy hours on the wide river we arrived at a small village where I had lunch at a small Islamic restaurant. Some rice and chicken with a warm soda. My young guide and I went shopping for grocery along the river market, vegetables etc since we were expected to cook our own food. Another 4 hours of passing boats laden with hardwood timber( the interior was getting deforested at an alarming rate with the forests being replaced by palm oil plantations. The impact on the wild life and especially the Orangutan population has been a ecological disaster.
In the past deforestation in Borneo was historically low due to infertile soils, unfavorable climate, and the presence of disease. Deforestation only began in earnest during the mid-twentieth century. Industrial logging rose in the 1970s as Malaysia depleted its peninsular forests, and former Indonesian strongman President Suharto distributed large tracts of forest to cement political relationships with army generals. Thus, logging expanded significantly in the 1980s, with logging roads providing access to remote lands for settlers and developers.
Logging in Borneo in the 1980s and 1990s was some of the most intensive the world has ever seen, with 60–240 cubic meters of wood being harvested per hectare versus 23 cubic meters per hectare in the Amazon. In Kalimantan for example, some 80% of lowlands went to timber concessions, including virtually all its mangrove forests. By the late 1980s, it became clear that Indonesia and Malaysia were facing a problem of timber crisis due to over-logging. Demand from timber mills was far-outstripping log production in both Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Borneo mountain rainforests lie in the central highlands of the island, above the 1,000 meters (3,300 ft) elevation. These areas represent habitat for many endangered species; orangutans, pygmy elephants and rare endemics such as the elusive Hose's civet. The Bornean orangutan has been a critically endangered species since 2016.

As well as Borneo's importance in biodiversity conservation and as a carbon sink, the forests have significance for water security and food sovereignty for local communities of indigenous peoples. About an hour from our destination we hit some serious rapids making it unsafe for me to travel. So the "captain" decided to unload my guide and I on the river bank, where we had to walk half a mile while he guided the boat through amazing skill through the rocky rapids, to pick us up a while later.
We disembarked onto a pallet sized pier and climbed the banks to hit the main road of the Dayak village of Bokonsu. It is perhaps one of the few villages along the river which still has a traditional longhouse that is still owned by the village chief Pak Dinson. The longhouse had been built by his great grandfather around the turn of the century when Dayaks lived like the fabled tribe as described by Conrad.

For me just being in the compound where the long house was surrounded by crypts of many family members from the 19th century, stacked in wooden boxes, was simply fascinating. A central pole, with a special box traditionally signified that the bones of the enemies were kept there to bring power to the village. Since I had arrived early the long house was empty but for a couple of young girls. Unable to contain my excitement I walked around all the burial crypts and shot some nice photographs. The leader of the village also the owner of the long house was a formidable looking Dayak, Chief Dinson welcomed me into his home as soon as he arrived from his job as a security guard in a plantation. As long houses go, the one in Bakonsu was relatively small. Perhaps 200 feet long and 40 feet wide, with an attached structure that serves as a latter-day kitchen. The entire floor was matted with reed mats with a few windows throwing very little light into the structure. There was no cross ventilation inside and it was quite hot and humid inside with no electricity but for a weak bulb powered by a 2 x 2 ft solar panel by days sunlight. There was not a hint of a breeze anywhere.
Many Bornean people have traditionally lived in longhouses that hold up to a 150 people and are like a village under one roof. In the center of house is a common room off which the rooms of the house radiate, sort of like side streets off of a main square. The rooms are connected by a common veranda or porch. The kitchen is divided from the main room by a wall and in the corner an area, where women slept. Men often slept outside. There were traditionally no windows. In the old days there were no possessions except for some large pots used for storing and fermenting.

I was given a thin mattress and a mosquito net which my guide erected for me , trapping some specimens inside that I had to swat during the night. The only access to this tall long house was a notched wooden plank, which traditionally is lifted up at night like a ship's gang plank. This was done to prevent headhunting raids by neighboring enemies. I cannot imagine a life in the jungle with enemies constantly prowling to take your head. The very fact that they lived in a longhouse made me realize that this kind of structure was purely an arrangement for security. It was a fortress on dry land to stymie head hunting raids.

I was not quite sure what to expect and how the evening was going to pass after sun down. My guide was busy chopping vegetables and cooking some chicken in the wood burning stoves in the adjacent structure. Of course with no running water but river water had been pumped into a giant overhead tank by a village owned diesel pump that sat on a barge by the small pier. I suspect all houses had their own wells since the water table was quite high in the area. In the meanwhile my boatman's wife was preparing his meal in the kitchen too. She had traveled with us for this very purpose perhaps including the provision of other spousal benefits.
Around 7:00 PM people started walking into the house, the women in sarong, some men wearing a lunghi while others were wearing a regular trouser and shirt: their Sunday best. None spoke English but as they were gathering and greeting each other a small gamelan ensemble had also assembled in a corner. It ceased to be a quiet corner anymore. The clanging of cymbals and the striking of the badegong drums was a bit cacophonous, until the rice wine arrived to numb ones senses.
I was finally told that I am going to receive the customary Dayak welcome. Potong pontan is a welcoming ceremony in which guest are given a machete by the village chief and asked to cut through plants placed at the entrance of the village to purge evil spirits. As they hack away the guests explain why they are visiting. Likewise I recollect visiting Wae Rebo, a village perched at an altitude of 4000 ft in Flores (Nusa Tenggara). After an 8 hour trek, I was shown the house of the chief (Manggarai clan) where he conducted a brief ceremony to request his ancestors for my permission to visit and that I will be kept away from harm.
Pak Dinson's family made me wear full native garb, turban included. They then seated me on a special 'throne" and thereafter the assemblage of a half a dozen women tied strings on my wrist to reflect their affection and to offer protection. A few decades ago, while seated on this makeshift throne, I would have been impressed by the rows of decorated skulls of fallen enemies hanging from the roof and corner, skull racks. Today all I could see was a few Hornbill skulls since the government has banned the exposition of human body parts.
Skulls from headhunting raids have traditionally been displayed in longhouses. Some longhouses today still have heads hanging from the ceiling as relics of their glorious past. The most recent ones are Japanese heads taken in World War II. In the mid 40s there was a spike in the number of head hunting occurrences as the Allies encouraged any means to defeat the Japanese. There was another increase in the 60s when the Indonesian government, fearing the spread of communism, encouraged the head hunting of Chinese immigrants. Headhunting is believed to still be practiced in some remote areas.

Head hunting was a Dayak was part and parcel of their religious rites. Births and “ naming,’’ marriages and burials, not to mention less important events, cannot be properly celebrated unless the heads of a few enemies, more or less, have been secured to grace the festivities or solemnities.
Heads taken in headhunting raids brought glory to the warrior who collected them and good luck to their village. They were usually preserved and worshiped in special rituals. Head-hunting rituals are needed for spiritual benefits such as for agriculture (rice) and the building of a new house (longhouse). Certain parts of the body—the heart, brains, blood and liver—was believed to bring power to those who consumed them. Some Dayaks of Sarawak used to eat the palms of their enemies. Cutting out the heart, it was believed, destroys the evil that is believed to reside in that organ.

I was given a buffalo horn and each man and woman of the village took turns to pour rice wine into my horn. After 10 such passes, I gracefully stumbled out of my royal perch. As the attached photographs show, I was dancing with the women and men in a slow trance inducing dance, augmented by the cacophony of the pentatonic beat of the ensemble.
This moment could have been very touristy except that I was the only person there and quietly decided to go native. The women, were very flirtatious right under the noses of their husbands. I was quite surprised. While I have seen some beautiful Dayak women in photographs, I was not quite lucky since my female admirers were mostly machete wielding plantation workers.

Henry Keppel wrote in “Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido for the Suppression of Piracy” in the early 1840s: “We were fortunate in visiting these Dyaks during one of their grand festivals in the evening; dancing, singing, and drinking were going on in various parts of the village. In one house there was a grand fete, in which the women danced with the men. The dress of the women was simple and, curious — a light jacket open in front, and a short petticoat not coming below the knees, fitting close, was hung round with jingling bits of brass, which kept “making music'* wherever they went. The movement was like all other native dances — graceful, but monotonous. There were four men, two of them bearing human skulls, and two the fresh heads of pigs; the women bore wax-lights, or yellow rice on brass dishes. They danced in line, moving backwards and forwards, and carrying the heads and dishes in both hands; the graceful part was the manner in which they half turned the body to the right and left, looking over their shoulders and holding the heads in the opposite direction, as if they were in momentary expectation of someone coming up behind to snatch the nasty relic from them. At times the women knelt down in a group, with the men leaning over them. After all, the music was not the only thing wanting to make one imagine oneself at the opera. The necklaces of the women were chiefly of teeth — bears' the most common — human the most prized. In an interior house at one end were collected the relics of the tribe. These consisted of several round-looking stones, two deer's heads, and other inferior trumpery. The stones turn black if the tribe is to be beaten in war, and red if to be victorious: any one touching them would be sure to die; if lost, the tribe would be ruined."




The rice wine was quite potent and I was afraid of either being too familiar with the women or simply collapse from my knees suffering from the inability to bear the weight of my drunken frame. The very thought of having to climb down the notched ladder for a toilet break was quite unimaginable. Late in the evening I sat alone with Dinson the formidable looking chief ( who is now reduced to be the Head of security at a Chinese owned plantation)sat with me and traded war stories. While many of his stories were passed on by his forebears he had personally been involved with the rest of the village in a major battle with the Madurese people. He proudly produced his mandau, which had 5 notches to my guide's three. A notch is a score and I leave the rest to your imagination.

"This story needs to be told as every male over 25 was involved in this battle with the Madurese people in 2001. Madura is famous throughout Indonesia as a place to leave. Its poor soil and lack of industry make staying generally a one-way ticket to poverty. Many ethnic Madurese now live in eastern Java, but in the 1950s they began going to Borneo as well, some under government-sponsored “transmigration” schemes, others under their own steam. Migration was seen as a way to develop the jungles of the “land of rivers” and to relieve population pressures elsewhere in Indonesia. It was also a way to consolidate the government's hold on its restive regions.
Barren Madura is not much of a place for agriculture, so the newcomers tend to be laborers or traders. They have not mixed well. All ethnic groups in Central Kalimantan complain about the Madurese: they say they are aggressive, they try to encroach on land, they cheat and steal, and quickly get violent in disputes over women. Say a good word about a Madurese in Borneo and it might cost you your head.
For their part, most Dayaks retain adat, their traditional culture. This involves a reverence for ancestors and looks back to Borneo's past as a land of head-hunters in a perpetual state of war with one another. Heads were once needed to sanctify a new common house and in a host of other ceremonies. Dutch colonialists eventually persuaded the Dayaks to use buffalo heads instead. The practice of beheading humans was said to have virtually died out, until 1997.


The latest battlefield, near Pangalunbun the capital, in the long war between indigenous Dayaks and Madurese migrants, the warriors with their traditional mandau swords swap tales of eating human liver. The heads, livers and hearts of their victims have magical properties, they say. Beheading is their traditional way of killing their enemies, state-of-the-art magic their secret weapon.

The Madurese in Pankalanbun area have all gone or been killed now, but until February 2001 the town was around 60% Madurese. They were relatively prosperous, but aware of the violence Madurese had faced in West Kalimantan. In all this the government, as usual in Indonesia, has mostly been absent. A Dayak who has put on a red headband has declared that he is at war. And according to tradition, once at war he must kill someone and drink the victim's blood." writes the Economist magazine.

Late that night I was back in my mosquito net battling the remaining hungry mosquitoes. Morning came without much rest and it was time to leave. While Dinson had left early, he came back to wish us good bye and gave me something I still possess with great nostalgia: the head of a giant hornbill. These hornbill heads are used in Dayak's head dresses as their main ornament. He had no enemy skulls to give me since they were all either hidden or left inside the ceramic urn in the front of the house.

We left the longhouse on a walk around the village. Beautiful dayak rice granaries, some overgrown with weed. A couple of long houses were in deep decay. I met smiling people wherever I went until such time I reached the rivers bank to make my 4hour journey back down stream. My excitement was not quite over as I my guide pointed out to an ancestor's totem planted by the river. the interred bones were on an ceramic urn 60 feet from the ground- far away from any spirit seeking enemies.

The End

Send comments to [email protected]

Photo Gallery

Standing in the once blood splattered arena of this magnificent coliseum at El jem ( ancient Thysdrus) immediately reminded me of a glorious empire where Romans enjoyed good times in their colonies with wine, women and sport. The mosaics recovered from the villas that once dotted this rich city then known as Thysdrus was an eye-opener for me as to the reach, wealth and governance of the pro consuls and Emperors of Rome. Mosaics unearthed at the coliseum reveal a poor man prodded at spear point toward a leopard. The beast already seems to have drawn blood evident in the red tiles that embellish the lavish mosaic floor that once decorated the arena.

The Thysdrus coliseum was one of the largest in the Roman world seating over 35000. The dungeons that I descended into revealed several holding pens for men and beasts until their fated rendezvous at the arena. The place put goose bumps in Hindu skin!. Scenes from the mega hit "Gladiator" and "Life of Brian " were shot here, yet most of us are not aware of this amazing edifice. Even though incomplete, the construction of the amphitheater at Thysdrus was a remarkable feat. Unlike other coliseums/ amphitheaters that were built into hills, this was built on a plain, and it had no foundation to support its massive weight. It was an entirely freestanding structure supported by an intricate network of vaults and arches. It took an elliptical form, and researchers think that it probably had four floors.
The amphitheater, the largest such Roman monument in North Africa since it was erected, measures 138m by 114m, and it had 2 passageways beneath it for the animals, gladiators, and prisoners whose deaths were to entertain the masses.
While most estimates put the sitting capacity of the theater at 35,000, though some go as high as 60,000, which would make it virtually equal in capacity to the Coliseum in Rome. The amphitheater is ranked as the third largest Roman coliseum/ amphitheater in the world, falling behind the Coliseum in Rome, and the Coliseum in Capua (close to Naples, Italy). I was not, until doing research for this article, realize that there were around 105 coliseums built in the Roman world at the time of 100 AD.
The stones used to build the amphitheater were quarried 50km away, and they were clearly worth the distance. The amphitheater has survived for more than 17 centuries, weathering the elements and man’s numerous attempts at its destruction.
The urge to write this article about the events that lead to the building of the coliseum was paramount to me. In the process of doing research I figured that the history of this area should be partitioned into 4 sections; 1. The Carthaginian empire of Tunisia 2. The Saharan trade during Roman times 3. Life in Thysdrus in 230 AD and 4. the life of gladiators. Since there was no comprehensive source to answer these questions, I decided to assemble this article for those who may find this subject interesting.
The history of Tunisia is a catalog of conquest- The rise and fall of Carthage( Phoenicians) and later that of Rome, followed by the rise of Byzantium, coming of the vandals( Germans), spread of Arabs and the Ottoman Turks and lastly by the French. We Americans were there too. During the Allied invasion of North Africa, US GIs who crossed into Tunisia from Morocco and Algeria faced Rommel's army in Kasserine pass on February20, 1943. " On this day, German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launched an offensive against an Allied defensive line. The Kasserine Pass was the site of the United States’ first major battle defeat of the war. Rommel broke through Allied lines, inflicting devastating casualties on the U.S. forces. The Americans withdrew from their position, leaving behind most of their equipment. More than 1,000 American soldiers were killed by Rommel’s offensive, and hundreds were taken prisoner. "The United States had finally tasted defeat in battle." quotes a History Channel report.

1. Carthaginian Empire of Tunisia
We have all heard a lot about the Punic wars between Rome and Carthage. Who were the Phoenicians? The culture known as Phoenician was flourishing as early as 3000 B.C. in the Levant, a coastal region now divided primarily between Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. But it wasn't until around 1100 B.C., after a period of general disorder and social collapse throughout the region, that they emerged as a significant cultural and political force. From the ninth to sixth centuries B.C. they dominated the Mediterranean Sea, establishing emporiums and colonies from Cyprus in the east to the Islands of the Aegean Sea, Sicily near Italy, in current day Tunisia in North Africa, and Spain in the west. They grew rich trading precious metals from abroad and products such as wine, olive oil, and most notably the timber from the famous cedars of Lebanon, which forested the mountains that rise steeply from the coast of their homeland. They also possessed the greatest fleet of sailing vessels known to ancient man.
Acting as cultural middlemen, the Phoenicians disseminated ideas, myths, and knowledge from the powerful Assyrian and Babylonian worlds in what is now Syria and Iraq to their contacts in the Aegean. Those ideas helped spark a cultural revival in Greece, one which led to the Greeks' Golden Age and hence the birth of Western civilization. The Phoenicians imported so much papyrus from Egypt that the Greeks used their name for the first great Phoenician port, Byblos, to refer to the ancient paper. The name Bible, or "the book," also derives from Byblos. The Phoenicians eventually defeated the Greeks in Sicily and set up a large empire controlling the western Mediterranean from Tunisia into Sicily, Cyprus and Lebanon. After the fall of the great Phoenician city of Tyre (Lebanon) to Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, those Tyrians who were able to escape fled to Carthage with whatever wealth they had. Since many whom Alexander spared were those rich enough to buy their lives, these refugees landed in the city with considerable means and established Carthage as the new centre of Phoenician trade. I was so fascinated by the Pheonicians that I immersed myself in museums in Malta and Tunisia where they had made their imprint.

Roaming through the ruins of Carthage, just outside Tunis, I witnessed the terrible destruction wrought by Rome on Carthage.The Romans chose not to reoccupy this beautiful port city on the Mediterranean but instead bent on razing it to the ground and out of the history books. The Carthage museum, The Bardo Museum in Tunis and the Museum of Archeology in Valetta, Malta gave me a full account of Phoenician cultural sophistication garnered from artifacts displayed from their trade with Egypt, Greece, Iberia and the Levant.
The Punic Wars were a series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 BC to 146 BC. At the time, they were some of the largest wars that had ever taken place. The term Punic comes from the Latin word Punicus (or Poenicus), meaning "Carthaginian", with reference to the Carthaginians' Phoenician ancestry.
The main cause of the Punic Wars was the conflicts of interest between the existing Carthaginian Empire and the expanding Roman Republic. The Romans were initially interested in expansion via Sicily part of which lay under Carthaginian control. At the start of the First Punic War (264-241 BC), Carthage was the dominant power of the Western Mediterranean, with an extensive maritime empire. Rome was a rapidly ascending power in Italy, but it lacked the naval power of Carthage. The Second Punic War (218-201 BC) witnessed Hannibal's crossing of the Alps in 218 BC, followed by a prolonged but ultimately failed campaign of Carthage's Hannibal in mainland Italy. By the end of the Third Punic War (149-146 BC), after more than a hundred years and the loss of many hundreds of thousands of soldiers from both sides, Rome had conquered Carthage's empire, completely destroyed the city, and became the most powerful state of the Western Mediterranean.
With the end of the Macedonian Wars ( Greece) – which ran concurrently with the Punic Wars – and the defeat of the Seleucid King Antiochus III ( Persia) in the Great Roman–Seleucid War (Treaty of Apamea, 188 BC) in the eastern sea, Rome emerged as the dominant Mediterranean power and one of the most powerful cities in classical antiquity. The Roman victories over Carthage in these wars gave Rome a preeminent status it would retain until the 5th century AD. This ascendance of Rome over its Mediterranean neighbors were made possible by their glorious victory in the third Punic war.
This sets the stage for the rest of my article.

2. The Saharan Trade Routes.
Gold has been the most important and enduring element that has shaped West Africa and its interactions with the wider world for nearly 2000 years. The Garamantes were Berber semi-pastoralists who lived almost directly south of what would become Carthage and controlled the trade going into and coming out of the Sahara from West Africa. It has been suggested that the Garamantians traded directly with the Bambuk around the headwaters of the Senegal and Niger rivers. The Phoenician settlement of Carthage, was fabled for its gold, where many coins were minted for six centuries. It is probable that by the time of the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC trade across the Sahara had come to a standstill. It would be at least another two hundred years before any form of regular trade came to be established across the Sahara again. The camel was introduced from Arabia into North Africa by the Romans around 100 AD making it possible for people to regularly and reliably traverse the Sahara. From at least 400 AD onwards camel mounted Berber established trade routes across the Sahara to West Africa. The camel and the caravans it enabled came to dominate the trans-Saharan trade until the second half of the twentieth century.
The introduction of the camel allowed for constant communication to be maintained between the Berbers on both shores of the Sahara. With their camels these people, bridged the desert, and carried an ever-growing trade, in which southbound salt was exchanged for northbound gold. There were four principal routes across the Sahara: – The Salima trail from Cyrenacia to Wadai ( Chad to Libyan coast); – The Bilma Trail from Tripoli to Kawar ( Western Sudan to Tripoli); – The Gadames Road from Ghat to the Hausa country ( Niger River to Southern Libya); – The Sijilmassa – Walata Road from Morocco to the Middle Niger and Upper Senegal. Each of these routes represented a two month journey, with long waterless stretches between oases. The most important of these routes, Sijilmasa to Walata, was founded on the gold of the Upper Niger that was exchanged for the salt of the Saharan oases of Tagaza and Taodeni. The first Berber traders to reach the southern shores of the Sahel found an already long established and extensive trading system within West Africa. The trans Saharan trade and outside influence did not initiate the initial establishment of West African trading systems; instead the Berber allowed for the intermeshing of two previously wholly separate trading systems, that of the Mediterranean and that of West Africa..
As the nomads learned to know the great value of gold in the Roman world, they started bartering it from the peoples of West Africa for salt and copper. The gold was carried to the north, where it was probably used for payment of dates, corn and such handicrafts which the nomads could not produce themselves. The nomads may have bought also some luxury objects made in the Roman world, which they bartered for gold in the south. The Berbers also controlled the salt mines of the southern Sahara along with providing caravan security and route guidance.
All this gold ended up as coinage minted by the Carthaginians and Romans. There was a constant need for gold and the African colonies supplied it intermittently. Thysdrus lying in the cross roads of these caravan routes enjoyed great prosperity, both through trade, providing sanctuary for caravans and becoming one of the leading exporters of olive oil for the Roma Empire.

3. Life in Thysdrus in 230 AD
The origins of Thysdrus remain obscure. The recent discoveries cast little light on the pre-Roman period. Traces of occupation before the 300 B.C. are rare. From its name the city seems to have Berber rather than Punic origins. The name appeared for the first time in the period of Caesar's African campaign when the city, although closely involved with the events which shook the country, seems to have been no more than a small town. Towards the end of the 200 AD it became a municipium, competing with Hadrumetum ( another Phoenician city 100 miles south of Carthage and a few miles north of Thysdrus, for the second place in the province. Thysdrus lay amid a large olive-growing region, and since olive oil was in great demand in Rome during that period, the town prospered rapidly to become the leading olive-growing center of North Africa. With a population of between 20,000 and 30,000, the town accumulated enormous wealth, much of which - as in other Roman towns - was spent on the erection of both public buildings and private houses
In A.D. 238, its opulence, almost isolated in the midst of the empire in crisis, attracted the covetousness of the Emperor Maximianus. Under severe pressure, Thysdrus initiated a revolt which led to the assassination of a procurator of the treasury and the proclamation of the proconsul of Africa, Gordian I, as emperor. Thysdrus owed its fortune in ancient times to commerce. Its situation made it a market town at a crossroads of the communication routes of Central Tunisia. It served as intermediary between the ports and the hinterland as much for imports as for exports. The merchants of Thysdrus were active as far as the distant regions of the Orient. Yet Thysdrus owed the great part of its fortune to the spread, from the end of the 200AD of its olive plantations and its trade in oil. Today with its remains spread over 150 to 200 ha, it is classed among the most extensive archeological sites in Tunisia. Although an important part of its remains is yet to be explored and other parts are covered over again by modern structures, there are existing or recently excavated monuments in a good state of preservation.
The large amphitheater is the most celebrated and the best preserved of all the Roman monuments in this category in Africa. With a capacity of 35,000 spectators, it is classed among the largest amphitheaters of antiquity. The spectacles on show were fairly bloody but rather than gladiatorial contests, the fashion was to watch slaves, Christians, and criminals being executed. It is thought that lions were used as there were what looked like claw marks gouged in what was left of the marble around the arena. In the absence of an inscription, the exact date of the construction of the building is not known. Some attribute it to Gordian III who, towards the middle of the 200 AD might have built it for the glorification of the town which had brought his grandfather Gordian I to the throne.

Thysdrus also had a Hippodrome or circus maximus , an ancient Roman chariot racing stadium and mass entertainment venue ( It is scarcely visible on the terrain. Its existence was revealed with remarkable clarity by aerial photography.)
At its peak in the second and third centuries AD, the Roman Empire stretched across most of northern Europe and around much of the Mediterranean ( see Roman Empire Map provided). In North Africa the Romans built towns and cities from Alexandria (Egypt) in the East to Lixus and Volubilis (Morocco) in the West ( visited in 2008 by me and can be found in my website). Everywhere, the Romans built on the same general pattern, leaving behind the familiar elements of Roman urban planning and civic life that characterize the archaeological sites that remain today. Roman towns typically had many grand public buildings including a Capitol, Basilica, Amphitheatre and Public Baths, a triumphal arch and Forum (central square), with wide streets laid out on a grid. Water was brought into town via elaborately built aqueducts and the towns were usually surrounded by a defensive wall with grand entrance gates and sentry posts along their length. The houses of the wealthy classes were opulent, with colonnaded courtyards and lavish mosaics in many of the rooms.

Wanting to further investigate the mosaics of Thysdrus, I spent a couple of hours in the museum which contained many architectonic elements that belonged to the decoration of the city’s superb villas and public buildings and in particular, the sumptuous mosaic pavements, undoubtedly amongst the finest of Roman antiquity. The museum was built on the site of a roman villa and reproduces its layout: a central courtyard with a peristyle leading into the rooms where sculptures, mosaics, ceramics etc are displayed. These originate from the excavation campaigns carried out in Thysdrus as well as in the vicinity. It houses an exceptional collection of mosaics, most of them in much better condition than those at the famous Bardo in Tunis. An entire street of Roman villas has been excavated next to the museum; there are still some mosaics in situ, and I could easily make out the layout as I walked around.


4. The life of gladiators
While this article is written around the coliseum at Thysdrus, I have thus far only given the reader a glimpse of the Roman conquest of Carthage, the Saharan trade that made Thysdrus rich and a brief history of Thysdrus. The life of the gladiator as seen in movies like Spartacus and The Gladiator is very different than the reality on the ground. I will venture here to elaborate on the role of gladiators and games in Roman society, which ties in well with the tenor of this article.
Of Romans, the famous Christian theologian (150-240AD), Tertullian exclaims, "Next taunts or mutual abuse without any warrant of hate, and applause, unsupported by affection....The perversity of it! They love whom they lower; they despise whom they approve; the art they glorify, the artist they disgrace" (De Spectaculus, XXII).
Adopted from the earlier Etruscans(of Tuscany) predecessors of Romans, gladiatorial games (munera) originated in the rites of sacrifice due the spirits of the dead and the need to propitiate them with offerings of blood. They were introduced to Rome in 264 BC, Traditionally as an obligatory funerary offerings owed aristocratic men at their death. Elected in 65 BC, Julius Caesar commemorated his father, who had died twenty years before, with a display of 320 pairs of gladiators in silvered armor. In 46 BC, after recent victories in Gaul and Egypt, Caesar again hosted elaborate games at the tomb of his daughter Julia, who had died in childbirth eight years earlier (together with stage plays and beast fights, they included the first appearance of a giraffe). The display was criticized, however, for its extravagance and the number slain, including several of Caesar's own soldiers, who protested that none of the money was being allotted to them .
After the slave revolt of Spartacus in 73 BC, a nervous Senate limited the number of gladiators allowed in Rome. The State assumed greater control of public games and large numbers of gladiators were trained in imperial schools. Most gladiators were prisoners of war, slaves bought for the purpose, or criminals condemned to serve in the schools. (At a time when three of every five persons did not survive until their twentieth birthday, the odds of a professional gladiator being killed in any particular bout, at least during the first century AD, were perhaps one in ten)
Free men also volunteered to be gladiators and, by the end of the Republic, comprised half the number who fought. Often, they were social outcasts, freed slaves, discharged soldiers, or former gladiators who had been liberated on retirement but chose to return for a period of service. Commodus (AD 180-192) enthusiastically participated as a gladiator ( The movie The Gladiator draws on this fact).

The bestiarii were not gladiators, as such, but fought for their lives in the arena against wild beasts. The venatores were specialists of wild animal hunts (venationes). The popularity of these cruel spectacles was such that, by the time they were abolished in AD 523 during the consulship of Flavius Anicius Maximus, tens of thousands of animals had died, and entire species were no longer to be found in their native habitat, all having been captured or driven away. There were no more hippopotamuses in Nubia or elephants in northern Africa; the lions which once had been represented in Assyrian reliefs were gone. Either five thousand or ten thousand animals were reported to have died in the dedication of the Coliseum; eleven thousand died in the celebration of Trajan's conquest of Dacia; and Augustus boasted that, in the twenty-six venationes presented in his reign, thirty-five hundred animals had been killed. When Pompey presented elephants (and the first rhinoceros) at the Circus Maximus, he did so in part to demonstrate his power over even the strongest of beasts.

The day of the games, the gladiators were ceremoniously led in and paraded around the arena before presenting themselves at the emperor's podium .Preliminary events included bloodless, sometimes farcical, duels who likely fought with wooden weapons. Those to be used by the gladiators were demonstrated to be sharp and lethal, lots were drawn, and the war trumpet sounded. Then the games began. If the emperor was not in attendance, the producer of the games decided the fate of the victim. Even if defeated, a gladiator might be granted a reprieve if he fought well. But a gladiator also could be forced to fight again the same day, although that was considered bad form, and there were contests in which no reprieve was granted the loser. Victors were awarded crowns or a palm branch and the prize money stipulated in their contracts, as well as any money awarded by the crowd, which was collected on a silver tray. If a gladiator repeatedly survived the arena and lived long enough to retire, a symbolic wooden sword was awarded as a token of discharge from service.

The gladiator held a morbid fascination for the ancient Romans. Their blood was considered a remedy against impotence, and the bride whose hair had been parted by the spear of a defeated gladiator was thought to enjoy a fertile married life. Although their lives were brutal and short, gladiators often were admired for their bravery, endurance, and willingness to die. In forfeiting their lives in the arena, the gladiator was thought to honor the audience, and glory was what it could offer in return. They remained outcasts of society and were regarded no differently than criminals or members of other shameful professions. And yet, as the blood lust of the spectators, and emperors alike, the brutality of the combat, and the callous deaths of men and animals still disturb modern sensibilities. Certainly, Rome was cruel. Defeated enemies and criminals forfeited any right to a place within society, although they still might be saved from the death they deserved and be made slaves Because the life of the slave was forfeit, there was no question but that it could be claimed at any time. The gladiatorial shows were part of this culture of war, discipline, and death.
The public execution of those who did not submit to Rome, betrayed their country, or were convicted of heinous crimes vividly demonstrated the consequences of those actions. In a society that was deeply stratified (including seating in the Coliseum), the usurpation of undeserved rights could be rectified only by public degradation and death. In publicly witnessing such punishment, citizens were reassured that the proper social order has been restored and they, themselves, deterred from such actions. In this display, the games reaffirmed the moral and political order of things, and the death of criminals and wild animals, the real and symbolic re-establishment of a society under threat. In the arena, civilization triumphed over the wild and untamed, over the outlaw, the barbarian, the enemy.
At the time, only Seneca, the stoic Roman philosopher Statesman protested the carnage of the arena; most other Roman authors were silent or approving. Ostensibly, gladiatorial games were prohibited by the Byzantine emperor Constantine in AD 325 and the remaining schools closed by Honorius in AD 399. But they continued, in one form or another, until AD 404, when Honorius finally abolished munera altogether, prompted by the death of a Christian monk, Telemachus, who had entered the arena, endeavoring to stop the fight, and was stoned to death by the indignant crowd.- a monk, Gibbon observes (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), "whose death was more useful to mankind than his life."
Conclusive remarks.
Visiting the fabled arena had raised several questions in my mind. The answers given by my guide was at best sketchy. Upon return to the US I decided to research the life in Thysdrus, the life of gladiators and the audience at the coliseum who included citizens and caravan merchants seeking entertainment from their arduous journey across the Sahara. The Romano-Berber queen Kahina in her final attempt to stop the Arab invasion around 695 AD destroyed most of the olive trees of the Thysdrus area and used the amphitheater as a last defense, but was defeated. In the next centuries Thysdrus simply "disappeared" with the worsening arid climate that damaged the olive oil production, and by the tenth century many of the Thysdrus buildings were dismantled and used as stones for the Arab Kairouan. In the nineteenth century the French colonists found only a small village, named El Djem, with a few hundred inhabitants living around the remains of the amphitheater and surviving in very poor subsistence conditions.
Drifting sand is preserving the market city of Thysdrus and the refined suburban villas that once surrounded it. The amphitheatre occupies archaeologists’ attention despite no digging required. Some floor mosaics have been found and published, but field archaeology has scarcely been attempted. In the world of writing materials, Thysdrus lay in the Empire of Papyrus, which preserves remarkably well if kept as dry as at El Jem.

Leaving Tunisia behind was bitter sweet for I knew that it may be a long while before I would be able to visit its ancient sites on a truly intimate basis again.

End

The sources from which this article was extracted were many. Since this is not a for profit venture and serves as an advancement for learning, besides being already available to the general public, I am assuming copyright conditions do not apply.

Ramdas Iyer can be reached at [email protected]

Photo Gallery

The Sepik River

With a fascination for primitive cultures and as a collector of primitive art, Papua New Guinea was a country I had always wanted to explore. In 2010 I made a brief foray into Irian Jaya or West Papua ( part of Indonesia) to live among the Dani tribes. I had barely scratched the surface of this island with over 1100 cultures and 850 unique languages; the most diverse human population in the world. In 2017 I gave myself three weeks to experience river, oceanic and mountain cultures of this independent nation of only 6 million people. I chose the magnificent Sepik River province for my first article on PNG in this publication . I so thoroughly enjoyed myself that it resulted in my coming home with malaria contracted perhaps in the swampy areas where most people are always afflicted with the dreaded malaise.

The Sepik River at 1126 km in length and covering an area of 7.7 million hectares is one of the world's greatest river systems. The Sepik River is one of the least developed areas in PNG and home to approximately 430,000 people who depend almost entirely on products from the rivers and forests for their livelihoods. This is perhaps the most linguistically and culturally diverse area in the planet with over 300 languages in an area the size of France. The area is famed for the gabled spirit houses or "haus tambarans", one of the most dramatic examples of indigenous Melanesian architecture, and a very rich ceremonial carving and music tradition. Sepik peoples maintain their cultural integrity proudly and have influenced styles across the nation. Vegetation types, at altitudes from 0 to 3800 meters mean sea level include mangrove forest, herb swamps, tall lowland rainforest, cloud forest, and alpine heaths . Important water bird and crocodile populations are supported by the 1500 lakes and other wetlands associated with the basin.

Winding down from the timeless cloud forests of New Guinea’s Central Range, the Sepik River is most intact freshwater basins in the Asia Pacific region. The soul of Papua New Guinea, the Sepik is often compared with the Amazon and the Nile, and it sustains an amazing variety of flora and fauna — much of it endemic — along with a wellspring of human cultural expression. In particular, many of the region’s people are economically, culturally and spiritually tied to the crocodiles of the river. Along the banks of the river and its many tributaries live sparsely scattered, remote villages, scarcely contacted by the outside world, where people live a lifestyle that has changed little for thousands of years.

Revering the crocodiles that inhabit the rivers, the people of the Sepik have traditions and customs that can be found nowhere else, building large and elaborate twin level spirit houses (haus tambaran) in their villages to house the good spirits while producing intricate wood carvings to ward off the evil spirits. The top level is normally reserved for initiation ceremonies and a place holder for war shields, weaponry and skull racks containing decorated skulls of ancestors and enemies. This practise was stopped by missionaries in the 1950s. A dugout canoe journey through the Sepik Basin is both a cultural discovery of National Geographic proportions, and a retreat to a world where mankind survives at the mercy of nature. Ritual, genealogical and historical knowledge defines one group from another and maintains the distinctions that facilitate trade. The Sepik is a gallery of tribal art, where each village boasts a unique style and every villager an artisan.

Small wonder that the Sepik River area was declared a world heritage culture by UNESCO in 2006.

Head hunting was a river culture practice in the Sepik area. The fact that young men could only come of age in these regions by taking a head, suggests how incessant warfare must have been. The Iatmul people of the Sepik would take the heads in battle, boil away the flesh and hang the painted and decorated skulls as trophies in the men's houses. The head hunters were not necessarily cannibals, but many were. Human flesh was eaten until fairly recently and some of the older men from villages remember tasting it as children.

The men's house ( haus tambaran in pidgin) is the place where important decisions regarding the village are made, where boys are initiated and become men and ceremonies to please the spirits are performed. Here the crocodile is worshiped as the water spirit. In excruciatingly painful ceremonies young men have their backs cut to resemble the markings of the crocodile, which is a symbol of strength and power.
My itinerary took me from Pagwi, where the road from the coastal town of Weewak ends, in the middle Sepik area to Tonganjamb in the upper Sepik region. My trip also allowed me to navigate the large Chambri and Wagu lake areas and their associated cultures. On the first evening I arrived at a riverside hamlet attached to the ancient Palembei village of the Iatmul people. The Iatmul numbering around 10,000 inhabitants are the original crocodile worshippers and their clan and sub clans inhabit villages such as Kanganamun, Palimbe, Korogo, Tanbanom, Pagwi, Kamanibit, Yenchen,Chambri and many others. My host who was the son of the chief of Palembe, mentioned that at Yenchan village across the mile wide river an initiation for 5 youths was underway.

I immediately seized the opportunity and reached the village before sundown. Yenchan has a small spirit house by the river bank and as I arrived along the river I could see the entire structure fenced off with palm leaves to create a curtain for the secret affairs taking take place inside. Local women and the uninitiated are forbidden to see the rituals but an exception is made to travelers as they are not considered one of their own.
The Yenchan boys who undergo the ritual can be anywhere from 12-35 years of age. This is an expensive ritual, which takes the parents and families a long time to save money for their sons to undergo the skin cutting ceremonies. The age gap is also wide because these rituals only occur every 4-5 years. During this time, the boys reside in the Spirit House for 1-3 months, where they receive training, from the elders, on how to be a man and how to embody the manly identity. They are submitted to the scarification rituals, which may take days to weeks to finish. Once the scarring is done, the boys’ cuts are filled with medicinal mud and herbs to aid in the healing of the scars. The place where the cutting takes place resembles that of a bloody war ground. This is done on purpose, to symbolize strength and survival. It is of Iatmul belief that men should reside in Spirit Houses for a major part of their day after they have undergone initiation rituals, because it is there where they discuss village matters, where they bond with other men, and where they ultimately prepare for war, if needed. It is also important that men travel in groups and undergo scarification rituals in groups to strengthen their bonds and relationships.

For these young men, not only does it signify strength, masculinity and dedication to the tribe, but it is an exclusively male practice that emphasizes the importance of brotherhood. These rituals symbolize the expelling of the mother’s post-partum blood. This is why there are hundreds of small cuts made in the torso area, to expel blood from the mother and to allow the crocodile spirits of manhood to enter the male body. This symbolizes the divorce of young men from their mothers, and it prepares them for a symbolic transition into being “as strong as the crocodiles of the Sepik.” These rituals emphasize the importance of a “male-centered” community and symbolize the idea that “men come from other men.” According to their myths, it was initially women who resided in the Spirit House, but the men stole the right and became the “bearers of man.” This is evident in the fact that women are not allowed anywhere near the Spirit House.
I proceeded to discuss the details of this process inside the spirit houses where several senior members were keeping an eye on the young initiates.
Myth of the Crocodile

According to their verbal history, an ancestor was hunting in a canoe and saw something in the water so he dived deep into the water where he spotted a spirit house and within it lived a crocodile. The man remained
with the crocodile for months learning its secrets and power. When the man returned to his village, he taught his people how to build spirit houses as well as how to cut their skin to
resemble a crocodile. The Iatmul rely on the power and knowledge of the crocodile spirit ever since ( source: Tattoo Hunter, 2011).

The initiation ceremony
The young boys are secluded for 2 months upstairs in the Spirit House where they learn carefully guarded secrets of tribal knowledge from elders. The initiates are only allowed outside briefly but only if they are covered in a shroud. As part of the preparation, the village men sing in the spirit house teaching the initiates sacred chants and mythologies which will help them become men. This education also allows them to train for their future roles in society. Sacrifice plays a major role in their coming of age ritual. First off, the men sacrifice eight weeks of their lives, separated from society and every family member in their village, for this brutal rite to occur. During this time, they are put under strict regulations and are forced to meditate for around 6 hours each day. They are also not allowed to eat or take actions that may please their desires. The offering of each man’s body for the brutal ritual of skin cutting is the most intense sacrifice in this ritual. The pain these men must endure is incredibly severe. Even though it is rare, there have been cases of men dying during this ritual. The offering of their bodies to this suffereing shows their dedication to their tribe and is taken seriously by one and all.

Since pain is crucial for transforming a boy into a man it is believed that after the ritual they are capable of conquering any problems in life. It is a test of strength and discipline The initiates lay down and are cradled by their uncles while the professional cutter cuts open onto the initiate’s body ( Borrowed pictures from the web). Traditionally, the tool used for the ritual is a bamboo sliver, today razors are used. The ritual takes over an hour where they will receive over 1000 severed cuts. They are given a leaf to chew their teeth with during the cutting. Their backs, buttocks, and chest all receive multiple lacerations with bamboo slivers, creating scars that when healed form keloid scars. For days they rest and recuperate in order for the crocodile’s power to seep into their bodies. A special paste made from clay is put into their cuts with a feather to become infected. In many cases death has been reported from these infections.

The more infected the cuts, the more larger and raised the scars become. A week after the scarring, the elders prepare the new men for the graduation ceremony where they are presented to the rest of the tribe and honored for their strength and bravery. Usually a crocodile masked dance is organized while the mothers and family of the new initiates welcome them with happiness and tears. This scarring ceremony is considered one of the most painful and agonizing of rites of passage ceremonies among tribal tradition watchers around the world. As an example in nearby Vaanatu, these Melanesian islanders have their youth jump on bungee chords over land from towers erected for initiation often breaking their fall a few inches from ground. ( Bungee tradition started there).

As you can see from the photos attached, I was not there for the cutting ceremony but caught up with the boys during the healing process. The spirit house, the center of which sits the orator's stool where myths, legends and preparation for war are all discussed by the elders. Like most tribes the Iatmul were a warring tribe and planned ritual wars against their traditional enemies that resulted in head hunting. I cannot but thank my stars for actually witnessing one of these ancient rituals which may not stand the test of a few more years. The boys were in apparent pain especially with coal embers scorching their already maimed skin. Yet they found it interesting to talk to me briefly as some of them spoke a bit of English having worked in bigger cities. They are normally naked and cover themselves when women are present. My travelling companion from Wiesbaden, Tanja Rothermel, with whom I shared the costs of the river journey, was with me so they covered themselves with leaves during her time inside the spirit house.
For people interested in seeing the entire ritual this You tube video from National Geographic offers a good visual.( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJDOh3VSoxQ).

Author's conclusive remarks:

Initiation ceremonies such as baptism, upanayana, confirmation and Bar or Bat Mitzvah are considered important rites of passage in their respective religions. Initiation rites are seen as fundamental to human growth and development as well as socialization in many communities.
Initiation rites are a natural and necessary part of a community. These rites are paramount to the development of an individual as well as the community.
Most of the ancient rites of passage can be separated and classified into five groups. Birth as a rite of passage, rite of passage into adulthood, marriage rite, riteof household leadership and rite to becoming stellar ancestors. This fascination with primitive cultures and their attention to detail to the various stages in one's life makes it a fascinating observation for me. I am fortunate to have an Indian upbringing that allowed me to enjoy this path but occasionally lament their loss for my own progeny who were raised in the USA.

Credits:
Onnit Academy- Rites of Passage
UNESCO website
From Boys to Men: Suzanna Carranza
Scarification Rituals of PNG: Jessica Gray
Alamy Photo web images ( non profit use)

PHOTO GALLERY

Questions and Comments: [email protected]

Introduction:

From the embalmed body in a funeral home in modern day America to an early Neanderthal burial site like La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France from 50,000 years ago, humans have always taken care of their departed in unique ways. As world travelers, some of us are fascinated by Egyptian pyramids, Roman catacombs and the magnificent tombs built for Ming emperors in China; sometimes not necessarily for the beauty of the edifices but for the cultural practices of such burials that led to such monuments.

While traveling to distant lands and visiting old cultures, which hang precariously from the onslaught of modernity, I have observed many strange funeral customs. These customs stem from ancient religions that allows people to know about and communicate with supernatural beings—such as animal spirits, gods, and spirits of the dead. Religion often serves to help people cope with the death of relatives and friends, and it figures prominently in most funeral ceremonies
My previous articles on the funeral practices of the Dogon of Mali, the Taroja of Sulawesi, Zoarastrians of Iran and those along the Ganges river in India have been well received by my readers. Having returned recently from Madagascar I wanted to share some interesting customs and practices that have their origins in Indonesia, from where the original populating members arrived from around 1000 AD. These practices along with those of the African Bantu who arrived much later define the cultural landscape of Madagascar.

A firm belief in the existence of close ties between the living and the dead constitutes the most basic of all traditional beliefs and the foundation for Malagasy religious and social values. All the Malagasy peoples have traditionally accepted the existence of a supreme God, known commonly as Zanahary (Creator) or Andriamanitra (Sweet, or Fragrant, Lord). The dead have been conceived as playing the role of intermediary between this supreme God and humankind and are viewed as having the power to affect the fortunes of the living for good or evil. The dead are sometimes described as "gods on earth," who are considered the most important and authoritative members of the family, intimately involved in the daily life of the living members. At the same time, the razana (best defined as "ancestors") are the sources from which the life force flows and the creators of Malagasy customs and ways of life. The living are merely temporary extensions of the dead. Great hardship or trouble can result if the dead are offended or neglected.
The burial tomb, a prominent part of the island landscape in all regions, is the primary link between the living and the dead among the Malagasy. It is built with great care and expense, reflecting the privileged position of the dead, and is often more costly and substantial than the houses of the living. The land upon which a family tomb is situated--tanindrazana (land of the ancestors)--is inalienable, and social and economic practices are designed to guarantee that tomb lands are kept within the family.
Unlike cultural anthropologists who visit places like Madagascar armed with knowledge of unique burial practices there, I in turn simply stumbled upon these fascinating practices despite the main purpose of my visit being that of observing wildlife and natural history. As a result, my attention was constantly diverted towards observing the different ethnic groups as I traveled; the Merina and Betselio of the central highlands, the coastal Betsimaraka and Vezo people and the south western Sakalava and Mahafaly tribes. In this article I will attempt to share the different funeral customs of the six tribes mentioned above along with photographs that will help the reader appreciate these ancient customs.

The Six Tribes that I met & their Customs:

Of the 18 distinct groups, the Merina originally came from Indonesia, which is still reflected by their facial features. This tribe, which is numerically the largest, lives in and round the highlands of the capital Antananarivo. Historically, Merina dominated the country until it was declared French colony in 1882 ( until 1958). They were mainly involved in slave trade in the early 19th century. What remained from their long history is the splitting of their society in three classes: The Andriana (nobles), Hova (free men) and Andevo (slaves). Anthropologists have described the Merina as living, in effect, in two localities: the place where one happens to work and keep one's household, and the tanindrazana, a locality of much deeper sentimental significance, the spiritual center where the family tomb is located. The two are usually separated by a considerable distance. Among some groups, whether one decides to be buried in the tombs of the father's or mother's family determines individual descent-group allegiance. The tombs of the various peoples around the island differ somewhat in form. Merina tombs tend to be solid, stone structures, built partially underground, with a chamber in which the bodies of ancestors are kept on shelves, wrapped in silk shrouds.
The traditional tombs of the Mahafaly of the southwest desert region were built of stone but surmounted by intricately carved wooden posts depicting human and animal figures. More recent Mahafaly tombs, particularly those built by rich families, are often made of concrete, with glass windows, brightly painted designs and often remarkable depictions of airplanes, taxicabs, or other modern paraphernalia mounted on the roof. The graves are decorated with innumerable zebu horns and small wood carvings. Many families go in debt to be able to build a pompous grave for their relatives.

The Sakalava descend from the African Bantu and therefore very different from the other Asiatic tribes. The Sakalava were the dominating tribe for a long time ( until Merina dominance began in the 1820s )who sold slaves to Europe in exchange for weapons and other articles of value. Even today they are the second biggest tribe of Madagascar. Every seven years, Sakalava families celebrate male circumcision ceremonies similar to Bantu traditions. What is unusual is that grandfathers to eat their grandson’s cut foreskin after the event. They typically inter their dead in rock caves or rock caves, which are used to store the remains of dead Sakalava kings. Periodically, the Sakalava bring the mortal remains into the living’s circle during a ceremony called Fitampoha. They wash the remains in the river and return them into Doany thereafter. Even today Sakalava still use Trombas ( mediums): Trombas are persons, who get into some kind of trance and thereby experience the ghost of an ancestor, who speaks through them to the others. Not too long ago, it was the custom of the Sakalava people living around the Morondava River on the west coast to decorate their tombs with carvings showing explicit sexual activity. These were meant to illustrate the life-giving force, or fertility, of the ancestors.

Since the Sakalava tribes control the areas around World heritage site of Tsingy Bemaraha, they still will not allow Merina highlanders, their traditional enemies from visiting the Tsingy for the fear of displeasing their ancestors who fought them. I was told that special permission had to be received from the departed spirits through magic and mediums to obtain such a permission. I remember when I was in the highlands of Flores, Indonesia visiting a remote mountain settlement, Wae Reabo, the village head had to do a prayer to his ancestors in order receive me into the village.

Betsimisaraka people live along the east coast, most of them make their living from fishing in the Indian ocean and Canal des Pangalanes (The Canal des Pangalanes is one of the quiet wonders of Madagascar, a collection of natural and artificial waterways that stretches over 645km along the east coast, built by the French colonists) . They’re one of the biggest tribes of Madagascar and consist of many different smaller sub-groups (similar to Sakalava).
If Betsimisaraka die, they use pirogues as coffins ( like Viking nobles) and place those not far from the beach under small roofs. Zebu sacrifices play another important role in Betsimisaraka life. Fisokonas – wooden stakes, embellished with carved patterns and cattle horns are planted on the ground and sprinkled with sacrificed Zebu blood. They then call the ancestors through the fisokana and beg for succor or counsel.

The Bara people who dominate another large area are an important tribe of cattle farmers around the city of Ihosy, South Madagascar. They descend from African Bantu people. Their most famous tradition is that boys who want to marry will have to steal a Zebu beforehand to prove to the girl’s parents their courage and pay the cattle as dowry for their future wife. This nowadays leads to several conflicts between the people of the South – and often leads to the death of the cattle thieves.
When Bara die, they are buried in natural caves and covered with a stone cairn of neatly arranged granite. The bereaved cut their hair to express their mourning. Bara see the spirits of dead people as danger, so it can happen that a whole village moves to a new locality to save their lives.

The Vezo originally came from East Africa across the Mozambique channel. They are half nomadic fishermen in Southern Madagascar, in the areas between Toliara Intampolo, Morondava and Mahajanga. With their self-made small mangrove wood pirogues they ride the angry sea swells of the west coast to catch fish and other sea food. Even today they hunt with nets, spears and traps, because they don’t have money for modern equipment. Funerals of Vezo people take place in courtyards inside the forests, far away from their villages.

The Betsileo people are specialists in terraced rice field farming and are well known for their traditional exhumation of their dead, which is called Famadihana. This tradition is also practiced by the Merina living in the highlands who are closely related to the Betsileo people. ( I noticed that the Betseleo are a slightly mixed people of the Asiatic Merina and the Bara people of African extraction). Among the Merina and Betsileo the custom of famadihana ("placing" or the "turning" of the dead) reaffirms the link between the living and the dead. This ceremony occurs either because a person's remains are taken from a temporary to a permanent tomb or simply to remove the remains from a tomb in order to re.wrap the remains in new silken shrouds. These ceremonies incur immense expenses of providing food & shelter for a large number of relatives and guests. It is considered a serious transgression not to hold a famadihana when one is financially able to do so. The ceremony is presided over by an astrologer, but the chief participants are the close relatives of those persons whose remains are being moved or re wrapped. In this regard, the famadihana resembles in spirit a family reunion or the more austere ancestral ceremonies of China and Korea, where the spirits of ancestors are invited to a feast given by members of a family or lineage, rather than the funerals of the West, which are "final endings."

The Famadihana or "Turning of the Bones:" ceremony

The Malagasy people have built a way of life around death – during the dry winter months, famadihana ceremonies, known as “the turning of the bones”, take place around various towns and villages to commemorate the deceased.
Once every two to seven years, each family holds a huge celebration at their ancestral crypt where the remains of the dead are exhumed, wrapped in fine silk, sprayed with wine or perfume, and brought out for community festivities. In the Malagasy culture, the turning of the bones is a vital element in maintaining links with revered ancestors, who still play a very real role in daily life.
The famadihana custom appears to be an adaptation of pre modern double funeral customs from Southeast Asia as seen in Bali, Sulawesi, Sumba and other islands.. The custom is based upon a belief that the spirits of the dead finally join the world of the ancestors after the body's complete decomposition and appropriate ceremonies, which may take many years. In Madagascar this became a regular ritual usually once every seven years, and the custom brings together extended families in celebrations of kinship, sometimes even those with troubled relations.
The practice of famadihana is on the decline due to the expense of silk shrouds and belief by some Malagasy that the practice is outdated. Early missionaries discouraged the practice and Evangelical Christian Malagasy have abandoned the practice in increasing numbers. The Catholic Church, however, no longer objects to the practice because it regards famadihana as purely cultural rather than religious. As one Malagasy man explained to the BBC, "It's important because it's our way of respecting the dead. It is also a chance for the whole family, from across the country, to come together.

April Holloway in her blog in Ancient-origins says the ceremony is an evocation of being together again, so that the dead can experience once more the joys of life. But most importantly, she says, famadihana is an act of love.
As one foreigner who witnessed the ceremony described, “I came expecting the most macabre of ceremonies but instead found an extreme form of adoration for loved ones that will forever change how I view life and death. Death is not a sad occasion for many Malagash, but a time for celebrating. It is believed that the ancestors, like everyone, appreciate a really good party, especially one held in their honor.

Family members come from far and wide to attend the famadihana, sometimes traveling entire days on foot to attend the two-day festivities. When everyone has gathered, the corpses are delicately pulled from the tomb or crypt and wrapped in straw floor mats. Groups of people heave the corpses above their heads and carry them off, before laying them side-by-side on the ground to be cleaned and dressed. Their dried burial garments are delicately pulled from their corpses and the bodies are dressed in fresh silk garments. Women who are having trouble conceiving will take fragments of an ancestor's old shroud and place them under their mattresses (or even eat them) to induce pregnancy. Following the dressing of the deceased, a great party is held with music, dancing, and a huge feast among the villagers. As a band plays at the lively event, family members dance with the bodies. For some, it’s a chance to pass family news to the deceased and ask for their blessings — for others, it’s a time to remember and tell stories of the dead.
When the festival ends, the bodies must be returned to the tomb as the sun slowly retires beyond the horizon. They are re-buried alongside gifts of money and alcohol and placed upside-down to close the cycle of life and death. After a final ritual cleaning, the tomb is immediately closed - a powerful and emotional moment, embodying all the spiritual richness of the previous days' celebrations.

Brad Bernard writes an interesting first hand essay in the New York Times about a famahadina he attends :

"The village elder smiles at me curiously, his leathery hands nudge a plastic mouthwash bottle of homemade rum toward me. I cringe as the amber liquid burns my throat and the fumes fill my nasal cavity, temporarily numbing my anxiety about what comes next. The weathered shovel I hold creaks with my tightening grip. I wonder what I have gotten myself into. From here, I go with the village down the lonely path to dig up his family’s corpses from the cemetery, some still ‘wet,’ and parade them around town. When I first heard about this seemingly macabre ceremony in the highlands of Madagascar, I was immediately intrigued. I’m not sure what dark fascination I have with a ceremony called Famadihana, or Turning of the Bones, where local villagers exhume the skeletons of their elders to dance with. I search unsuccessfully for a justifiable motive. Perhaps I was seeking a simple thrill or maybe voyeurism fuels my morbid fixation on this phenomenon.
Earlier that morning, on our way to the ceremony, Njara, my college-educated driver, tells me, “They have never allowed a white person to attend this ceremony and emotions are high for this event. We will need to be very delicate in our approach so we don’t incite hostilities.” The look of concern in his eyes stirs my inner doubt. “…they say that the dead can sometimes cross back over into the living world. And during this ceremony, the souls of their ancestors can rejoin the living to indulge once again in worldly desires. It is so taboo for people our age, who prefer to avoid black magic, so the practice is dying out.” He says. “Anyways, this ceremony only occurs every seven years and is restricted to the immediate family so they may not let us attend.” We buy homemade “Rhum” to give them as a token of appreciation in the hopes they’ll let us attend.

We pull off the road at a tiny village. The whole town, all related in some way, is assembled outside the largest of the two-story mud-brick shacks, chanting in anticipation of the procession from the city. Njara announces that the elders have asked to meet me. My heart beats wildly as I focus intently on portraying respectfulness; my hands shake noticeably as I humbly offer the gifts. The elders look me over and the debate quickly becomes heated. The patriarch of the village, an old man with distinguished wrinkles and clouded eyes, darts toward me, snaps up the rum from my hands and slips into the dark entry of the house. I’m in. The family members slowly overcome their curiosity and introduce themselves.
We march down the pitted cattle path away from town.. We await the sign from the astrologer that the fabric between both worlds is thin enough that the exhumation can begin. A growing curiosity swells around me as more and more villagers seek out Njara to ask him questions about me. The old man approaches me showing deep concern. He tells Njara that I appear remorseful which is sending the wrong signals and arousing suspicion. He tells me I should act happy and joyous; that this is a celebratory event and I look like I am attending a funeral. I fear my uninformed presence is a mockery to the family The crowd dances tirelessly to the clumsy yet hypnotic melody of the band, a ragtag group of eight men swaggering around in matching uniforms. Their dented and tarnished brass instruments are reminiscent of the faded splendor of the long abandoned French ‘culturalization’ of natives on this island. A vendor has wheeled her wooden cart and tattered umbrella from far away to sell sodas and cigarettes.

The crowd goes silent. Suddenly, trumpets sound an impending climax. The old man leaps on top of the family tomb and announces the digging will begin. The crowd ignites, encircling the tomb, chanting rhythmically. The men shovel furiously. The old man pushes his relatives aside and hands me a shovel, insisting I participate.Digging up corpses from the cemetery in Madagascar
Once the hole is big enough, the door to the underworld is smashed and collapses into pieces. The crowd gasps collectively. I back away gingerly. The old man soon finds me, grabbing my hand and insisting I go inside with him. I glance at Njara, seeking permission. He nods suspiciously but issues me grave warning, “Whatever you do, don’t touch the bodies.” We crawl on hands and knees through the tiny opening of the catacomb to a small room and find mummies on stone benches with their caramelized bones poking through holes in their garments. Flickering candlelight illuminates the yellow stains from seeping body fluids. A sour, earthy smell of decay permeates the tiny room. The old man introduces me to each of his ancestors by name as he pats the dust from their corpses. He insists I feel the decaying body of his mother on my right who has just died a few weeks ago. I place my hand on her chest and close my eyes as he begins to chant. The hair on my neck stands up as a strange feeling engulfs me, dizzy and scared; I lunge toward the fresh air to avoid fainting.
One by one, the corpses are delicately pulled from the tomb and wrapped in straw floor mats like burritos. With several pushes, a group heaves a corpse above their heads and carries it off. They are laid side-by-side on the flat ground to be cleaned and dressed, the names are written in faded black marker to tell them apart. Their dried burial garments are delicately pulled from their corpses like crispy skin from chicken wings to avoid taking too much flesh. The bodies are dressed in fresh silk garments and individually whisked off by awaiting family members. The corpses are cleaned and dressed in fresh silk garments
The same corpse I touched in the crypt is now in her granddaughter’s arms, dancing in circles. She holds her grandmother delicately, crying tears of happiness and talking about her progress in school. In that moment, I heard a voice answer the granddaughter’s call that I still cannot explain. To this day, I dream of that moment. That voice is hard to forget. My heart sinks as I realize how real this is to her. She passes the mummy to the hands of an awaiting woman who begins to cry with happiness. The young girl refocuses her attention on a game her friends are playing and is soon laughing and joking again.
As the sun slowly retires beyond the horizon, the bodies are once again laid to rest but upside-down to close the cycle of life and death. The young always return home to honor their origins here at this earthen hill that embodies their ancestry. I feel a deep connection with this family now that only comes from sharing the most intimate experiences. I am eternally grateful to them for opening their doors and my eyes to such a beautiful practice. It is the most amazing way of respecting the dead that I have ever experienced. I came expecting the most macabre of ceremonies but instead found an extreme form of adoration for loved ones that will forever change how I view life and death. My enlightenment feels bittersweet as I realize my own aversions still prevent me from wanting to visit my loved ones at their graves and the void this creates in my life. I don’t have the stomach for facing death. I stubbornly prefer to bury and forget; somehow thinking this will satisfy desire to remember the way they were. I’ve found more happiness in death than I could have ever imagined."

Other societies that wash their ancestor's bones

While doing my research on this subject, I was quite amazed at how these practices are common in many countries in Asia and South America.

Campeche, Mexico

:During Hanal Pixan in Pomuch, Mexico, decedents honor the dead through the annual ritual of “washing” or brushing the bones of dead loved ones with a piece of cloth or small brush. The local custom is for family members to exhume the skeletons of the deceased after they have been buried for three years, when the flesh has turned to dust, and carefully clean the bones. Once they have been cleaned, the bones are placed in an open wooden box that has been lined with embroidered or painted linens. These boxes are then displayed in small cement niches in the graveyard. Every year, families return to the graveyard to re-wash the bones of their relatives, change the linens, and leave offerings of fresh flowers and lit candles. Although perpetuating an unusual practice, the people of Pomuch take much pride in caring for and presenting the bones of their ancestors. Pomuch is the only town in Mexico to still honor this tradition.

Sulawesi , Indonesia

Prior to the Dutch colonization of this area in the 20th century, the Toraja people lived in remote villages without roads connecting one to the other. Due to the difficulty of treading terrain in this mountainous region, people were terrified to journey too far in fears that their body could not be returned to their birthplace in the event of their demise. The Toraja’s beliefs state that if the body is not returned to the corpse’s village of birth, the soul will never reach Puya and will forever wander around in limbo, confused by their unfamiliar surroundings. In order to aid in transporting corpses, Shamans would be called upon to temporarily raise the dead so that they could walk back to their birthplace on their own in order to attend their funeral and begin their journey to Puya. Every August, a ritual known as Ma’nene or “The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses” takes place. Corpse cleaning, grooming and redressing during Ma’nene. During this time, families exhume the bodies of deceased relatives in order to wash them, groom them, change their clothes and repair their coffins. The bodies are taken to the place of their death, then back to their grave in the village of origin. Often the deceased are paraded around the village in straight lines during the journey in order to observe the living.

This is done out of respect to the ‘Hyang’, unseen spiritual entities with supernatural powers who reside in mountains, hills and volcanoes and may ==only move in straight lines.
Luzon, Philippines:== Bogwa” is the practice of exhuming the bones of the dead, cleaning, rewrapping and returning them to the grave or “lubuk. The Ifugao is one of the ethnic groups in the Cordillera region of the Philippines that practice this tradition of exhuming their dead usually after a year or more depending on the desire and necessity. The Ifugaos traditionally see it as a family responsibility towards the deceased loved one and a necessity for those left behind in order to prosper and live at peace with the spirits of their departed. With all the animals offered to appease the spirits of the dead, the bogwa is one of the most expensive native rituals next to a wedding. Three days of feasting rather than mourning is expected and an open invitation is extended to everyone within or outside the community. Performing bogwa shows not only the love and care to a family member even though he died several years ago but also the concern, love, care and hope for prosperous years for the living ones.

Changmai, Thailand:

Songkran is a time when people are expected to return to their villages to pay respect to their elders. It is a time of family reunions, family parties, celebrations with friends, and religious merit making to go along with merriment in general. Songkran here in Thailand is like the combining of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and the Super Bowl into one grand celebration. Songkran also has a more somber and sober side. It is during Songkran that Theravada Buddhist families will remove the bones of ancestors to wash them and then return them to their resting places inside of the family Tat.
End
Contact: [email protected]

Some information extracted from different sources.
credits:
Area handbook-US Army on Madagascar
New York Times: Brad Bernard 2010 article
Huffington post: Campeche photos: Janelle Pietrzak A world traveling documentary and fine art photographer.
Photos other than by Ramdas Iyer are taken from Web sources.
This is a not for profit blog

PHOTO GALLERY:

Blogs are a great means of describing in detail what the writer wants to convey in an environment where word count is not a factor. This write-up elaborates on my recently published article in Forbes Woman Africa (FWA), Jun-Jul 2017. There is little doubt that Madagascar is one of the final frontiers for the discovery of new fauna and flora. But the amazing cultural traditions of this country is something the reader also needs to be made aware; a small portion of this article covers this area of interest.

The prehistoric breakup of the super continent Gondwana separated the Madagascar–Antarctica–India landmass from the Africa–South America landmass around 135 million years ago. Madagascar later split from India about 88 million years ago, allowing plants and animals on the island to evolve in relative isolation.Plant and reptilian fossils confirm this breakup as illustrated in the Gondwana break up figure below.

This break up also created the Mozambique channel that separates Africa with the fourth largest island on earth, Madagascar. Flying over the 400 mile wide Mozambique Channel my heart raced at the prospect of visiting a remote island where nearly all the species evolved in isolation since it broke off. What I found there was a lost world of unique animals and plants unseen by humans until their first arrival.
Imagine an island more than 1,000 miles long in a blue tropical ocean uninhabited for most of its history. Forests cover vast areas, interspersed with swamps where crocodiles 8 meters long lie in wait to prey on pygmy hippopotamuses. In the rain forests and in dryer parts of the island live some of the strangest primates to have ever existed on Earth. Some 110 species of these lemurs live throughout the island and range in size from the world's smallest primate, weighing about 1 ounce, to a lemur the size of a Gorilla ( now extinct).

Peering out of my aircraft window, I watched the strato cumulus clouds tower over the many swollen rivers draining the rain waters as we descended towards Antananarivo (Tana), its capital located in the cool central highlands. With golden paddy fields blanketed by green clusters of trees, I was descending into what appeared to be a paradise of forests, paddy fields and rolling hills.
At the arrivals area I was surprised by the faces that displayed a unique mix of African and Indonesian bloodlines. Despite the island's location just off the coast of Africa, the Malagasy are of Polynesian descent, with the same linguistic and cultural characteristics also found in a small region of southern Borneo, over 3500 miles away. The exact circumstances of how those settlers arrived on the other side of the Indian Ocean has until now been unclear, but analysis of settlement patterns seems to suggest that Malagasy with Polynesian heritage can trace their lineage back to one of only 30 women, who landed on the island roughly 1,200 years ago. According to molecular bio scientist Murray Cox of Massey of the University in New Zealand, this settlement of Madagascar might have been the result of a one-off event like a shipwreck rather than any deliberate migration. ( This is not an accepted theory but one of many that has confounded anthropologists). Discover Magazine reports that the study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, used previous research which had found that 30 percent of Malagasy people shared the same maternal mitochondria. In a typical population study, a diverse population of humans would normally share only two percent, by comparison.

A unique blend of African and Asian landscapes and cultures is usually one of the first things recognized by first-time travelers to Madagascar. In the zebu cattle-raising regions of the south and west, for example, the savannas resemble those of East Africa. In the central highlands, however, irrigated and terraced rice fields evoke images of Southeast Asia. Indonesians brought rice to Madagascar some 1,500 years ago, and they came more than 3,500 miles across the Indian Ocean in outrigger canoes to get here, arriving well before the first Africans. The author Jared Diamond has called this migration, 'The single most astonishing fact of human geography in the world.'
My planned take-away from this adventure included photographing colorful chameleons, trek lush rain forests, navigate spiny thorn forests and climb the spectacular rock formations. At the end of it all what left me with a deeper sense of this country was its unique people who follow ancient customs despite their wanton destruction of a paradise.

My guide in Antasibe, Maurice Ratsesakanana was instrumental in my tracking down the apex lemur, Indri. Its haunting calls are reminiscent of the songs of the humpback whales. Each morning in my bungalow at the Hotel Fenny Ala at the edge of the rain forest, I woke up to its call. The Indri is the largest lemur in existence today and tracking and photographing them in rain was a trophy to be had. Indri's have never been successfully bred in captivity and this is the only place on earth that one can see these unusual primates. A spectacular jumper the indri can leap up to 30 feet between branches.
Maurice also exposed me to some of the 600 amphibians and reptiles that inhabit the forest, most of them endemic to Madagascar, meaning found nowhere else on earth. Frogs of every imaginable color and pattern leapt in this wet jungle. Chameleons, some brilliantly colored, and others shades of mottled brown, crept invisibly about. The largest, can capture mice and birds, while the smallest, measuring only 1 inchs feeds on insects.
More than 80 percent of Madagascar's 14,883 plant species are found nowhere else in the world. The rain forests had many orchids growing on tree barks and stems. Maurice indicated that three-fourths of Madagascar's 860 orchid species are endemic, as are six of the world's eight baobab species. I found orchid nursery's lining all along the Antasibe road, simply harvested from the rain forest each day.

At the World heritage rain forest of Ranomafana, Theo Farafidison, my guide educated me on so many aspects of the fauna there. Theo had worked with David Attenborough during the shooting of the BBC series there .Almost all the amphibians and reptiles in Madagascar, half the 300 bird life and all its 110 species of lemurs are endemic. Theo and I spotted a Parson's chameleon that was almost two feet long capable of grabbing birds with its sticky tongue. I could not help but coax it to walk on my arms, a small violation of the park's rules. The Bamboo lemurs are a specialty here along with 7 other species.

My personal highlight was that of grabbing a 6 ft tree Boa at night while we were looking for nocturnal lemurs and chameleons. He was quite docile and surprisingly comfortable in my hold. He could have decided to sink his long fang giving me a severe puncture wound. After studying him in my confines, I gently eased him on to a tree not realizing until later that they hunt on the ground. After photographing many species of frogs, tens of geckos including those that mimic leaves, several chameleon species, five snake species including a very Madagascar large tree Boa, I moved on to the drier side of the highlands. In order to photograph the rare gekkos like the uroplatus guentheri ( 10 inch long leaf gekko) that completely mimics leafs and barks and the uroplatus phantasyicus also known as the Satanic leaf gekko, I had to dispatch a pair of forest workers to hunt them down. Such unique animals of this country are a target for pet suppliers from all over the world especially the tree Boa constrictor.

Some of the amazing landscapes I found in its national parks included spectacular rock massifs, canyons, aquatic environments, savannahs and dry lands. Isalo, Zombitse , Kirindy, Bemaraha and Andatringa, comes to mind as places that cannot be missed. Waterfalls abound, cascading down tall cliffs into rivers and lakes, the central highlands are a mosaic of woodland and savannah, while the eastern regions are covered in dense, humid rainforest. In my quest for soaking up this paradise I swam in cool pools inside canyons, trekked the Tsaranaro massif, a sheer rock 800 meters tall known for world class rock climbing, went sapphire prospecting on river banks, walked in wet, dry, semi-humid and spiny forests enjoying everything from insects like the endemic kung fu cricket, which takes a martial posture when approached to the diverse ethnic groups that populate this island .
One great adventure that will last in my memory was my attempt to to reach the spectacular limestone karst formations of Tsingy de Bemahara in the rainy season. "Tsingy" means 'one cannot walk barefoot'. It is an impenetrable wilderness of limestone spikes and sharp rocks that dominates the North West. The Tsingy is an ancient 200 mile long coral reef lifted from the ocean and carved over the millennia by wind and water into dagger edged pinnacles. Crossing rivers on barges and driving through the dirt roads that had become 3ft deep streams during the rainy season, I reached this remote area to be hailed as the first tourist to arrive there that season. A nine mile trek and climb ensued my visit this world heritage site from the top looking down since all road access was inundated.
Deforestation has been present on the island since its colonization by humans, approximately 2000 years ago, with 90% of the original forests lost .With an unprecedented population growth, an extreme poverty (one of the highest in the world ) and a brewing political crisis, the nature of the island is helpless and besieged by multiple fronts including corruption at the highest levels. There is a police stop almost every few miles who find something wrong with every vehicle in order to squeeze a few arriaris out of innocents and crooks alike. Thankfully they do not bother tourists. One interesting behavior that I wish to write about is that of the gendarmerie ( National police) offered a full ceremonial salute when all our papers were in order
.

67-_DSC5926

In addition to the traditional system of slash and burn deforestation, which allows local people to open forests to cultivate, international players in cahoots with local officials selectively log rosewood tree species and has become the main threat for the biodiversity of the island. Lorries of hardwood leaving forested areas forced me to inquire about its legitimacy to everyone I met. They all shrugged almost helplessly even though their future was being stripped one day at a time.

Other threats include killing lemurs for meat, poaching reptiles and amphibians for the pet trade (the Ploughshare tortoise fetches US $ 200000), habitat alteration and the clearance of forests, primarily for firewood and charcoal production. En route to the rainforests of Antasibe I could see virgin rain forests burning outside the limits of the park for agriculture and cattle grazing, that brought tears to my eyes. At every turn during my trip, my driver Tony Rebetsitonta, reflected on the different forested areas that had disappeared in his 25 years of driving around the country. It is anticipated that all the island's rain forests, excluding those in protected areas and the steepest eastern mountain slopes, will have been deforested by 2025. As a result several charismatic species such as chameleons and lemurs that evolved for millions of years here may become extinct by the end of the century
The urgency to conserve habitat has long been noticed by western scientists and conservation funding for Madagascar is at its peak. From protecting flora, fauna, habitats and large swathes of remaining forest, organizations are finding new ways to compensate the locals, educate them in sustainable land use and above all deal with a complex system of taboos that hold back progress. While at Ranofamana National Park I came to realize that this large virgin rain forest was protected and later converted into a park by none other than Dr. Patricia Wright of Stony Brook University in 1980, while studying Bamboo lemurs as a post doctoral research worker there. I was so impressed by her work that I contacted her at the University and will soon be meeting her, first to thank her and also to interview her for an article to appear in FWA soon. This is another example of a driven woman scientist challenging government officials, locals and vested interests to create a legacy for mankind.
By the 16th century, the central highlands where the bulk of Madagascar’s population resides had been largely cleared of their original forests. It was small wonder that I saw red top soil getting washed off into the rivers from the air with no roots to hold them down. More recent contributors to the loss of forest cover include the growth in cattle herd size since their introduction around 1000 years ago. I met a professor from the University of Pretoria who is studying land grabs and cattle rustling in Madagascar and did not want his name publicized. This is a country where people still keep their wealth in cattle and not cash. He told me that rustling cattle is big business and as a result big groups of heavily armed men attack villages and run away with the several hundred heads of cattle. I am told that the Malagasy people register their Zebu cattle at birth with the authorities, and not their own children.

Today, there are around 18 different ethnic groups living on the island. These include the Asiatic Merina (who make up over a quarter of the population), the Betsimisaraka, Betsileo, Tsimihety, Antaimoro and the Bantu Sakalava. Indians, Arabs, French also make up a small immigrant population who have formed small communities during the past 300 years. The Malagasy language is very similar to the Indonesian language called Minaan, spoken only in Borneo it has accepted some Bantu/Swahili words over time. Their customs especially of burials, land ownerships, taboos and professions are very unique for the traveler to see and experience.
The Malagasy burial customs matches closely with cultures from Indonesia where I have traveled extensively to study them This includes periodic exhumation of the bones and have huge celebrations, keeping the corpse at home until it dries before burial or placing them inside rock cairns in hard to reach places, all of which bankrupt families in pursuit of satisfying their forefathers. Their philosophy much like the ethnic Indonesians of Sulawesi and Borneo believe that life on earth is very ephemeral when compared to the soul’s journey through the universe.
This beautiful land and its people are in a ticking time bomb of land loss, top soil erosion and desertification in a few centuries. While western agencies are doing their best to stem the degradation, it is inevitable that it cannot be reversed. Added to this, poor education, absent health care and a corrupt government has kept the people very poor, just living under an annual US $500 per capita. A deeper problem is that the island's population has doubled since 1990 and is increasing faster than ever.

Richard Grant in his article in The Telegraph writes" Nowhere in the world have I met nicer people, but their need for firewood, charcoal and land, their farming and herding practices, and their increasingly successful attempts to have seven daughters and seven sons per marriage, have
created a catastrophe with no solutions in sight. Already Madagascar is one of the most eroded countries on earth. The topsoil is washing away in red rivers to the sea, and astronauts have reported that Madagascar appears to be bleeding to death.
As a newcomer to the island, I find my emotions swinging erratically between delight and despair, exhilaration and sorrow. The food, the music, the people I'm meeting and what's left of the forests and the wildlife are all so wonderful, but as the Duke of Edinburgh put it with characteristic brusqueness when he was here, 'This island is committing suicide.'"

It is a paradise in retreat and all our efforts to decelerate this decline is all I can hope for these wonderful people and its other living denizen. It is a travesty created by man in his effort to conquer nature.

The End

Questions & Contacts: [email protected]

MORE PHOTOS:[img=https://photos.travellerspoint.com/396820/large_07-DSC02370.jpg]

I have attempted herein to combine my travels to historical places along the silk route along with my practice of meditation which melds seamlessly through wonderful places touched by Buddhism, Hinduism and nature. Without a historic perspective, these travels do not mean much. The great history behind these places increases their value as a destination and an appropriate location to meditate. Spanning a time frame from 500 BC to 2012 AD, I have within the percepts of 5000 words compressed 2500 years of history. Many empires are referenced and can be better understood with the time frame and maps provided.
I have been experimenting with meditation since 2007 ever since the paths of Mark Reisenberg and mine intersected at a gym in Short Hills, NJ. Generally feeling rather rushed, anxious ,short tempered with frequent outbursts at work and lack of patience at home, one day I became deeply aware of my short comings. I sought the counsel of Mark, who had trained under the great Mahesh Yogi. Mark and I had developed a friendship since he was drawn to my knowledge of the East and me to his deep interest in it. Most days Mark had a glow in his face and when questioned he would comment about the great meditation session he had had that day. In fact he has been having those great moments almost daily for the past 40 years. A walking prescription for that practice. He agreed to come to my house and give me an introductory lesson in Transcendental Meditation. I could immediately feel its impact and would feel "cleansed" and be more mindful of my actions. Being a busy entrepreneur, committing time for meditation without feeling rushed has been my only challenge. Despite having the knowledge that there is only upsides when time is dedicated to this practice, it has still been a work in progress having already tapped into the nectar of its abilities.
The structured practice of meditation( Dhyana) is thought to go back 5,000 years with its development in India, culminating in its initial development by Hindus as a means of discerning the true nature of Brahman (or God) and its later development by the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) who reached “enlightenment” by meditating under a Bodhi Tree (ficus religiosa), following years of disenchantment with established religious practices.


I had promised to escort Mark and his daughter Kate to some of the great meditation centers of India someday when everyone was ready to do so.
As my travel regimen peaked during the last decade, I had traveled much of the Silk road and other Asian countries which coincidentally fell under the sway of Hinduism and Buddhism for over 2000 years. This gave me ample opportunities to not only explore the historical areas but also meditate in storied locations which has been a great personal joy thus far.

Uzbekistan lies north west of current day Afghanistan & Pakistan and is the route through which Buddhism spread into China along the fabled silk road. Ancient India and old Persia had their border near current day Uzbekistan/ Turkmenistan. This border delineated the two great axial religions that were borne out of the migrating Aryans of the Central Asian Steppes: Hinduism and Zoarastrianism.Visiting the town of Termez in 2009, where Alexander the Great had crossed the Oxus (a major military feat) enroute to India, I realized that I had emerged from a time machine upon landing at the small airport. 2000 years of history lay at my feet .In a town called Fayez Tepe, about 40 km from Mazar-e-Sharif , Afghanistan,( another center of Buddhism during the Kushan Empire, not too far from Bamiyan where the great Buddha statues were decapitated by the Taliban)), I visited a small stupa and monastery erected by Kanishka I, the Great (AD 127-163), the fabled ruler of the Kushan Empire of Ancient India. Kanishka came to rule an empire in Bactria (Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan) extending from Turfan in the Tarim Basin ( Xinjiang Province of China) to Pataliputra ( near modern Patna, India)on the Gangetic plain. His conquests and patronage of Buddhism played an important role in the development of the Silk Road, and the transmission of Mahayana Buddhism from Gandhara ( modern Pakistan)across the Karakoram range to China. Kanishka 's father hailed from Xinjiang province and belonged to a tribe known as Tocharians and spoke an eastern Iranian language similar to Sanskrit, another one of the Indo European languages. The Aryan connection with India that started around 1500BC continued until the 4th century AD through migrations and conquests. So I followed Kanisha's conquests which incidentally lay the foundations of the fabled silk route.
While visiting Fayez Tepe, being the only traveler that day in this remote corner, I requested my guide for some free time to sit alone under the stupa and meditate for world peace; a fitting location given the double electrified border fence and minefields less than 500 metres away.*( Quiet the mind, and the soul will speak. ~Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati).

Later that evening my guide who also worked in the local museum, gave me a private post dinner tour of the amazing Bactrian and Gandharan artifacts excavated around Termez by Soviet archeologists of renown. Sotheby's would have drooled at such a treasure fairly well kept by the State Museum.



On an earlier trip to China in 2008 while passing through the Tarim Basin, considered one of the hottest places on earth, I came upon many small towns that constituted the original silk road, but is today set away from the main highways connecting Xian to Kashgar for over 3000 miles. In these now Islamic towns inhabited by the Turkic Uygur people, one could see Buddhist caves scattered all over remote hill sides. I sat besides some of them and pondered the impact of Buddhism on these peoples who were all Buddhists prior to their conversions around 840 AD. during the rise of Islam. So I asked the locals about Buddhism and they had no clue what I was talking about. Communism and Islam had erased all spoken history, despite the area being Buddhist for nearly 600 years. I suspect that no European would ever admit to being a pagan at that time either.
Crossing the Tarim Basin from Kashgar to Urumqi along the silk road, home of several Uighur unrests, I could only begin to fathom the extreme conditions in which the silk road merchants traveled. After an adventure filled 36 hour train ride through the Gobi desert I arrived at the town of Dunhuang- famous for its world famous Magao Buddhist grottos and now a World Heritage site. Carved into the cliffs above the Dachuan River, the Mogao Caves south-east of the Dunhuang oasis, Gansu Province, comprise the largest, most richly endowed, and longest used treasure house of Buddhist art in the world. It was first constructed in 366AD and represents the great achievement of Buddhist art from the 4th to the 14th century. 492 caves are presently preserved, housing about 45,000 square meters of murals and more than 2,000 painted sculptures. The unique artistic style of Dunhuang art is not only the amalgamation of Han Chinese artistic tradition and styles assimilated from ancient Indian, Greco-Bactrian and Gandharan customs, but also an integration of the arts of the Turks, ancient Tibetans and other Chinese ethnic minorities. Many of these masterpieces are creations of an unparalleled aesthetic talent. The artifacts stolen from here by British and German archeologists began the rift between China and the west and well documented in the book" Foreign Devils on the Silk Road" by Peter Hopkirk. If I were to be on an adventure during Victorian times, this would have been it.

The railhead being 2 hours from town, my guide and driver spent the night in a small lodging nearby. On arrival at 2:00 AM, there was no soul stirring in the station and I had to carry my heavy baggage up and over railway trestles to meet my people. It was cold, hard and riven with anxiety.
Later that morning driving along the Dachuan river, I could see the multitude of caves at different elevations on the hardened mud cliffs of the river valley. It was extremely cold near the caves with the temperature in single digits. After taking a private tour of some of the grottos I looked for a place to meditate. Out of a possible 200 well preserved caves one can only see 4 caves during each visit. This way they reduce the impact of tourism on the murals adorning the fragile walls of the caves. These amazing caves were decorated using gifts given to the monks by traders to build altars and grottos to thank Buddha for their successful missions. The Tang Emperors had built a beautiful pavilion near the grotto around 650 AD. This gave me a quiet place to meditate and appreciate the opportunity bestowed on me to be in such a place. *(Mind is a door that leads you outside in the world; meditation is the door that leads you to your interiority—to the very innermost shrine of your being. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)

Again after another 24 hour train ride, I arrived in Xian and transferred to another train to Lou Yang, one of the greatest ancient cities of China. Not realizing that I had to break journey in Xian ( Ancient Chang An), I hired a porter who carried my belongings to a youth hostel nearby. After a quick breakfast, I hired one of the hustling taxi drivers to take me to the famous Xian mosque built in 742 by the Tang Emperors in classic Chinese style. The Tang Dynasty noted for its religious tolerance is still considered the Golden Age of China. There were even two Hindu temples with Brahmin priests in Chang' An in the 8th century. India and China historically had such a great connection that the damage done during the Communist Government will take more time to fully heal. I meditated at this mosque which to me was more Buddhist in element than Islam in presence.( *One hour of contemplation surpasses sixty years of worship. – Muhammad)

Situated on the central plain of China, Luoyang is one of the cradles of Chinese civilization, and is one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. For several centuries, Luoyang was the focal point of China. In AD 68, the White Horse Temple, the first Buddhist temple in China, was founded in Luoyang. The temple still exists, though the architecture is of later origin, mainly from the 16th century. The history of this city is so rich that it asks to be investigated outside the scope of this article. My coming here was to visit two great sites; the White Horse Temple and the Longmen Grottos.
On the instruction of the Chinese Emperor Ming Di, two of his emissaries departed to India around AD 67 during the Kushan period (2nd century BC to 3rd century AD), in search for Buddhist scriptures .They encountered two Indian Buddhist monks in Gandhara and persuaded them to join them and return to China, bringing their book of Buddhist scriptures, relics and statues of Buddha with them on two white horses. At the behest of the emperor, the two monks named Kasyapa Matanga and Gobharana translated the Buddhist classics at the Baimai Temple at LuoYang, which was then the nation’s capital. The most notable of the classics, the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters was translated by Matanga. This was the first Buddhist sutra in Chinese and has the pride of place in the history of Chinese Buddhism. The temple then increased in importance as Buddhism grew within China and spread to Korea, Japan and Vietnam. The introduction of Buddhism in China was a significant influence on Chinese morals, thought and ethics. Pleased with their arrival in China, the king built a temple in their honor and named it the White Horse Temple as an appreciation of the white horses that had carried the monks. The horses are buried here and a statue has been erected there. The Buddhist religion prospered from here and with the arrival of Bodhidarma ( from Kanchipuram in South India), another monk from India in the 5th century, Chinese Buddhism evolved, spreading to other countries.

. The two monks are buried there under earthen mounds typical of Chinese burials of that period. One cannot imagine a better place for an amazing meditation session. I found a quiet corner next to Kashyapa Matanga's mound and had one of my greatest meditation sessions there. (*Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there – buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day. – Deepak Chopra.)
One of the most spectacular Buddhist sites is the Longmen Grottos- located on both sides of the Yi River to the south of the ancient capital of Luoyang, Henan province ( Near modern Zhengzhou). It comprises of more than 2,300 caves and niches carved into the steep limestone cliffs over a 1km long stretch. These contain almost 110,000 Buddhist stone statues, more than 60 stupas and 2,800 inscriptions carved on steles. Well, one would think that it must be the ultimate place for meditation, but unfortunately the place got run over by tourists since it is a World heritage Site. While the location has nothing of great historical connection with Buddhism itself it encapsulates the high cultural level and sophisticated society of Tang Dynasty China(5th-7th Century AD).

On the next leg of my travel in China, I finally came upon the famous Shaolin Temple, home to Chinese martial arts, Kung Fu. Shaolin Temple was established in 495A.D. at the western foot of Songshan Mountain, 13 kilometers northwest to Dengfeng City, Henan Province. The then Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei dynasty (386-557) had the temple built to accommodate the Indian master Batuo (Buddhabhadra). Shaolin Temple literally means “temple in the thick forests of Shaoshi Mountain”.

As the first Shaolin abbot, Batuo (Buddhabhadra) devoted himself to translating Buddhist scriptures and preaching doctrines to hundreds of his followers. Later, another Indian monk Bodhidharma arrived at the Shaolin Temple, after crossing the Yangtze River from Canton. He spent nine years meditating in a cave and initiated the Chinese Chan tradition( Zen Buddhism) at Shaolin Temple. Thereafter, Bodhidharma was honored as the first Patriarch of Chan Buddhism. As Chinese Kung fu also originated from Shaolin Temple, it has been recognized as the origin of Chan Buddhism and the cradle of Kung fu; both attributed to Boddhidharma.
I must elaborate on this great Buddhist, Bodhidharma, since he hailed from Kanchipuram a town 35Km from where I grew up in Madras, India. Shaolin tradition mentions Bodhidharma (ca. 470-532) as that the 'first Zen patriarch'. The son of a South Indian ruler, a king of Kanchipuram, and that he appeared one day at the southern Chinese port city of Canton around 520 A.D is written into history by scholars, whence he traveled to see Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty. This tradition points to Bodhidharma as a member of the ruling class of the South Indian dynasty of the Pallavas, the contemporary of Skandavarman IV or Nandivarman I.
It is well known that Kanchipuram, the Pallava capital, was one of the most important strongholds of Indian Buddhism at that time. Bodhidharma, (like me) was a Tamil-speaking South Indian who trained the monks of Shaolin Temple, Kalaripayat, a local form of martial arts still practiced in the Kerala region today. This training of monks became necessary due to regular raids from the forested areas on the monastery. Until this day Shaolin is the home to Kung Fu ( too commercialized within the city today) and Bodhidharma is recognized as the undisputed master of Zen philosophy and Kung Fu. He is worshiped as Damma in Japan where Chan Buddhism is called Zen Buddhism.
What better place to do meditation where the great Bodhidharma himself meditated. It was a quiet, cool afternoon as I found a place under a statue of the master and meditated deeply.( *As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the Buddha. -Bodhidharma)

From Uzbekistan to interior China I had travelled on three different trips to complete this circuit ever so closely connected with Buddhism and meditation. Now it is time for me to return to India and connect the dots where great Hindi philosophers and Buddha himself began these traditions.
In 2010 , my sister, her husband and my cousin did a road trip through Garwhal Himalayas. We were heading to Badrinath one of the holiest places of Hinduism in India. Enroute, we stayed in the hill town of Jyothirmatt. This was where one of India's greatest Hindu philosopher meditated and started a monastic order. He was Shankara. The great Adi Shankara in early 8th century was a philosopher and theologian who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta. He is credited with unifying and establishing the main currents of thought in Hinduism philosophy which expounds that God resides inside our own soul. This is the branch of philosophy my community and family have practiced over millennia.
Shankara travelled across the Indian subcontinent to propagate his philosophy through discourses and debates with other thinkers. He established the importance of monastic life as sanctioned in the great Hindu works of Upanishads and Brahma Sutra, in a time when the existing Mīmāṃsā school established strict ritualism and ridiculed monasticism. He is reputed to have founded four mathas ("monasteries"), which helped in the historical development, revival and spread of Advaita Vedanta of which he is known as the greatest revivalist. At a time when Buddhism was a populist religion that attracted the masses, he through doctrines and brilliant discourses restored Hinduism in India. In its aftermath Buddhism and Jainism became diminished religions within its borders for better or worse.
Just imagine meditating in the cave were the great Shankara himself immersed himself inwards. This along with my time under the Bodhi tree marked moments of great internal bliss for me.*( “If the mind falls asleep, awaken it. Then if it starts wandering, make it quiet. If you reach the state where there is neither sleep nor movement of mind, stay still in that, the natural (real) state.” ― Ramana Maharshi)


There is little doubt among those who appreciate Indian philosophy that the foothills of the Himalayas was a Petri dish for great thinkers. The Hindu Rishis subjected themselves to great feats of body & breathe control and would survive in very cold climes with very little outerwear. Through those extreme moments, they focused their mind into deep meditation. The Buddhists were even more severe in their penance and rigor during meditation. While my wife Pushpa and I were at the Mt. Everest Base Camp in Tibet in 2012, we visited the Rongbuk Monastery (17600 ft altitude). Rongbuk Monastery was founded in 1902 by the Nyingmapa Lama Ngawang Tenzin Norbuin in an area of meditation huts and caves that had been in use by communities of nuns since the 18th century. Hermitage meditation caves dot the cliff walls all around the monastery complex and up and down the valley. Mani stone walls, carved with sacred syllables and prayers, line the paths. These are areas where temperatures never climb above freezing point.
The founding Rongbuk Lama, also known as Zatul Rinpoche, was much respected by the Tibetans. Even though the Rongbuk Lama viewed the early climbers at the Base Camp as "heretics," he gave them his protection and supplied them with meat and tea while also praying for their conversion. It was the Rongbuk Lama who gave Namgyal Wangdi the name Ngawang Tenzin Norbu, or Tenzing Norgay, as a young child.
On a very cold but windless day with crystal clear skies and on a ground with ice over several inches thick, I found a spot facing the great Choma Lama-Mt. Everest and got into deep mediation with the peaks staring down at me. This was a memorable place and moment in my life. I could see the glaciers below and wisps of snow blow from the peak and imagine a visit to its pinnacle through an inward journey.*( Sitting like a mountain let your mind rise, fly and soar. – Sogyal Rinpoche)

So travel can be combined with many personal hobbies or practices. One can do yoga in spectacular places, meditate in meaningful places, exercise in unique locales, paint as my friend cerebral Suresh does alongside nature and yet be tourist and traveler.
Finally 2016 came around and the trip I promised my guru a decade ago kicked into being. In February of 2016 Mark, Kate and I embarked on a two week journey to North India. The ultimate destination, The Bodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya was true to our expectations.
I must give a small primer about Buddha for some of my western readers. Born as prince Gautama and living the trappings of luxury, he became exposed to the ultimate reality of life: sorrow. Gautama abandoned his court life and family took on the life of a wandering monk, accepting food as it was offered to him. He pursued his spiritual quest and studied under the well-known teachers of his day. He learned deep meditation and followed the yogic practices, but in the end discovered that he reached a point where the teachers could offer him no more. He wanted to find the truth of life through severe penance and meditation.
For six years, Sakyamuni starved and punished his body and lived the most austere life imaginable. He sat under a Bodhi tree at a place called Bodh Gaya and determined not to move until he had found the answers he sought. His meditation was deep, and, on the night of the full moon in May of 523 BC, complete Enlightenment came to him. His mind became calm and clear and he understood the cycle of birth, death and the wheel of life. He understood his true nature and that of all living beings. This was the end of his spiritual journey, and at that moment he became "the Buddha". His simple message was a lot more appealing than the complex ritual and caste based Hinduism, that a religious revolution that took root in ancient India.

Waking up early we visited the grounds which was thronging with Buddhist pilgrims from all over the World. The chant of the Tibetans, the songs of the Sri Lankans, the quiet worship of the Japanese and Thai, along with a smattering of westerners who were deeply rooted in meditation. The Mahabodhi Temple Complex, UNESCO Heritage Site, is one of the four holy sites related to the life of the Lord Buddha, and particularly to the attainment of Enlightenment. The first temple was built by Emperor Asoka in the 3rd century B.C., and the present temple dates from the 5th or 6th centuries. It is one of the earliest Buddhist temples built entirely in brick, still standing in India, from the late Gupta period.
After walking around the complex with throngs of monks and lay people performing worship both in a private and personal manner in every nook and cranny of the grounds, was truly inspirational. As a Hindu, the lack of major ceremonies or grand rituals in Buddhism became quite evident here. Mark had always maintained that the power of group meditation was synergistic. Mark, Kate and I searched for a spot under the huge branches of the Bodhi tree and the three of us mediated amongst the faint backdrop of chanting and singing. It was an invigorating experience, something I could have done sitting there all morning.*( Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without............... Buddha)

We returned to the complex again in the evening and again the following morning with each visit providing immense satisfaction and internal joy. On the last morning while Mark and I were meditating before sunrise, a monk came and sat next to us. In the midst of meditation he placed a fruit in each of our hands. Upon waking up we realized that he had gone. Within a matter of minutes, two monks came to us with a begging bowl and all we had with us were the fruits in our hands to offer. It was a remarkable event and seemed to be surreal moment that either of us can explain in words.
Another important place that marks the life of the Buddha. He arrived in Sarnath after wandering along the Ganges river and spent days meditating in a grove with wandering deers. Word soon got out that a great monk was dispensing great words that even ordinary people could understand. Here he preached his message of the middle way to nirvana after he achieved enlightenment at Bodhgaya and gave his famous first sermon here. In the 3rd century BC, emperor Ashoka had magnificent stupas and monasteries erected here as well as an engraved pillar. When Chinese traveler Xuan Zang dropped by in AD 640, Sarnath boasted a 100m-high stupa and 1500 monks living in large monasteries. However, soon after, Buddhism went into decline and, when Muslim invaders sacked the city in the late 12th century, Sarnath disappeared altogether. It was ‘rediscovered’ by British archaeologists in 1835.Today it’s one of the four key sites on the Buddhist circuit.
In a suitable spot, Kate, Mark and I had a tremendous group meditation session. My personal awakening here is simply indescribable.*( Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed. -Saint Francis de Sales)

Our spiritual travels also took us to Rishikesh, the ashram of Mahesh Yogi and famous for the Beatles in residence in the 60s. Since ancient times, Rishikesh has been an important pilgrimage spot for the saints and Hindu devotees. However, it is during the initial medieval period in India that the place started to gain more popularity. During 8th century Adi Shankaracharya, mentioned earlier, built several temples and ashrams in the region. Unfortunately, most of the temples and ashrams were destroyed because of several earthquakes and floods that have affected the region over the centuries; however, some temples still stand tall and are reminiscent of the rich cultural heritage of the place.

While Rishikesh has a rich religious history that makes it an important place among Indians, but the event that really put Rishikesh on world’s map was the visit by The Beatles in 1968. The band arrived in India in the search of answers to life’s larger questions. During their stay of several weeks, at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram, they learnt transcendental meditation to understand the deeper meaning behind human existence. It is in Rishikesh, that they wrote most of the songs of their most famous album, The White Album. Since their visit, millions of people from across the globe have thronged the place, either to seek answers to their own questions or to witness the remains of that historic event.
While John Lennon and Ringo went about practicing songs for the White Album, George and Paul really got into some serious meditation. It is said that Paul still supports the Transintendal Meditation organization until this day. Mark and I had a small meditation session there to follow the footsteps of his guru and the Beatles.* ("Meditate and enjoy."
"TM in the am and the pm."
"Water the root to enjoy the fruit."
"20 minutes in the bank, all day in the market place." .........Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)


Mark and I meditated at the famous Sivananda Ashram in front of the samadhi of the great Hindu spiritual teacher and a proponent of Yoga and Vedanta. Swami Sivananda is the last of India's great sages and I would ask my readers to sample his works available in the web. A few miles downriver in Hardwar, we had the opportunity to witness the Ardh Kumbh Mela where over 80 million pilgrims wash away their sins in the river over a 45 day period. The Kumbh Mela is a very ancient event referred to in the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata dating to 1500 BC. First written evidence of the Kumbha Mela can be found in the accounts of Chinese traveler, Huan Tsang or Xuanzang (602 - 664 A.D.) who visited India in 629 -645 CE, during the reign of King Harshavardhana.

• ( "Regular meditation opens the avenues of

intuitional knowledge,
makes the mind calm and steady,
awakens an ecstatic feeling,
and brings the practitioner in contact
with the source of his/her very being."
...............Swami Sivananda"_

While staying at the elegant Hari Ganga Haveli in Haridwar we took a plunge in the icy waters around 5:00 AM. We followed that dip by a meditation session in our room and the energy of the place and the meditation carried us through for a couple of days. Kate unfortunately took ill in Hardwar and was bed ridden for three days with a virus. The local doctor was very efficient and kind and the in room treatment including medicines for three days cost less than $20. Haridwar was an amazing place where one could see poor peasants and rich land lords dip next to each other competing for space to wash away their sins. The deep faith shown by the masses, the orderliness, the excellent security arrangements provided by the government and our ability to meander amongst millions of people, with a camera pointed, was quite exceptional. As a traveler and photographer such an access to humanity ever willing to grace themselves in a photograph cannot be found anywhere else on earth.
Varanasi has been a cultural centre of North India for several thousand years, and is closely associated with the Ganges. Hindus believe that death in the city will bring salvation, making it a major centre for pilgrimage. The city is known worldwide for its many Ghats, embankments made in steps of stone slabs along the river bank where pilgrims perform ritual ablutions. In Varanasi, we walked the alleyways, sailed the river passing bathers, worshipers and the cremation Ghats which has witnessed the burning Hindu remains for over two millennia, 24/7 365 days a year. Our meditation sessions took place in the terrace of our haveli, overlooking the river, that once belonged to the King of Nepal. On these banks the great Buddha gave his sermons, where saints like Kabir and Tulsi Das called home. *(“Be quiet in your mind, quiet in your senses, and also quiet in your body. Then, when all these are quiet, don't do anything. In that state truth will reveal itself to you.”...................Kabir)

With Mark, Kate and brother Vijay in attendance, I also used this great opportunity to bring the cremated remains of my dear father who passed away in 2015 in New Jersey and immersed it in the river after Hindu rituals lead by a chief priest. Here he joined my forebears who watch and guide me through my daily meditation and machinations of life.
Mixing and meeting amazing people, meditating in historic sites, eating great food, I offered my friend and his family a glimpse into Hindu India. I will try to devote some other amazing mediation moments while traveling through South east Asia in another article. I must stop now. It is time for meditation. Aum. ( [email protected])
The End

Album

It was a grey and rainy day when friend Mark Riesenberg and I crossed the long suspension footbridge, Ram Jhula, hanging nearly 200 feet above the Ganges into the wonderful valley of Rishikesh, early last month. The river Ganga, both a spiritual and life giving resource had finally descended here to make its journey through the plains of India, after traveling from the glaciated peaks of the Himalayan ranges.
I had met Mark in my gym in New Jersey over a decade ago and soon came to realize the spiritual depth of this man though raised Jewish was more Hindu than most. Soon he became my meditation guru and who better to learn the techniques than from a master who was a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself, the founder of Transcendental Meditation( TM) institutes, whose ashram we were visiting. After graduating college in the 60s during the thick of the hippie movement, Mark chose to become a meditation teacher and worked for many years as one for the TM institute in the NY/NJ area.

I had promised Mark that someday I would escort him to the real India and in 2016 accompanied by his daughter Kate, we embarked on a spiritual journey visiting Varanasi, Haridwar, Rishikesh and Bodh Gaya. We were treated to some amazing experiences including the Ardh Kumbh Mela in Haridwar ( over 100 million bathe in the Ganges during this month long worship of the river), meditations twice a day along the Ganges, uplifting moments under the Bodhi tree where Buddha achieved his enlightenment 2500 years ago in Gaya. One of the unplanned highlights was a visit to the Maharishi's much vaunted ashram in Rishikesh; a musical and spiritual retreat for the Beatles in 1968. Mark always remarked that the Maharishi had told him to visit India with an Indian in order grasp the full impact of the experience. The Maharishi's wish had indeed come true.
The Beatles first met the Maharishi in London in August 1967 and then attended a seminar in Bangor, Wales. They had planned to attend the entire ten-day session, but their stay was cut short by the death of their manager, Brian Epstein. Wanting to learn more, they kept in contact with the Maharishi and made arrangements to spend time with him at his teaching centre located near Rishikesh, in "the Valley of the Saints" at the foothills of the Himalayas.


Along with their wives, girlfriends, assistants and numerous reporters, the Beatles arrived in India in February 1968 and joined the group of 60 people who were training to be TM teachers, including musicians Donovan, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, and flautist Paul Horn. While there, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Harrison wrote many songs and Ringo Starr finished writing his first. Eighteen of those songs were recorded for The Beatles ("the White Album"), two songs appeared on the Abbey Road album, and others were used for various solo projects.
According to McCartney, the Maharishi "was great to us when Brian Epstein( their manager) died" and Cynthia Lennon wrote "it was as though, with Brian gone, the four needed someone new to give them direction and the Maharishi was in the right place at the right time." Curious to learn more, the Beatles made plans to spend time at the "Maharishi's training center" in India in 1968.
A quick brief here on the Maharishi(meaning Great seer) is apropos. Mahesh studied physics at Allahabad University and earned a degree in 1942. In 1941, he became an administrative secretary to the great philosopher and Vedanta scholar and Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati( respectfully called Guru Dev) and took a new name, Bal Brahmachari Mahesh. The Maharishi recalls how it took about two and a half years to attune himself to the thinking of Brahmananda Saraswati and to gain "a very genuine feeling of complete oneness". Eventually he gained trust and became Guru Dev's "personal secretary" and "favored pupil". He was trusted to take care of the bulk of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati's correspondence without direction, and was also sent out to give public speeches on Vedic (scriptural) themes.
Although Brahmachari Mahesh was a close disciple, he could not be the Shankaracharya's spiritual successor because he was not of the Brahmin caste. The Shankaracharya, at the end of his life, charged him with the responsibility of travelling and teaching meditation to the masses. Thus began the TM movement.


As Mark and I walked through the town along the many ashrams, coffee shops and Ayurveda Clinics, Mark with his characteristic smile quipped " This is a perfect home for a Hippie" . The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Ashram was a bit way out of town, a 20 minute walk along the high river bank where the jungle starts engulfing the narrowing pathway. The Ashram today is inside the Rajaji Tiger Reserve and National Park. Until recently, one had to scale a small fence to get inside but recently access to the site is allowed with an entrance ticket. As we walked into the overgrown vegetation onto the small stone pathway we came suddenly we treated to a unique sight of multiple meditation pods that lined it on either side. The place was quiet, extremely peaceful except for an occasion chirp from the birds amidst the sound of flowing water. Lennon-McCartney song" Mother Nature's Son" written in this location rang in my mind:
"Born a poor young country boy, Mother Nature's son
All day long I'm sitting singing songs for everyone

Sit beside a mountain stream, see her waters rise
Listen to the pretty sound of music as she flies

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo

Find me in my field of grass, Mother Nature's son
Swaying daises sing a lazy song beneath the sun

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo
Yeah yeah yeah

Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm
Mm mm mm, ooh ooh ooh
Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm
Mm mm mm mm, wah wah wah

Wah, Mother Nature's son ".

Mindy Poder, executive editor of Travel Age West captures the scene inside the ashram well in her 2014 article.
" While the Ganges River may be a pilgrimage site for Hindus, “The Beatles Ashram” is something of a Mecca to many Fab Four fans. That’s what I explain to Ramesh Chawla, a local guide and native from nearby Haridwar, who has trouble understanding why I would want to visit a closed, decaying ashram. Somehow, in spite of its blazing importance to Western pop culture, the place where Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught Transcendental Meditation to his famous followers in the 1960s has been left to rot. There, overlooking the Ganges River, they grew beards, donned Indian-style cotton pajama pants and tunics, meditated in private caves and attended lectures and discussions on their meditations. Following years of extraordinary success and the sudden passing of their manager Brian Epstein, the Fab Four were seeking peace of mind. They were hoping to expand their minds as well.
“Oh, it was pretty exciting, you know,” said Ringo Starr in an interview for “The Beatles Anthology” documentary. “We were in this really spiritual place, and we were meditating a lot, having seminars by Maharishi. It was pretty far out.”
Their time in Rishikesh turned out to be one of the most prolific periods of their career. They wrote most of the double album, “The Beatles” (more popularly referred to as “The White Album”), as well as songs that would later appear on “Abbey Road.” Many songs, such as “Dear Prudence,” “Mother Nature’s Son,” and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and Monkey,” make direct references to what the band learned and saw while in India.
“I remember having a great meditation, one of the best I ever had,” recounted McCartney in the biography “Many Years From Now” by Barry Miles. “It was a pleasant afternoon, in the shade of these big tropical trees on the flat roof of this bungalow. It appeared to me that I was like a feather over a ... warm-air pipe. I was just suspended by this hot air, which was something to do with the meditation. And it was a very, very blissful feeling … And I thought, ‘Well, hell, that’s great, I couldn’t buy that anywhere.’ That was the most pleasant, the most relaxed I ever got, for a few minutes I really felt so light, so floating, so complete.”.

The guide, Ramesh Chawla, referred in Mindy Poder's article incidentally turned out to be our guide too. He was a great 'guyde' and can be seen with us in a photo shot inside the Maharishi's bungalow . Each of the 86 meditation pods had a private room, toilet and a winding staircase that leads to a meditation grotto under the foliage. The scene was very surreal and looked like a scene from "Lost" as mentioned in Poder's article. Two wonderful gentlemen, from New Zealand and lovers of the Beatles emerged from the thicket and were glad to see us since they were completely lost. We walked and chatted away into the late evening with much energy and excitement.
It is said that it was Paul and George who had the most benefits from this trip. Ringo left in a week while Lennon was very restless during his stay. Mia and Prudence Farrow were a part of the Beatles entourage. Prudence was supposed to be a serious meditator, spending hours a day deep in meditation. She became so serious about her meditation that she "turned into a near recluse" and "rarely came out" of the cottage she was living in. John Lennon was asked to "contact her and make sure she came out more often to socialize". As a result, Lennon wrote the song "Dear Prudence". In the song Lennon asks Farrow to "open up your eyes" and "see the sunny skies" reminding her that she is "part of everything". The song was said to be "a simple plea to a friend to 'snap out of it'".
" Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?
Dear Prudence, open up your eyes
Dear Prudence, see the sunny skies
The wind is low, the birds will sing
That you are part of everything
Dear Prudence, won't you open up your eyes?
Look around round
Look around round round
Look around
Dear Prudence, let me see you smile
Dear Prudence, like a little child
The clouds will be a daisy chain
So let me see you smile again
Dear Prudence, won't you let me see you smile?
Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful and so are you................ "

My friend Mark was so excited to visit Maharishi's bungalow- once a wonderful abode with fine detailing and sweeping views of the Ganges below. Mark had always maintained that the Yogi was a very special person with great penchant for of design and organization. This was evident from the layout of the ashram. Later as we walked into the huge meditation/ lecture hall, Mark remembered his lectures in Switzerland in similar halls were Maharishi used to be seated in front of 400 plus devotees who listened to his speeches on Vedanta. One of the idealistic views of the Maharishi was that World Peace could be achieved through inner peace attained through meditation. While a great utopian concept, it was unfortunately a failed attempt at changing the world. At least someone tried and many of us are still on that path.

Just two years ago, Canadian artist Pan Trinity Das set out to revitalize the former meditation hall of the ashram. Das was joined by volunteers from around the world — artists and fans alike. According to the group, the project was closed down after two weeks by park authorities. But with just black, red and white paint, the group created what is now called Beatles Cathedral Gallery. As I view the art that fills the hall, it’s clear that this group tapped into the same creative energy that inspired The Beatles during their stay. We were lucky to photograph this beautiful place and present it here even as the light on that rainy evening was fading rapidly.
On one giant wall, there is a painting of John, Paul, George and Ringo in pop-art style, with each of their faces half-obstructed by shadow. Other pop-art portraits fill the hall, including that of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on an empty stage on the opposite wall. It feels like a visual representation of what the guru-teacher relationship might have been like, as imagined by fans solving the puzzle themselves. Snippets of classic Beatles lyrics written at this very location twirl around the paintings. They fill the silent hall with song. What was even more beautiful was a 'Peace" symbol made completely out of fallen leaves.

It was indeed a reminder of an amazing counter culture age so enriched by the music of the Beatles and the spiritually uplifting message of the Yogi.
With joy in our hearts we left this beautiful ashram, though in a state a decay it still had the spirit of a great philosopher and the imprint of four great musicians. Jai Gurudev!.
emailme @ ( [email protected])

Credits:
Wikipedia (245 references)Travel Age Media, The Story of the Maharishi (published 1976), William Jefferson,Photographs of the Beatles in Rishikesh by Paul Saltzman, Mark Riesenberg

PHOTO GALLERY

Growing up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan,the mysteries of Africa have always played in my mind and fantasies. Growing up in India, tales about fabulous Indian kingdoms, tigers and rope tricks written by the likes of Rudyard Kipling, were less exciting to me than that of Africa. Lee Falk, who created the 'Phantom" comic strip was also a hero of mine. Written in 1936, he culled all the interesting stories that came out of Africa from French and Belgians who were busy with the brutal enterprise of slavery, ivory trade and colonialism at that time.
My interest in Africa transcends books. Since 1992 I have collected over 100 pieces of wooden African sculptures belonging to over 25 tribes of anthropological re known like the Bambara, the Fang, The Luba, The Dogon etc to name a few. The stories attached to the usage of masks and fetishes, mostly to invoke both human and animal spirits, is a testament to these first peoples.

Last week, I was having a long conversation about the plight of Africa with my cousin Venkatram Santosh of Richmond, Virginia. Living in the capital city of the old confederate America we talked at length about Africa and slavery, until such time his surgeon's emergency button beeped. So I decided to continue that conversation by penning my thoughts here while using the framework of great writers on this subject.
During the past two decades I have managed to get a glimpse of East Africa through Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, that of the North through Egypt and Ethiopia, Mali in the west and the southern countries of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Angola and Zimbabwe. Alas it was time to penetrate the darkest deepest jungles of Africa- the Congo Basin. While I was filled with excitement to explore I was also anxious to avoid the many conflicts and diseases that has afflicted this area . After spending 2 weeks in the Republic of Congo(ROC of Congo-Brazzaville), I both was amazed and shocked by the riches of the country along with the corruption and poverty endured by the people. This article will mostly deal with its neighbor on the other side of the river, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC -Kinshasa) but by extension includes the entire basin. I could not obtain a visa in time to the DRC-Kinshasa, but spent many an evening sipping beer at the Brazzaville- Congo river front looking at Kinshasa on the other bank just 4 km away.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries on earth, but colonialism, slavery and corruption have turned it into one of the poorest . The world's bloodiest conflict since World War II is still rumbling on today. It is a war in which more than five million people have died, millions more have been driven to the brink by starvation and disease and several million women and girls have been raped.
The DRC borders the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan to the north; Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania to the east; Zambia and Angola to the south; and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world. With a population of over 75 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populated officially Francophone country, the fourth most populated nation in Africa.

The Great War of Africa, a conflagration that has sucked in soldiers and civilians from nine nations and countless armed rebel groups, has been fought almost entirely inside the borders of one unfortunate country - the Democratic Republic of Congo. Many of the country's mining operations are connected to the waters of the mighty Congo River. It is a place seemingly blessed with every type of mineral, where even the more fortunate live in grinding poverty. It is consistently rated lowest on the UN Human Development Index,) ranking 176 out of 187 countries in 2004 .

In order to understand the reasons for this penury and suffering I did some research using the web and by reading books about its ancient history, its ethnic composition, politics, colonies, impact of slavery and corruption that has spread like blight into African society. The land of the Congo river is split between DRC-Democratic Republic of Congo (Belgian Congo) and ROC- Republic of Congo ( formerly French Equatorial Africa). The DRC is the most violent part of the world today while the ROC is a dictatorship which is poor, corrupt but stable. Two books; King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hoschild and Blood River-A Journey through Africa's Broken Heart. by Tim Butcher, enabled me to grasp the depth of suffering in these accursed nations.
The Congo River is the largest river in western Central Africa and the most powerful on the continent. Its overall length of 2,900 miles makes it the second-longest in Africa (after the Nile). It is the fifth-longest river in the world, draining a basin of nearly 1.5 million square miles. The river also has the second-largest flow in the world, with a discharge of 1.5 million cubic feet of water per second, trailing only the Amazon. The river and its tributaries flow through the second-largest rainforest in the world, the Congo Rainforest, second only to the Amazon Rainforest in South America. The dense rain forest, heavy rainfall, and poor soil of the basin that is traversed by the Congo results in sparse population, except for small settlements of hunters, farmers, and fishermen along or near the river. Since it is close to the equator, the climate is hot and humid.

The Congo Basin spans across six countries—Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. There are approximately 10, 000 species of tropical plants in the Congo Basin and 30 percent are unique to the region. Endangered wildlife, including forest elephants, chimpanzees, bonobos, and lowland and mountain gorillas inhabit the lush forests. 400 other species of mammals, 1,000 species of birds and 700 species of fish can also be found here.
The Congo Basin has been inhabited by humans for more than 50,000 years and it provides food, fresh water and shelter to more than 75 million people. Nearly 150 distinct ethnic groups exist and the region’s Ba’Aka (Pygmy) people are among the most well known representatives of an ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Ancient history and Ethnicity:

Most of my readers may understand Aryan, Viking, Mongol and Arabic migrations that has impacted much of China, India, Iran, Middle East and both western and Eastern Europe. Some of these migrations were gradual while others were through trade and mostly conquests. The Aryan impact happened around 2000-500BC BC, the Vikings were active around 800-1100 AD, the Arab conquests between 780-1100 AD and the Mongol/Turkic incursions around 1200 AD. However, the largest human migrations in history happened in Africa with the Bantu speaking tribes pushing south from west Africa.
The Bantu migration was one of the first formative events in African history The great southward Bantu migration in Africa took place in sub-Saharan Africa (south of the Sahara Desert), over some 2,000 years between 1000 BC and 1700 AD. With the development of the iron blade( iron age), reaping became easier for the bantu people and agriculture took on a whole new meaning. This necessitated the enlargement of territory since the foragers settled down to form communities. A linguistically related group of about 60 million gradually migrated down to the continent into southern Africa from the west and equatorial Africa.
The Bantu-speaking peoples brought agriculture to the southern half of Africa, which was mostly populated by foragers, herders, and hunter-gatherers. Bantu peoples settled land and created great empires like the Great Zimbabwe and the Zulu kingdom, and continued to expand and settle more land. Bantu refers to several similar languages, or a 'family' of languages, that can be found throughout central and south Africa.
If you look at the map showing the Bantu migration, the southern Africa was primarily peopled by the Xhosas ( San and Bushmen) while the Congo region was peopled by the Mbuti (Pygmy- Aka, Baka, Twa and Mbuti). In this migration, these people were displaced, exterminated ,marginalized and in some cases enslaved until this day.

The first sub Saharan kingdoms emerged in the early 4th century( barring the Ethiopian and Egyptian kingdoms of earlier periods). These Sahelian kingdoms were a series of kingdoms or empires that were centered on the Sahel, the area of grasslands south of the Sahara. They controlled the trade routes across the desert, and were also quite decentralized, with member cities having a great deal of autonomy. The Ghana Empire may have been an established as early as the 4th century AD. It was succeeded by the Sosso in 1230, the Mali Empire in the 13th century AD, and later by the Songhai and Sokoto Caliphate. There were also a number of forest empires and states in this time period.
Following the collapse of the Songhai Empire, a number of smaller states arose across West Africa, including the Bambara Empire of Ségou ( Mali-Ivory Coast), the lesser Bambara kingdom of Kaarta, the Fula/Malinké kingdom of Khasso (Mali)), and the Kénédougou Empire of Sikasso ( Mali-Burkina Faso) emerged. We will not go into details of the other minor kingdoms that existed during my focus on Congo.
The Kingdom of Kongo was established around 1390 in west central Africa in what is now northern Angola, Cabinda, the Republic of the Congo, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the southernmost part of Gabon.( Please see modern map attached). At its greatest extent, it reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Congo River( Kwango in Bantu)in the east, and from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in Angola to the south. I was basically traveling that section during my recent trip, reaching almost 30 miles near the Gabon border. Since I was a bit inland and in a dense forest, I must have been about 100 miles east of the coast.
The kingdom largely existed from c. 1390 to 1891 as an independent state, and from 1891 to 1914 as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Portugal. In 1914, the titular monarchy was forcibly abolished, following Portuguese victory against a Kongo revolt. The remaining territories of the kingdom were assimilated into the colony of Angola ( which was under Portugal since 1575).

The Congo River and Slavery 17th-19th Century:

In 1482 when the Portuguese sailor Diego Cao accidentally came upon the river as it emptied into the Atlantic, he was astounded by its sheer size. Modern oceanographers have discovered more evidence of the great river's strength in its 'pitched battle with the ocean' a 100-mile-long canyon, in place 4,000 feet deep, that the river has carved out of the sea floor... It pours some 1.4 million cubic feet of water per second into the ocean; only the Amazon carries more water.
Thanks to satellite technology, the world now knows that much of the river's basin lies on a plateau which rises nearly 1,000 feet high 220 miles from the Atlantic coast. Thus the river descends to sea level in a furious 220-mile dash down the plateau.
During this tumultuous descent the river squeezes through narrow canyons, boils up in waves of 40 feet high, and tumbles over 32 separate cataracts. So great is the drop and the volume of water that these 220 miles have as much hydroelectric potential as all the lakes and rivers of the United States combined."

Diogo Cão, became the first European to visit the Congo when he reached the mouth of the Congo River and sailed a few miles upstream. Soon thereafter the Portuguese established ties with the king of Kongo, and in the early 16th cent. they established themselves on parts of the coast of modern Angola.
The Portuguese had little influence on the Congo until the late 18th cent., when the African and mulatto traders whom they backed, traveled far inland to the kingdom of Mwata Kazembe ( Katanga province of DRC in eastern Congo bordering Zambia). In the mid-19th cent. Arab, Swahili, and Nyamwezi traders from present-day Tanzania penetrated into E Congo, where they traded and raided for slaves and ivory. Some of the traders established states with considerable power. With the discovery of the Americas, slaves were in great demand in South and North America. As a result raiding villages in all of Congo took place in the entire length of this huge country from the Atlantic to its borders with Lake Tanganyika almost 3000 miles away.


From the 17th century to the early 19th century, many Congolese and Angolans were brought as slaves to the United States. The first Angolan slaves of Virginia (15 men and 17 women) were Mbundu and Bakongo, who spoke bantu based Kimbundu and Kikongo languages respectively. Many of these early slaves were literate due to their conversion to Catholicism by the Portuguese.
Later, slaves were stolen by English and Dutch pirates from the Portuguese from the Angolan port of Luanda. Many of these slaves were imported by the Dutch to New York, which, at that time, was called New Amsterdam and was under Dutch control. As a New Yorker I find it interesting that the Angolans also were the first slaves in New York City. According to Harvard university professor Jill Lepore, the slaves of Angola who arrived in New Amsterdam were also Ambundu of Angola and, to a lesser extent, Kongos, as was the case with the first slaves who arrived in Virginia. The Congolese-Angolan slavery trade in the United States reached its greatest magnitude between 1619 and 1650. In 1644, 6,900 slaves on the African coast were purchased to clear the forests, lay roads, build houses and public buildings, and grow food. During the colonial period, people from the region Congo-Angola made up 25% of the slaves in North America.
Based on the data mentioned, many slaves came from distinct ethnic groups, such as the Bakongo and the Tio and Northern Mbunbu people. However, not all slaves kept the culture of their ancestors. The Bakongo were Catholics, from the kingdom of Kongo who had voluntarily converted to Catholicism in 1491 after the Portuguese conquered this territory. Many of the Bakongo slaves who arrived in the United States in the 18th century were captured and sold as slaves by African kings to other tribes or enemies during several civil wars in Kongo.

European , Stanley and King Leopold- 18th -20th century

Until the middle of the 19th century, the Congo was at the heart of independent Africa, as European colonialists seldom entered the interior. Along with fierce local resistance, the rainforest, swamps, and attendant malaria, and other diseases such as sleeping sickness made it a difficult environment for European invasion forces. Western countries were at first reluctant to colonize the area in the absence of obvious economic benefits. Those who tried to sail upriver encountered a narrow gorge that compressed the water into a powerful opposing current. In the river's final 220 miles from the edge of the central plateau to the coast, the Congo River drops more than a thousand feet and has 32 rapids. Difficult terrain made exploration on foot also treacherous. Following Cao, more than three hundred years elapsed before serious exploration of the Congo was undertaken.
Francisco José de Lacerda, a Portuguese explorer, reached the copper-rich Katanga region from the east in 1798, as did Arab traders in the first half of the 1800s. The Arabs extended their influence over the eastern Congo River Basin, engaging in the slave and ivory trades. In 1816 a British expedition went as far as Isangila ( see map). Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone visited the Luapula and Lualaba rivers in 1871, believing them to be sources of the Nile.
Henry Morton Stanley was the first European to navigate the river's length during his search for Dr. Livingston and reported that the Lualaba was not a source of the Nile, as had been suggested. After leaving Livingstone, Stanley sailed for 1000 miles (1600 km) down the Lualaba (Upper Congo) to the large lake he named Stanley Pool, near Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Then, rather than perish in the impenetrable country of the cascades, Stanley took a wide detour overland to come within striking distance of the original Portuguese trading station at Boma on the Congo estuary. In 2004, a Daily Telegraph correspondent, Tim Butcher, was the first person to have retraced his route. -"Blood River'-A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart, in under 24 hours last week. Any fan of Congo should get hold of this amazing modern day adventure book.
When Stanley returned to Europe in 1878, he had not only found Dr. Livingstone (an event remembered to this day), resolved the last great mystery of African exploration-exploring the Congo, and ruined his health: he had also opened the heart of tropical Africa up to the outside world. This was to be his most enduring legacy.
Stanley was lionized across Europe. He wrote articles, appeared at public meetings, lobbied the rich and powerful tirelessly; and always his theme was the boundless opportunity for commercial exploitation of the lands he had discovered or, in his own words, to "pour the civilization of Europe into the barbarism of Africa".
"There are 40,000,000 nude people" on the other side of the rapids, Stanley wrote, "and the cotton-spinners of Manchester are waiting to clothe them... Birmingham's factories are glowing with the red metal that shall presently be made into ironwork in every fashion and shape for them... and the ministers of Christ are zealous to bring them, the poor benighted heathen, into the Christian fold."
Though trade in goods was the initial impetus for the Europeans, they quickly discovered that the slave trade was much more lucrative, and the river was the means to deliver them to the coast from inland areas once the supply of slaves dwindled on the coast. As the wealth from the slave trade filtered inland, the demand for slaves grew, leading to raids by some groups and migrations by others to escape the slavers. But the increased trade and multiplication of towns along the river had the unforeseen benefit of lifestyles becoming more similar and new crops and technologies being shared.

Europe was less than keen on the idea: the great European scramble for Africa had not yet begun. Outside of the Cape of Good Hope and the Mediterranean coast, Europe had no African colonies of any significance. The focus of the great powers was still firmly on the lands that had made Europe's fortune: the Americas, the East Indies, India, China, and Australasia. There seemed no economic sense to investing energy in Africa when the returns from other colonies were likely to be both richer and more immediate. Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. Stanley was applauded, admired, decorated—and ignored.
As a constitutional monarch, Leopold was charged with the usual constitutional duties of opening parliaments, greeting diplomats, and attending state funerals. He had no power to decide policy. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. Leopold noted, "Our frontiers can never be extended into Europe." However, he added, "since history teaches that colonies are useful, that they play a great part in that which makes up the power and prosperity of states, let us strive to get one in our turn."
At various times, he launched unsuccessful schemes to buy an Argentine province, to buy Borneo from the Dutch, rent the Philippines from Spain, or establish colonies in China, Vietnam, Japan, or the Pacific islands. When the 1860s explorers focused attention on Africa, Leopold schemed to colonize Mozambique on the east coast, Senegal on the west coast, and the Congo in the centre. None of these schemes came anywhere near fruition: the government of Belgium resolutely resisted all Leopold's suggestions, seeing the acquisition of a colony as a good way to spend large amounts of money for little or no return.
Leopold's eventual response was extraordinary in its hubris and simplicity. If the government of Belgium would not take a colony, then he would simply do it himself, acting in his private capacity as an ordinary citizen.
In 1876 Leopold II sponsored an international geographical conference in Brussels, inviting delegates from scientific societies all over Europe to discuss philanthropic and scientific matters such as the best way to coordinate map making, to prevent the re-emergence of the west coast slave trade, and to investigate ways of sending medical aid to Africa. The conference was a sham: at its close, Leopold proposed that they set up an international benevolent committee to carry on, and modestly agreed to accept the chairman's role. For the look of things, he held one more meeting the following year, but from that time on, the Association Internationale Africaine was simply a front for Leopold's ambition. He created a baffling series of subsidiary shell organisations, culminating in the cunningly named Association Internationale du Congo, which had a single shareholder: Leopold himself.

Stanley returned on behalf of King Leopold of Belgium in 1876 and claimed huge swaths of land in the Conger River basin for the king, an area more than 76 times the size of Belgium. By 1885 Leopold ruled this huge area as his personal domain through his private army, the Force Publique. His legacy is one of exploitation and human rights abuses such as slavery and mutilation of the peoples. He was eventually forced to cede this land to Belgium in 1908.It is estimated that nearly 5 million perished under his brutality and is known as the second Holocaust. Other than scholars and students of Africa, this fact is little known to everyone. This is another reason that prompted me to write this blog.
Having established a beachhead on the lower Congo, in 1883 Stanley set out upriver to extend Leopold's domain, employing his usual methods: negotiations with local chiefs buying sovereignty in exchange for bolts of cloth and trinkets; playing one tribe off another; and if need be, simply shooting an obstructive chief and negotiating with his cowed successor instead. However, as he approached Stanley Falls at the junction between the Congo proper and the Lualaba (close to the general vicinity of Central Africa where he had found Livingstone six years before), it soon became clear that Stanley's men were not the only intruders.

Tippu Tip, the last and greatest of the Zanzibari slave traders of the 19th century, was well-known to Stanley, as was the social chaos and devastation that slave-hunting brought. It had only been through Tippu Tip's help that Stanley had found Livingstone (who himself had survived years on the Lualaba by virtue of Tippu Tip's friendship). Now, Stanley discovered, Tippu Tip's men had reached still further west in search of fresh populations to enslave.
Four years before, the Zanzibaris had thought the Congo deadly and impassable, and warned Stanley not to attempt to go there, but when Tippu Tip learned in Zanzibar that Stanley had survived, he was quick to act. Villages throughout the region had been burned and depopulated. Tippu Tip had raided 118 villages, killed 4,000 Africans, and, when Stanley reached his camp, had 2,300 slaves, mostly young women and children, in chains ready to transport half-way across the continent to the markets of Zanzibar.

Leopold's Rule of Congo Free State 1885-1908)

When Leopold finally ascended the throne in 1865, his undying desire was to own colonies. He tried everything under the sun to get a colony to no avail, including offering to buy the Philippines from Spain, buying lakes in the Nile and draining them out, or trying to lease territory on the island of Formosa.

He despised Belgium's small size. "Small country, small people" was how he described his little Belgium that had only become independent in 1830. The brutal expeditions of Stanley in Africa finally offered Leopold the chance to land his prized jewel, Congo in 1876.
The agents of King Leopold II of Belgium massacred 10 million Africans in the Congo. Cutting off hands as we see in Sierra Leone today, was very much part of Leopold's repertoire. Today, Leopold's "rubber terror" has all been swept under the carpet. Adam Hochschild calls it "the great forgetting" in his brilliant new book, King Leopold's Ghost(1999, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). This is a story of greed, exploitation and brutality that Africa and the world must not forget. I learnt about this book from a British English language teacher, Eric G. with whom I played Scrabble during a boring a 2015 Xmas party in Brazzaville where many UN and Embassy workers were present.
While Stanley was staking out land for Leopold's colony( Congo Free State) in the eastern Congo, the French where greedily establishing their own on the western side of Stanley pools in Brazzaville- Republic of Congo ( ROC). It is in the ROC where I spent nearly two weeks with Brazzaville its capital, which was formally established as the French Congo in 1882. Its borders with Cabinda, Cameroons, and the Congo Free State ( Belgian Congo)were established by treaties over the next decade. The plan to develop the colony was to grant massive concessions to some thirty French companies. These were granted huge swaths of land on the promise they would be developed. This development was limited and amounted mostly to the extraction of ivory, rubber, and timber. These operations often involved great brutality and the near enslavement of the locals.
Even with these measures most of the companies lost money. Only about ten earned profits. Many of the companies' vast holdings existed only on paper with virtually no presence on the ground in Africa. The French Congo was sometimes known as Gabon-Congo.
"In France's equatorial African territories including the Republic of Congo where the region's history is best documented, the amount of rubber-bearing land was far less than what Leopold controlled in Belgian Congo, but the rape was just as brutal. Almost all exploitable land was divided among concession companies. Forced labor, hostages, slave chains, starving porters, burned villages, paramilitary company 'sentries', and the chicotte were the order of the day. [The chicotte was a vicious whip made out of raw, sun-dried hippopotamus hide, cut into a long sharp-edged cork-screw strip. It was applied to bare buttocks, and left permanent scars. Twenty strokes of it sent victims into unconsciousness; and a 100 or more strokes were often fatal. The chicotte was freely used by both Leopold's men and the French].
"Thousands of refugees who had fled across the Congo River to escape Leopold's regime (Congo-Leopoldville) eventually fled back to escape the French (in Congo-Brazzaville). The population loss in the rubber-rich equatorial rainforest owned by France is estimated, just as in Leopold's Congo, at roughly 50%." writes Hoschild.

Many excerpts from his book review constitute the bulk of the next few paragraphs. Adam Hoschild, a Professor of Journalism from University of California, Berkeley has done a yeoman's service in researching and exposing Belgian rule and brutality in Congo.
Leopold never set foot in "his" Congo Free State - for all the 23 years (1885-1908) he ruled what Hochschild calls "the world's only colony claimed by one man".
It was a vast territory which "if superimposed on the map of Europe", says Hochschild, "would stretch from Zurich to Moscow to central Turkey. It was bigger than England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. Although mostly rainforest and savannah, it also embraced volcanic hills and mountains covered by snow and glaciers, some of whose peaks reached higher than the Alps."
Leopold's "rubber terror" raised a lot of hairs in Britain, America and continental Europe (particularly between the years 1900-1908). But while they were condemning Leopold's barbarity, his accusers were committing much the same atrocities against Africans elsewhere on the continent. Hochschild tries to be fair here by pointing to what the Americans and the British were doing, or had done, elsewhere.

"What happened in the Congo was indeed mass murder on a vast scale, but the sad truth is that the men who carried it out for Leopold were no more murderous than many Europeans then at work or at war elsewhere in Africa. Conrad said it best (in his book, Heart of Darkness, based on the brutalities in the Congo): 'All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz'."
Kurtz is Joseph Conrad's lead character in Heart of Darkness. He is "both a murderous head collector and an intellectual, an emissary of science and progress, a painter, a poet and a journalist, and an author of a 17-page report to the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, at the end of which he scrawls in shaky hand: 'Exterminate all the brutes'."
Conrad had himself gone to Congo in 1890 and claimed that Kurtz was created after Leon Rom, who in real life was committing his atrocities. "The moral landscape of Heart of Darkness", writes Hochshild, "and the shadowy figure at its centre are the creations not just of a novelist but of an open-eyed observer who caught the spirit of a time and place with piercing accuracy." Rom was born in Mons in Belgium. Poorly educated, he joined the Belgian army aged 16. Nine years later, aged 25 in 1886, he found himself in the Congo in search of adventure. He became district commissioner and was later put in charge of the African troops in Leopold's murderous Force Publique army in the Congo.
Rom's brutality knew no bounds. It was such that even the white people working with him were shocked to their boots.
So, how did Leopold come to own such a vast territory, exploited it, killed its people, took away its riches and never set foot in it?
Three things stand out in this sad story - the naivety of the African kings and people; the misfits of Europe sent to subdue the Africans; and the superior weapons of war that the Europeans possessed which the Africans lacked.
When the first Europeans (the Portuguese) arrived in Congo in 1482, they met a thriving African kingdom. "Despite the contempt for Kongo culture," says Hochschild, "the Portuguese grudgingly recognized in the kingdom a sophisticated and well-developed state - the leading one on the west coast of central Africa. It was an imperial federation, of two or three million people, covering an area roughly 3,000 sq miles, some of which lie today in several countries after the Europeans had drawn arbitrary border lines across Africa in 1886."
The great fascination of the Congo at the time was its mighty 3,000-mile river, variously called Lualaba, Nzadi or Nzere by the people who lived on its banks. Nzere means "the river that swallows all rivers" because of its many tributaries. Just one tributary, the Kasai, carries as much water as Europe's longest river, the Volga in Russia and it is half as long as the Rhine. Another tributary, the Ubangi is even longer. On Portuguese tongue, Nzere became Zaire which was adopted by Mobutu when he renamed the country in 1971. Like most things African, the Europeans changed the river's name to Congo.
In all, the river (Africa's second longest) drains more than 1.3 million square miles, "an area larger than India," Hochschild testifies. "It has an estimated one-sixth of the world's hydroelectric potential... Its fan-shaped web of tributaries constitute more than seven thousand miles of interconnecting waterways, a built-in transportation grid rivaled by few places on earth."
Thus, Congo was a jewel any colonialist would kill for. And the lot fell to Henry Morton Stanley to colonize it for King Leopold II.
Stanley was Welsh but he passed himself round as an American. He had first stumbled on the river on his second trip to Africa. Because the river flowed north from this point, Stanley thought it was the Nile.
Stanley's background tells a lot about the brutality he unleashed on the Africans he met on his journeys. He had been born a "bastard" in the small Welsh market town of Denbigh on 28 January 1841. His mother, Betsy Parry (a housemaid) had recorded him on the birth register of St Hillary's Church in Denbigh as "John Rowlands, Bastard". His father was believed to be a local drunkard called John Rowlands who died of delirium tremens, a severe psychotic condition occurring in some alcoholics.
John Rowlands Bastard was the first of his mother's five illegitimate children. After an exceptionally difficult childhood spent with foster parents and in juvenile workhouses, John Rowlands Bastard moved to New Orleans (USA) in February 1859 where he changed his name several times - sometimes calling himself Morley, Morelake and Moreland. Finally he settled on Henry Morton Stanley which he claimed was the name of a rich benefactor he lived with in New Orleans.
Stanley would become a soldier, sailor, newspaperman and famous explorer feted by the high and mighty on both sides of the Atlantic. He was knighted by Britain and elected to parliament. Despite his lowly background, Stanley, I have come to believe, rose above the fray as a great explorer, author and leader. Like how racism has kept many a talented individual down in the west and around the world, Stanley was subjected to many torments by his peers. On one hand as a modern day traveler I find him to be an exalted explorer without a peer. On the other, I find his cruelty and indiscretions utterly revolting.
Stanley had made two "journalistic" trips to Africa, first in 1869 to find David Livingstone. The second was in 1874 where, starting from Zanzibar with 356 people (mostly Africans), he "attacked and destroyed 28 large towns and three or four score villages" (his own words) as he plundered his way down to Boma and the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic coast.
In 1879, Stanley was off again to Africa, this time under commission from King Leopold to colonize Congo for him. Stanley used the gun, cheap European goods and plain-faced deceit to win over 450 local chiefs and their people and take over their land.
Stanley apparently remembered how the 22-sq-mile Manhattan Island in New York Bay had been "bought" from the Native Americans by the Dutch colonial officer, Peter Minuit, with trinkets valued at just $24.
If Minuit could do it in Manhattan, Stanley could do it, too, in the Congo. Only that in his case, he just asked the Congolese chiefs to mark Xs to legal documents written in a foreign language they had not seen before. Stanley called them treaties, like this one signed on 1 April 1884 by the chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela:
"In return for "one piece of cloth per month to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides present of cloth in hand, they promised to freely of their own accord, for themselves and their heirs and successors for ever...give up to the said Association [set up by Leopold] the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing rights to all their territories...and to assist by labor or otherwise, any works, improvements or expeditions which they said Association shall cause at any time to be carried out in any part of these territories... All roads and waterways running through this country, the right of collecting tolls on the same, and all game, fishing, mining and forest rights, are to be the absolute property of the said Association."
With treaties like this, Stanley set forth to colonize Congo for Leopold. But the French would not let them have all the laugh. They sent Count Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza on their own colonizing mission. De Brazza landed north of the Congo River, carved out an enclave for France and had a town named after him (Brazzaville). The enclave eventually became known as Congo Brazzaville, where the French too unleashed their own brutality on the local people.
Meanwhile Stanley was doing a "good" job across the river for Leopold, building a railway and a dirt road to skirt the 220-mile descent of the river. This was to facilitate the shipping of Congo's abundant ivory and other wealth to Belgium to enrich Leopold and his petit pays. In 1884, Stanley finally left for home in England, his work for Leopold done.
Leopold next sent in his hordes, including Leon Rom, to use absolute terror to rule the land and ship out the wealth. It was the brutality of Leopold's agents that would catch the eye of the world and lead to his forced sale of Congo to the Belgian government in 1908.
Ivory had been the initial prized Congo export for Leopold. Then something happened by accident in far away Ireland that dramatically changed the fate of Leopold, his Congo and its people. John Dunlop, an Irish veterinary surgeon, was tinkering with his son's bicycle in Belfast and accidentally discovered how to make an inflatable rubber tire for the bike. He set up a tire company in 1890 named after himself, Dunlop, and a new major industry was up and running. Rubber became the new gold, and Leopold was soon laughing all the way to the bank.
The huge rainforest of Congo teemed with wild rubber, and Leopold pressed his agents for more of it. This is when the genocide reached its peak. Tapping wild rubber was a difficult affair, and Leopold's agents had to use brutal force to get the people of Congo to go into the forests and gather rubber for Leopold. Any Congolese man who resisted the order, saw his wife kidnapped and put in chains to force him to go and gather rubber. Or sometimes the wife was killed in revenge.
As more villages resisted the rubber order, Leopold's agents ordered the Force Publique army to raid the rebellious villages and kill the people. To make sure that the soldiers did not waste the bullets in hunting animals, their officers demanded to see the amputated right hand of every person they killed. As Hochschild puts it, "the standard proof was the right hand from a corpse. Or occasionally not from a corpse. 'Sometimes', said one officer to a missionary, 'soldiers shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a living man'. In some military units, there was even a 'keeper of the hands', his job was the smoking [of them]."
Fortunately for the people, Edmund Dene Morel, a clerk of a Liverpool shipping line used by Leopold to ship out Congo's wealth, discovered on his several journeys to the Belgian port of Antwerp in the 1890s that while rubber and ivory were shipped from Congo to Antwerp, only guns and soldiers were going from Antwerp to Congo. This marked the beginning of his massive newspaper campaign to expose Leopold and his atrocities in the Congo.
Newspaper accounts of "sliced hands and penises was far more graphic and forceful than the British government had expected. In the end, the Belgian government was forced to step in and buy Congo from Leopold in 1908. Negotiations for the buy-out started in 1906. Leopold dragged his feet for two years, but finally, in March 1908, the deal was done.
"From the colonial era, the major legacy Europe left for Africa was not democracy as it is practiced today in countries like England, France and Belgium; it was authoritarian rule and plunder. On the whole continent, perhaps no nation has had a harder time than the Congo in emerging from the shadow of its past.

"When independence came, the country fared badly... Some Africans were being trained for that distant day; but when pressure grew and independence came in 1960, in the entire territory there were fewer than 30 African university graduates. There were no Congolese army officers, engineers, agronomists or physicians. The colony's administration had made few other steps toward a Congo run by its own people; of some 5,000 management-level positions in the civil service, only three were filled by Africans." , writes Hochschild.
Yet on the day of independence, King Baudouin, the then monarch of Belgium, had the gall to tell the Congolese in his speech in Kinshasa: "It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show that you are worthy of our confidence".
No cheek could be bigger! And you could well imagine how mad the Congolese nationalists like Patrice Lumumba were jumping.

After Leopold and Independence from Belgium in 1960:

In May 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Belgian Congo achieved independence under the name "République du Congo" in English). Shortly after independence, the provinces of Katanga (led by Moise Tshombe and the west) and South Kasai engaged in secessionist struggles against the new leadership at the behest of the Belgian expats.
Most of the 100,000 Europeans who had remained behind after independence fled the country, opening the way for Congolese to replace the European military and administrative elite.[( Katanga Rebellion).
As the neighboring Brazzaville based French colony also chose the name "Republic of Congo" upon achieving its independence, the two countries were more commonly known as "Congo-Léopoldville" and "Congo-Brazzaville", after their capital cities.
Within 4 months, Lumumba was arrested by forces loyal to Joseph Mobutu. On 17 January 1961, he was handed over to Katangan authorities and executed by Belgian-led Katangese troops. Lumumba had previously appointed Joseph Mobutu chief of staff of the new Congo army, Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC). Taking advantage of the leadership crisis between President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba, Mobutu garnered enough support within the army to create mutiny. With financial support from the United States and Belgium, Mobutu paid his soldiers privately. The aversion of Western powers to communism and leftist ideology influenced their decision to finance Mobutu's quest to maintain "order" in the new state by neutralizing Kasavubu and Lumumba in a coup by proxy. A constitutional referendum after Mobutu's coup of 1965 resulted in the country's official name being changed to the "Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1971 Mobutu changed the name again, this time to "Republic of Zaïre".
One more time we can see USA supporting the wrong guy to avert communism. The list goes on Mossadeh in Iran, Allende in Chile, Nkhruma in Ghana, Chiang Ki Shek in China, Arbenz in Guatemala, Aristede in Haiti, Saddam Hussain ( we installed him) in Iraq, Sandanistas in Nicaragua. In every country we have interfered the outcome has not been great for either parties. Our track record is as bad as the British.
Corruption became so prevalent the term "le mal Zairois" or "Zaïrean Sickness",]meaning gross corruption, theft and mismanagement, was coined, reportedly by Mobutu himself. International aid, most often in the form of loans, enriched Mobutu while he allowed national infrastructure such as roads to deteriorate to as little as one-quarter of what had existed in 1960. Zaïre became a "kleptocracy" as Mobutu and his associates embezzled government funds.
In a campaign to identify himself with African nationalism, similar to the local leaders in India who changed British given names that I am familiar with, Mobutu renamed the nation's cities: Léopoldville became Kinshasa (the country was now Democratic Republic of The Congo – Kinshasa), Stanleyville became Kisangani, Elisabethville became Lubumbashi, and Coquilhatville became Mbandaka. This renaming campaign was completed in the 1970s.
In 1971, Mobutu renamed the country the Republic of Zaïre, its fourth name change in 11 years and its sixth overall. The Congo River was renamed the Zaïre River.
During the 1970s and 1980s, he was invited to visit the United States on several occasions, meeting with U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union U.S. relations with Mobutu cooled, as he was no longer deemed necessary as a Cold War ally. No wonder no one trusts our foreign policy!.
Civil wars involving Rwanda and Congo (1996–present)
By 1996, following the Rwandan Civil War and genocide and the ascension of a Tutsi-led government in Rwanda, Rwandan Hutu militia forces (Interahamwe) fled to eastern Zaïre and used refugee camps as a base for incursion against Rwanda. They allied with the Zairian armed forces (FAZ) to launch a campaign against Congolese ethnic Tutsis in eastern Zaïre.
A brief history of the Tutsi- Hutu conflict / genocide needs to be explained here. In 1994, Rwanda’s population of seven million was composed of three ethnic groups: Hutu (approximately 85%), Tutsi (14%) and Twa (1%). The Tutsis historically were herders and therefore organized and administered their lives in a notable manner. This trait had established them as the elite in Rwanda then and as a model East African Nation today. The ruling Hutus were basically hunter gatherers and marginalized the Tutsis .
In the early 1990s, Hutu extremists within Rwanda’s political elite blamed the entire Tutsi minority population for the country’s increasing social, economic, and political pressures. Tutsi civilians were also accused of supporting a Tutsi-dominated rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down. Violence began almost immediately after that. Under the cover of war, Hutu extremists launched their plans to destroy the entire Tutsi civilian population. Political leaders who might have been able to take charge of the situation and other high profile opponents of the Hutu extremist plans were killed immediately. Tutsi and people suspected of being Tutsi were killed in their homes and as they tried to flee at roadblocks set up across the country during the genocide. Entire families were killed at a time. Women were systematically and brutally raped. It is estimated that some 200,000 people participated in the perpetration of the Rwandan genocide.
In the weeks after April 6, 1994, 800,000 men, women, and children perished in the Rwandan genocide, perhaps as many as three quarters of the Tutsi population.
Talking to Rwandan scientists in Odzala National Park in the ROC, I finally understood the reasons behind the genocide and penetration of Rwandans into Congo to kill the perpetrators of genocide. One interesting information that I garnered during several hours of conversation in the middle of an equatorial rainforest made me shudder: France, which was a peacekeeper in the Rwandan conflict allowed the fleeing Hutu criminals into Congo since they were Francophone while the Anglophone Tutsi army were watching helplessly.
A coalition of Rwandan and Ugandan armies ( Anglophone) invaded Zaïre to overthrow the government of Mobutu, and ultimately to control the mineral resources of Zaïre, launching the First Congo War. The coalition allied with some opposition figures, led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, becoming the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL). In 1997 Mobutu fled and Kabila marched into Kinshasa, naming himself president and reverting the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congolese Civil Wars, which began in 1996, brought about the end of Mobutu Sese Seko's 31-year reign and devastated the country. The wars ultimately involved nine African nations, multiple groups of UN peacekeepers and twenty armed groups, and resulted in the deaths of 5.4 million people
Kabila later requested that foreign military forces return to their own countries—he had concerns that the Rwandan officers running his army were plotting a coup in order to give the presidency to a Tutsi who would report directly to the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. Rwandan troops retreated to Goma and launched a new Tutsi-led rebel military movement called the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD) to fight against Kabila, while Uganda instigated the creation of new rebel movement called the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), led by the Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba. The two rebel movements, along with Rwandan and Ugandan troops, started the Second Congo War by attacking the DRC army in 1998. Angolan, Zimbabwean and Namibian militaries entered on the side of the government.
Kabila was assassinated in 2001. His son, Joseph Kabila, succeeded him and called for multilateral peace-talks. UN peacekeepers, MONUC, now known as MONUSCO, arrived in April 2001. Talks led to the signing of a peace accord in which Kabila would share power with former rebels. By June 2003 all foreign armies except those of Rwanda had pulled out of Congo. A transitional government was set up until the election was over. A constitution was approved by voters, and on 30 July 2006 DRC held its first multi-party elections. An election-result dispute between Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba turned into an all-out battle between their supporters in the streets of Kinshasa. MONUC took control of the city. A new election took place in October 2006, which Kabila won, and on December 2006 he was sworn in as President.

The DRC today:

In 2009 people in the Congo continued to die at a rate of an estimated 45,000 per month estimates of the number who have died from the long conflict range from 900,000 to 5,400,000.The death toll is due to widespread disease and famine; reports indicate that almost half of the individuals who have died are children under five years of age. There have been frequent reports of weapon bearers killing civilians, of the destruction of property, of widespread sexual violence, causing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, and of other breaches of humanitarian and human rights law. One study found that more than 400,000 women are raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo every year.
One more important fact that cannot go unmentioned here is the plight of the Pygmies. In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, told the UN's Indigenous People's Forum that during the Congo Civil War, his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. ( The German Colonists did the same to the Bushmen in Namibia in 1938). In neighboring North Kivu province there has been cannibalism by a group known as Les Effaceurs ("the erasers") who wanted to clear the land of people to open it up for mineral exploitation. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman" and some say their flesh can confer magical powers.
Makelo asked the UN Security Council to recognize cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide. According to Minority Rights Group International there is extensive evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape of Pygmies and they have urged the International Criminal Court to investigate a campaign of extermination against pygmies. The greatest environmental problem the Pygmies seem to be facing is the loss of their traditional homeland, the tropical forests of Central Africa. In several countries such as Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo this is due to deforestation and the desire of several governments in Central Africa to evict the Pygmies from their forest habitat in order to cash in on quick profits from the sale of hardwood and the resettlement of farmers onto the cleared land. In some cases, as in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this conflict is violent. Certain groups, such as the Hutus of the Interahamwe (of genocide fame), wish to eliminate the Pygmy and take the resources of the forest as a military conquest, using the resources of the forest for military as well as economic advancement. Since the Pygmies rely on the forest for their physical as well as cultural survival, as these forests disappear, so do the Pygmy.
Raja Sheshadri, one of my fellow Indian expatriates of fPcN-Global.org has conducted extensive research on the pygmies. This human rights organization states that as the forest has receded under logging activities, its original inhabitants have been pushed into populated areas to join the formal economy, working as casual laborers or on commercial farms and being exposed to new diseases. This shift has brought them into closer contact with neighboring ethnic communities whose HIV levels are generally higher. This has led to the spread of HIV/AIDS into the pygmy group.



Since poverty has become very prevalent in the Pygmy communities, sexual exploitation of indigenous women has become a common practice. Commercial sex has been bolstered by logging, which often places large groups of male laborers in camps which are set up in close contact with the Pygmy communities.
Human rights groups have also reported widespread sexual abuse of indigenous women in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite these risks, Pygmy populations generally have poor access to health services and information about HIV. The British medical journal, The Lancet, published a review showing that Pygmy populations often had worse access to health care than neighboring communities.[ According to the report, even where health care facilities exist, many people do not use them because they cannot pay for consultations and medicines, they do not have the documents and identity cards needed to travel or obtain hospital treatment, and they are subjected to humiliating and discriminatory treatment

In 2015 major protests broke out across the country and protesters demanded that Joseph Kabila step down as President. The protests began after the passage of a law by the Congolese lower house that, if also passed by the Congolese upper house, would keep Kabila in power at least until a national census was conducted (a process which would likely take several years and therefore keep him in power past the planned 2016 elections, which he is constitutionally barred from participating in).As of 2015 elections are scheduled for late 2016 and a tenuous peace holds over the Congo.

The ROC today:

Despite the military's claims that its interests are not divorced from those of the people, it is clear that the military undermines human security when it attempts to govern rather than follow the lead of the elected civilian authorities. The military barely understands the nature of its own institutions-and still less those of the democratic civilian governments. The military is undemocratic, order-oriented, and hierarchical, and does not tolerate differences of opinions. My own experiences during arrival into Brazzaville was a 2 hour ordeal. The local Government is not interested in tourism or world opinion since they are content with plundering and enriching themselves from their own people.
In ROC power is concentrated in the hands of one group. To consolidate its position, the power wielders exclude others from fully participating in national life. Violence is used to force them to cooperate with the authorities. Detention, persecution, mistreatment, and other human rights violations become a common practice. The victims of the politics of exclusion rarely achieve a fair hearing before courts, which further exacerbates their conditions. They are not allowed to become active players in the key areas of the economy, lacking access to agricultural lands, investment opportunities, or the higher positions that their counterparts enjoy. Modern African history is replete with examples of leaders enriching their own groups while paying little attention to the plight of their fellow citizens. Some leaders have even made their birthplaces into exclusive development zones.
I was traveling through the town of Edo en route to Odzala National Park in the north west of the country. The airline, airliner and the airport belonged to the daughter of the ruler Denis Sassou-Nguess. There were multiple checks on the passengers akin to traveling to Israel. Flights are only on weekends to suit his traveling needs. There are elaborate homes along the poverty stricken villages; a clear slap across the face of his citizens. In the west we are more subtle and have learned to hide them in distant places.
These powerful men live behind high walls, sun shades and automatic weapons unable to face their citizens. Internationally, Sassou's regime has been hit by corruption revelations despite attempts to censor them. One French investigation found over 110 bank accounts and dozens of lavish properties in France; Sassou denounced embezzlement investigations as "racist" and "colonial".
Around Edo new schools, colleges ,hospitals including a 4 star hotel have been built along with the nations only cattle farm to feed the elite( milk is imported from France and not affordable by most). None of these institutions have staff since the country has not developed any form of professionals other than gun toting militia.

In the Republic of Congo, where Pygmies make up 2% of the population, many Pygmies live as slaves to Bantu masters for over a millennium. The nation is deeply stratified between these two major ethnic groups. The Pygmy slaves belong from birth to their Bantu masters in a relationship that the Bantus call a time-honored tradition. Even though the Pygmies are responsible for much of the hunting, fishing and manual labor in jungle villages, Pygmies and Bantus alike say Pygmies are often paid at the master's whim; in cigarettes, used clothing, or even nothing at all. As a result of pressure from UNICEF and human-rights activists, a law that would grant special protections to the Pygmy people is awaiting a vote by the Congo parliament. Pygmies are often evicted from their land and given the lowest paying jobs. At a state level, Pygmies are not considered citizens by most African states and are refused identity cards, deeds to land, health care and proper schooling. Government policies and multinational corporations involved in massive deforestation have exacerbated this problem by forcing more Pygmies out of their traditional homelands and into villages and cities where they often are marginalized, impoverished and abused by the dominant culture.

Today there are roughly 500,000 Pygmies left in the rain-forest of Central Africa. This population is rapidly decreasing as poverty, intermarriage with Bantu peoples, Westernization, and deforestation all gradually destroy their way of life and culture along with their genetic uniqueness.
The End.
emailme @ ( [email protected])

PHOTO GALLERY

References:
King Leopold's Ghost- Adam Hoschild
Into Africa-Adventures af Livingston and Stanley by Martin Dugard
Blood River- A journey through Africa's Broken Heart- Tim Butcher
Extensive Wikipedia and Wiki Images
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/teachers/readings7.html
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Congo_River

Growing up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, the mysteries of Africa has always played on my mind and fantasies. Growing up in India, tales about fabulous Indian kingdoms, tigers and rope tricks written by the likes of Rudyard Kipling, were less exciting to me than that of Africa. Lee Falk, who created the 'Phantom" comic strip was also a hero of mine. Written in 1936, he culled all the interesting stories that came out of Africa from French and Belgians who were busy with the brutal enterprise of slavery, ivory trade and colonialism at that time.
My interest in Africa transcends books. Since 1992 I have collected over 100 pieces of wooden African sculptures belonging to over 25 tribes of anthropological re known like the Bambara, the Fang, The Luba, The Dogon etc to name a few. The stories attached to the usage of masks and fetishes, mostly to invoke both human and animal spirits, is a testament to these first peoples.

Last week, I was having a long conversation about the plight of Africa with my cousin Venkatram Santosh of Richmond, Virginia. Living in the capital city of the old confederate America we talked at length about Africa and slavery, until such time his surgeon's emergency button beeped. So I decided to continue that conversation by penning my thoughts here while using the framework of great writers on this subject.
During the past two decades I have managed to get a glimpse of East Africa through Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, that of the North through Egypt and Ethiopia, Mali in the west and the southern countries of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Angola and Zimbabwe. Alas it was time to penetrate the darkest deepest jungles of Africa- the Congo Basin. While I was filled with excitement to explore I was also anxious to avoid the many conflicts and diseases that has afflicted this area . After spending 2 weeks in the Republic of Congo(ROC of Congo-Brazzaville), I both was amazed and shocked by the riches of the country along with the corruption and poverty endured by the people. This article will mostly deal with its neighbor on the other side of the river, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC -Kinshasa) but by extension includes the entire basin. I could not obtain a visa in time to the DRC-Kinshasa, but spent many an evening sipping beer at the Brazzaville- Congo river front looking at Kinshasa on the other bank just 4 km away.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries on earth, but colonialism, slavery and corruption have turned it into one of the poorest . The world's bloodiest conflict since World War II is still rumbling on today. It is a war in which more than five million people have died, millions more have been driven to the brink by starvation and disease and several million women and girls have been raped.
The DRC borders the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan to the north; Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania to the east; Zambia and Angola to the south; and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world. With a population of over 75 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populated officially Francophone country, the fourth most populated nation in Africa.

The Great War of Africa, a conflagration that has sucked in soldiers and civilians from nine nations and countless armed rebel groups, has been fought almost entirely inside the borders of one unfortunate country - the Democratic Republic of Congo. Many of the country's mining operations are connected to the waters of the mighty Congo River. It is a place seemingly blessed with every type of mineral, where even the more fortunate live in grinding poverty. It is consistently rated lowest on the UN Human Development Index,) ranking 176 out of 187 countries in 2004 .

In order to understand the reasons for this penury and suffering I did some research using the web and by reading books about its ancient history, its ethnic composition, politics, colonies, impact of slavery and corruption that has spread like blight into African society. The land of the Congo river is split between DRC-Democratic Republic of Congo (Belgian Congo) and ROC- Republic of Congo ( formerly French Equatorial Africa). The DRC is the most violent part of the world today while the ROC is a dictatorship which is poor, corrupt but stable. Two books; King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hoschild and Blood River-A Journey through Africa's Broken Heart. by Tim Butcher, enabled me to grasp the depth of suffering in these accursed nations.
The Congo River is the largest river in western Central Africa and the most powerful on the continent. Its overall length of 2,900 miles makes it the second-longest in Africa (after the Nile). It is the fifth-longest river in the world, draining a basin of nearly 1.5 million square miles. The river also has the second-largest flow in the world, with a discharge of 1.5 million cubic feet of water per second, trailing only the Amazon. The river and its tributaries flow through the second-largest rainforest in the world, the Congo Rainforest, second only to the Amazon Rainforest in South America. The dense rain forest, heavy rainfall, and poor soil of the basin that is traversed by the Congo results in sparse population, except for small settlements of hunters, farmers, and fishermen along or near the river. Since it is close to the equator, the climate is hot and humid.

The Congo Basin spans across six countries—Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. There are approximately 10, 000 species of tropical plants in the Congo Basin and 30 percent are unique to the region. Endangered wildlife, including forest elephants, chimpanzees, bonobos, and lowland and mountain gorillas inhabit the lush forests. 400 other species of mammals, 1,000 species of birds and 700 species of fish can also be found here.
The Congo Basin has been inhabited by humans for more than 50,000 years and it provides food, fresh water and shelter to more than 75 million people. Nearly 150 distinct ethnic groups exist and the region’s Ba’Aka (Pygmy) people are among the most well known representatives of an ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Ancient history and Ethnicity:

Most of my readers may understand Aryan, Viking, Mongol and Arabic migrations that has impacted much of China, India, Iran, Middle East and both western and Eastern Europe. Some of these migrations were gradual while others were through trade and mostly conquests. The Aryan impact happened around 2000-500BC BC, the Vikings were active around 800-1100 AD, the Arab conquests between 780-1100 AD and the Mongol/Turkic incursions around 1200 AD. However, the largest human migrations in history happened in Africa with the Bantu speaking tribes pushing south from west Africa.
The Bantu migration was one of the first formative events in African history The great southward Bantu migration in Africa took place in sub-Saharan Africa (south of the Sahara Desert), over some 2,000 years between 1000 BC and 1700 AD. With the development of the iron blade( iron age), reaping became easier for the bantu people and agriculture took on a whole new meaning. This necessitated the enlargement of territory since the foragers settled down to form communities. A linguistically related group of about 60 million gradually migrated down to the continent into southern Africa from the west and equatorial Africa.
The Bantu-speaking peoples brought agriculture to the southern half of Africa, which was mostly populated by foragers, herders, and hunter-gatherers. Bantu peoples settled land and created great empires like the Great Zimbabwe and the Zulu kingdom, and continued to expand and settle more land. Bantu refers to several similar languages, or a 'family' of languages, that can be found throughout central and south Africa.
If you look at the map showing the Bantu migration, the southern Africa was primarily peopled by the Xhosas ( San and Bushmen) while the Congo region was peopled by the Mbuti (Pygmy- Aka, Baka, Twa and Mbuti). In this migration, these people were displaced, exterminated ,marginalized and in some cases enslaved until this day.

The first sub Saharan kingdoms emerged in the early 4th century( barring the Ethiopian and Egyptian kingdoms of earlier periods). These Sahelian kingdoms were a series of kingdoms or empires that were centered on the Sahel, the area of grasslands south of the Sahara. They controlled the trade routes across the desert, and were also quite decentralized, with member cities having a great deal of autonomy. The Ghana Empire may have been an established as early as the 4th century AD. It was succeeded by the Sosso in 1230, the Mali Empire in the 13th century AD, and later by the Songhai and Sokoto Caliphate. There were also a number of forest empires and states in this time period.
Following the collapse of the Songhai Empire, a number of smaller states arose across West Africa, including the Bambara Empire of Ségou ( Mali-Ivory Coast), the lesser Bambara kingdom of Kaarta, the Fula/Malinké kingdom of Khasso (Mali)), and the Kénédougou Empire of Sikasso ( Mali-Burkina Faso) emerged. We will not go into details of the other minor kingdoms that existed during my focus on Congo.
The Kingdom of Kongo was established around 1390 in west central Africa in what is now northern Angola, Cabinda, the Republic of the Congo, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the southernmost part of Gabon.( Please see modern map attached). At its greatest extent, it reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Congo River( Kwango in Bantu)in the east, and from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in Angola to the south. I was basically traveling that section during my recent trip, reaching almost 30 miles near the Gabon border. Since I was a bit inland and in a dense forest, I must have been about 100 miles east of the coast.
The kingdom largely existed from c. 1390 to 1891 as an independent state, and from 1891 to 1914 as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Portugal. In 1914, the titular monarchy was forcibly abolished, following Portuguese victory against a Kongo revolt. The remaining territories of the kingdom were assimilated into the colony of Angola ( which was under Portugal since 1575).

The Congo River and Slavery 17th-19th Century:

In 1482 when the Portuguese sailor Diego Cao accidentally came upon the river as it emptied into the Atlantic, he was astounded by its sheer size. Modern oceanographers have discovered more evidence of the great river's strength in its 'pitched battle with the ocean' a 100-mile-long canyon, in place 4,000 feet deep, that the river has carved out of the sea floor... It pours some 1.4 million cubic feet of water per second into the ocean; only the Amazon carries more water.
Thanks to satellite technology, the world now knows that much of the river's basin lies on a plateau which rises nearly 1,000 feet high 220 miles from the Atlantic coast. Thus the river descends to sea level in a furious 220-mile dash down the plateau.
During this tumultuous descent the river squeezes through narrow canyons, boils up in waves of 40 feet high, and tumbles over 32 separate cataracts. So great is the drop and the volume of water that these 220 miles have as much hydroelectric potential as all the lakes and rivers of the United States combined."

Diogo Cão, became the first European to visit the Congo when he reached the mouth of the Congo River and sailed a few miles upstream. Soon thereafter the Portuguese established ties with the king of Kongo, and in the early 16th cent. they established themselves on parts of the coast of modern Angola.
The Portuguese had little influence on the Congo until the late 18th cent., when the African and mulatto traders whom they backed, traveled far inland to the kingdom of Mwata Kazembe ( Katanga province of DRC in eastern Congo bordering Zambia). In the mid-19th cent. Arab, Swahili, and Nyamwezi traders from present-day Tanzania penetrated into E Congo, where they traded and raided for slaves and ivory. Some of the traders established states with considerable power. With the discovery of the Americas, slaves were in great demand in South and North America. As a result raiding villages in all of Congo took place in the entire length of this huge country from the Atlantic to its borders with Lake Tanganyika almost 3000 miles away.


From the 17th century to the early 19th century, many Congolese and Angolans were brought as slaves to the United States. The first Angolan slaves of Virginia (15 men and 17 women) were Mbundu and Bakongo, who spoke bantu based Kimbundu and Kikongo languages respectively. Many of these early slaves were literate due to their conversion to Catholicism by the Portuguese.
Later, slaves were stolen by English and Dutch pirates from the Portuguese from the Angolan port of Luanda. Many of these slaves were imported by the Dutch to New York, which, at that time, was called New Amsterdam and was under Dutch control. As a New Yorker I find it interesting that the Angolans also were the first slaves in New York City. According to Harvard university professor Jill Lepore, the slaves of Angola who arrived in New Amsterdam were also Ambundu of Angola and, to a lesser extent, Kongos, as was the case with the first slaves who arrived in Virginia. The Congolese-Angolan slavery trade in the United States reached its greatest magnitude between 1619 and 1650. In 1644, 6,900 slaves on the African coast were purchased to clear the forests, lay roads, build houses and public buildings, and grow food. During the colonial period, people from the region Congo-Angola made up 25% of the slaves in North America.
Based on the data mentioned, many slaves came from distinct ethnic groups, such as the Bakongo and the Tio and Northern Mbunbu people. However, not all slaves kept the culture of their ancestors. The Bakongo were Catholics, from the kingdom of Kongo who had voluntarily converted to Catholicism in 1491 after the Portuguese conquered this territory. Many of the Bakongo slaves who arrived in the United States in the 18th century were captured and sold as slaves by African kings to other tribes or enemies during several civil wars in Kongo.

European , Stanley and King Leopold- 18th -20th century

Until the middle of the 19th century, the Congo was at the heart of independent Africa, as European colonialists seldom entered the interior. Along with fierce local resistance, the rainforest, swamps, and attendant malaria, and other diseases such as sleeping sickness made it a difficult environment for European invasion forces. Western countries were at first reluctant to colonize the area in the absence of obvious economic benefits. Those who tried to sail upriver encountered a narrow gorge that compressed the water into a powerful opposing current. In the river's final 220 miles from the edge of the central plateau to the coast, the Congo River drops more than a thousand feet and has 32 rapids. Difficult terrain made exploration on foot also treacherous. Following Cao, more than three hundred years elapsed before serious exploration of the Congo was undertaken.
Francisco José de Lacerda, a Portuguese explorer, reached the copper-rich Katanga region from the east in 1798, as did Arab traders in the first half of the 1800s. The Arabs extended their influence over the eastern Congo River Basin, engaging in the slave and ivory trades. In 1816 a British expedition went as far as Isangila ( see map). Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone visited the Luapula and Lualaba rivers in 1871, believing them to be sources of the Nile.
Henry Morton Stanley was the first European to navigate the river's length during his search for Dr. Livingston and reported that the Lualaba was not a source of the Nile, as had been suggested. After leaving Livingstone, Stanley sailed for 1000 miles (1600 km) down the Lualaba (Upper Congo) to the large lake he named Stanley Pool, near Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Then, rather than perish in the impenetrable country of the cascades, Stanley took a wide detour overland to come within striking distance of the original Portuguese trading station at Boma on the Congo estuary. In 2004, a Daily Telegraph correspondent, Tim Butcher, was the first person to have retraced his route. -"Blood River'-A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart, in under 24 hours last week. Any fan of Congo should get hold of this amazing modern day adventure book.
When Stanley returned to Europe in 1878, he had not only found Dr. Livingstone (an event remembered to this day), resolved the last great mystery of African exploration-exploring the Congo, and ruined his health: he had also opened the heart of tropical Africa up to the outside world. This was to be his most enduring legacy.
Stanley was lionized across Europe. He wrote articles, appeared at public meetings, lobbied the rich and powerful tirelessly; and always his theme was the boundless opportunity for commercial exploitation of the lands he had discovered or, in his own words, to "pour the civilization of Europe into the barbarism of Africa".
"There are 40,000,000 nude people" on the other side of the rapids, Stanley wrote, "and the cotton-spinners of Manchester are waiting to clothe them... Birmingham's factories are glowing with the red metal that shall presently be made into ironwork in every fashion and shape for them... and the ministers of Christ are zealous to bring them, the poor benighted heathen, into the Christian fold."
Though trade in goods was the initial impetus for the Europeans, they quickly discovered that the slave trade was much more lucrative, and the river was the means to deliver them to the coast from inland areas once the supply of slaves dwindled on the coast. As the wealth from the slave trade filtered inland, the demand for slaves grew, leading to raids by some groups and migrations by others to escape the slavers. But the increased trade and multiplication of towns along the river had the unforeseen benefit of lifestyles becoming more similar and new crops and technologies being shared.

Europe was less than keen on the idea: the great European scramble for Africa had not yet begun. Outside of the Cape of Good Hope and the Mediterranean coast, Europe had no African colonies of any significance. The focus of the great powers was still firmly on the lands that had made Europe's fortune: the Americas, the East Indies, India, China, and Australasia. There seemed no economic sense to investing energy in Africa when the returns from other colonies were likely to be both richer and more immediate. Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. Stanley was applauded, admired, decorated—and ignored.
As a constitutional monarch, Leopold was charged with the usual constitutional duties of opening parliaments, greeting diplomats, and attending state funerals. He had no power to decide policy. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. Leopold noted, "Our frontiers can never be extended into Europe." However, he added, "since history teaches that colonies are useful, that they play a great part in that which makes up the power and prosperity of states, let us strive to get one in our turn."
At various times, he launched unsuccessful schemes to buy an Argentine province, to buy Borneo from the Dutch, rent the Philippines from Spain, or establish colonies in China, Vietnam, Japan, or the Pacific islands. When the 1860s explorers focused attention on Africa, Leopold schemed to colonize Mozambique on the east coast, Senegal on the west coast, and the Congo in the centre. None of these schemes came anywhere near fruition: the government of Belgium resolutely resisted all Leopold's suggestions, seeing the acquisition of a colony as a good way to spend large amounts of money for little or no return.
Leopold's eventual response was extraordinary in its hubris and simplicity. If the government of Belgium would not take a colony, then he would simply do it himself, acting in his private capacity as an ordinary citizen.
In 1876 Leopold II sponsored an international geographical conference in Brussels, inviting delegates from scientific societies all over Europe to discuss philanthropic and scientific matters such as the best way to coordinate map making, to prevent the re-emergence of the west coast slave trade, and to investigate ways of sending medical aid to Africa. The conference was a sham: at its close, Leopold proposed that they set up an international benevolent committee to carry on, and modestly agreed to accept the chairman's role. For the look of things, he held one more meeting the following year, but from that time on, the Association Internationale Africaine was simply a front for Leopold's ambition. He created a baffling series of subsidiary shell organisations, culminating in the cunningly named Association Internationale du Congo, which had a single shareholder: Leopold himself.

Stanley returned on behalf of King Leopold of Belgium in 1876 and claimed huge swaths of land in the Conger River basin for the king, an area more than 76 times the size of Belgium. By 1885 Leopold ruled this huge area as his personal domain through his private army, the Force Publique. His legacy is one of exploitation and human rights abuses such as slavery and mutilation of the peoples. He was eventually forced to cede this land to Belgium in 1908.It is estimated that nearly 5 million perished under his brutality and is known as the second Holocaust. Other than scholars and students of Africa, this fact is little known to everyone. This is another reason that prompted me to write this blog.
Having established a beachhead on the lower Congo, in 1883 Stanley set out upriver to extend Leopold's domain, employing his usual methods: negotiations with local chiefs buying sovereignty in exchange for bolts of cloth and trinkets; playing one tribe off another; and if need be, simply shooting an obstructive chief and negotiating with his cowed successor instead. However, as he approached Stanley Falls at the junction between the Congo proper and the Lualaba (close to the general vicinity of Central Africa where he had found Livingstone six years before), it soon became clear that Stanley's men were not the only intruders.

Tippu Tip, the last and greatest of the Zanzibari slave traders of the 19th century, was well-known to Stanley, as was the social chaos and devastation that slave-hunting brought. It had only been through Tippu Tip's help that Stanley had found Livingstone (who himself had survived years on the Lualaba by virtue of Tippu Tip's friendship). Now, Stanley discovered, Tippu Tip's men had reached still further west in search of fresh populations to enslave.
Four years before, the Zanzibaris had thought the Congo deadly and impassable, and warned Stanley not to attempt to go there, but when Tippu Tip learned in Zanzibar that Stanley had survived, he was quick to act. Villages throughout the region had been burned and depopulated. Tippu Tip had raided 118 villages, killed 4,000 Africans, and, when Stanley reached his camp, had 2,300 slaves, mostly young women and children, in chains ready to transport half-way across the continent to the markets of Zanzibar.

Leopold's Rule of Congo Free State 1885-1908)

When Leopold finally ascended the throne in 1865, his undying desire was to own colonies. He tried everything under the sun to get a colony to no avail, including offering to buy the Philippines from Spain, buying lakes in the Nile and draining them out, or trying to lease territory on the island of Formosa.

He despised Belgium's small size. "Small country, small people" was how he described his little Belgium that had only become independent in 1830. The brutal expeditions of Stanley in Africa finally offered Leopold the chance to land his prized jewel, Congo in 1876.
The agents of King Leopold II of Belgium massacred 10 million Africans in the Congo. Cutting off hands as we see in Sierra Leone today, was very much part of Leopold's repertoire. Today, Leopold's "rubber terror" has all been swept under the carpet. Adam Hochschild calls it "the great forgetting" in his brilliant new book, King Leopold's Ghost(1999, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). This is a story of greed, exploitation and brutality that Africa and the world must not forget. I learnt about this book from a British English language teacher, Eric G. with whom I played Scrabble during a boring a 2015 Xmas party in Brazzaville where many UN and Embassy workers were present.
While Stanley was staking out land for Leopold's colony( Congo Free State) in the eastern Congo, the French where greedily establishing their own on the western side of Stanley pools in Brazzaville- Republic of Congo ( ROC). It is in the ROC where I spent nearly two weeks with Brazzaville its capital, which was formally established as the French Congo in 1882. Its borders with Cabinda, Cameroons, and the Congo Free State ( Belgian Congo)were established by treaties over the next decade. The plan to develop the colony was to grant massive concessions to some thirty French companies. These were granted huge swaths of land on the promise they would be developed. This development was limited and amounted mostly to the extraction of ivory, rubber, and timber. These operations often involved great brutality and the near enslavement of the locals.
Even with these measures most of the companies lost money. Only about ten earned profits. Many of the companies' vast holdings existed only on paper with virtually no presence on the ground in Africa. The French Congo was sometimes known as Gabon-Congo.
"In France's equatorial African territories including the Republic of Congo where the region's history is best documented, the amount of rubber-bearing land was far less than what Leopold controlled in Belgian Congo, but the rape was just as brutal. Almost all exploitable land was divided among concession companies. Forced labor, hostages, slave chains, starving porters, burned villages, paramilitary company 'sentries', and the chicotte were the order of the day. [The chicotte was a vicious whip made out of raw, sun-dried hippopotamus hide, cut into a long sharp-edged cork-screw strip. It was applied to bare buttocks, and left permanent scars. Twenty strokes of it sent victims into unconsciousness; and a 100 or more strokes were often fatal. The chicotte was freely used by both Leopold's men and the French].
"Thousands of refugees who had fled across the Congo River to escape Leopold's regime (Congo-Leopoldville) eventually fled back to escape the French (in Congo-Brazzaville). The population loss in the rubber-rich equatorial rainforest owned by France is estimated, just as in Leopold's Congo, at roughly 50%." writes Hoschild.

Many excerpts from his book review constitute the bulk of the next few paragraphs. Adam Hoschild, a Professor of Journalism from University of California, Berkeley has done a yeoman's service in researching and exposing Belgian rule and brutality in Congo.
Leopold never set foot in "his" Congo Free State - for all the 23 years (1885-1908) he ruled what Hochschild calls "the world's only colony claimed by one man".
It was a vast territory which "if superimposed on the map of Europe", says Hochschild, "would stretch from Zurich to Moscow to central Turkey. It was bigger than England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. Although mostly rainforest and savannah, it also embraced volcanic hills and mountains covered by snow and glaciers, some of whose peaks reached higher than the Alps."
Leopold's "rubber terror" raised a lot of hairs in Britain, America and continental Europe (particularly between the years 1900-1908). But while they were condemning Leopold's barbarity, his accusers were committing much the same atrocities against Africans elsewhere on the continent. Hochschild tries to be fair here by pointing to what the Americans and the British were doing, or had done, elsewhere.

"What happened in the Congo was indeed mass murder on a vast scale, but the sad truth is that the men who carried it out for Leopold were no more murderous than many Europeans then at work or at war elsewhere in Africa. Conrad said it best (in his book, Heart of Darkness, based on the brutalities in the Congo): 'All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz'."
Kurtz is Joseph Conrad's lead character in Heart of Darkness. He is "both a murderous head collector and an intellectual, an emissary of science and progress, a painter, a poet and a journalist, and an author of a 17-page report to the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, at the end of which he scrawls in shaky hand: 'Exterminate all the brutes'."
Conrad had himself gone to Congo in 1890 and claimed that Kurtz was created after Leon Rom, who in real life was committing his atrocities. "The moral landscape of Heart of Darkness", writes Hochshild, "and the shadowy figure at its centre are the creations not just of a novelist but of an open-eyed observer who caught the spirit of a time and place with piercing accuracy." Rom was born in Mons in Belgium. Poorly educated, he joined the Belgian army aged 16. Nine years later, aged 25 in 1886, he found himself in the Congo in search of adventure. He became district commissioner and was later put in charge of the African troops in Leopold's murderous Force Publique army in the Congo.
Rom's brutality knew no bounds. It was such that even the white people working with him were shocked to their boots.
So, how did Leopold come to own such a vast territory, exploited it, killed its people, took away its riches and never set foot in it?
Three things stand out in this sad story - the naivety of the African kings and people; the misfits of Europe sent to subdue the Africans; and the superior weapons of war that the Europeans possessed which the Africans lacked.
When the first Europeans (the Portuguese) arrived in Congo in 1482, they met a thriving African kingdom. "Despite the contempt for Kongo culture," says Hochschild, "the Portuguese grudgingly recognized in the kingdom a sophisticated and well-developed state - the leading one on the west coast of central Africa. It was an imperial federation, of two or three million people, covering an area roughly 3,000 sq miles, some of which lie today in several countries after the Europeans had drawn arbitrary border lines across Africa in 1886."
The great fascination of the Congo at the time was its mighty 3,000-mile river, variously called Lualaba, Nzadi or Nzere by the people who lived on its banks. Nzere means "the river that swallows all rivers" because of its many tributaries. Just one tributary, the Kasai, carries as much water as Europe's longest river, the Volga in Russia and it is half as long as the Rhine. Another tributary, the Ubangi is even longer. On Portuguese tongue, Nzere became Zaire which was adopted by Mobutu when he renamed the country in 1971. Like most things African, the Europeans changed the river's name to Congo.
In all, the river (Africa's second longest) drains more than 1.3 million square miles, "an area larger than India," Hochschild testifies. "It has an estimated one-sixth of the world's hydroelectric potential... Its fan-shaped web of tributaries constitute more than seven thousand miles of interconnecting waterways, a built-in transportation grid rivaled by few places on earth."
Thus, Congo was a jewel any colonialist would kill for. And the lot fell to Henry Morton Stanley to colonize it for King Leopold II.
Stanley was Welsh but he passed himself round as an American. He had first stumbled on the river on his second trip to Africa. Because the river flowed north from this point, Stanley thought it was the Nile.
Stanley's background tells a lot about the brutality he unleashed on the Africans he met on his journeys. He had been born a "bastard" in the small Welsh market town of Denbigh on 28 January 1841. His mother, Betsy Parry (a housemaid) had recorded him on the birth register of St Hillary's Church in Denbigh as "John Rowlands, Bastard". His father was believed to be a local drunkard called John Rowlands who died of delirium tremens, a severe psychotic condition occurring in some alcoholics.
John Rowlands Bastard was the first of his mother's five illegitimate children. After an exceptionally difficult childhood spent with foster parents and in juvenile workhouses, John Rowlands Bastard moved to New Orleans (USA) in February 1859 where he changed his name several times - sometimes calling himself Morley, Morelake and Moreland. Finally he settled on Henry Morton Stanley which he claimed was the name of a rich benefactor he lived with in New Orleans.
Stanley would become a soldier, sailor, newspaperman and famous explorer feted by the high and mighty on both sides of the Atlantic. He was knighted by Britain and elected to parliament. Despite his lowly background, Stanley, I have come to believe, rose above the fray as a great explorer, author and leader. Like how racism has kept many a talented individual down in the west and around the world, Stanley was subjected to many torments by his peers. On one hand as a modern day traveler I find him to be an exalted explorer without a peer. On the other, I find his cruelty and indiscretions utterly revolting.
Stanley had made two "journalistic" trips to Africa, first in 1869 to find David Livingstone. The second was in 1874 where, starting from Zanzibar with 356 people (mostly Africans), he "attacked and destroyed 28 large towns and three or four score villages" (his own words) as he plundered his way down to Boma and the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic coast.
In 1879, Stanley was off again to Africa, this time under commission from King Leopold to colonize Congo for him. Stanley used the gun, cheap European goods and plain-faced deceit to win over 450 local chiefs and their people and take over their land.
Stanley apparently remembered how the 22-sq-mile Manhattan Island in New York Bay had been "bought" from the Native Americans by the Dutch colonial officer, Peter Minuit, with trinkets valued at just $24.
If Minuit could do it in Manhattan, Stanley could do it, too, in the Congo. Only that in his case, he just asked the Congolese chiefs to mark Xs to legal documents written in a foreign language they had not seen before. Stanley called them treaties, like this one signed on 1 April 1884 by the chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela:
"In return for "one piece of cloth per month to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides present of cloth in hand, they promised to freely of their own accord, for themselves and their heirs and successors for ever...give up to the said Association [set up by Leopold] the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing rights to all their territories...and to assist by labor or otherwise, any works, improvements or expeditions which they said Association shall cause at any time to be carried out in any part of these territories... All roads and waterways running through this country, the right of collecting tolls on the same, and all game, fishing, mining and forest rights, are to be the absolute property of the said Association."
With treaties like this, Stanley set forth to colonize Congo for Leopold. But the French would not let them have all the laugh. They sent Count Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza on their own colonizing mission. De Brazza landed north of the Congo River, carved out an enclave for France and had a town named after him (Brazzaville). The enclave eventually became known as Congo Brazzaville, where the French too unleashed their own brutality on the local people.
Meanwhile Stanley was doing a "good" job across the river for Leopold, building a railway and a dirt road to skirt the 220-mile descent of the river. This was to facilitate the shipping of Congo's abundant ivory and other wealth to Belgium to enrich Leopold and his petit pays. In 1884, Stanley finally left for home in England, his work for Leopold done.
Leopold next sent in his hordes, including Leon Rom, to use absolute terror to rule the land and ship out the wealth. It was the brutality of Leopold's agents that would catch the eye of the world and lead to his forced sale of Congo to the Belgian government in 1908.
Ivory had been the initial prized Congo export for Leopold. Then something happened by accident in far away Ireland that dramatically changed the fate of Leopold, his Congo and its people. John Dunlop, an Irish veterinary surgeon, was tinkering with his son's bicycle in Belfast and accidentally discovered how to make an inflatable rubber tire for the bike. He set up a tire company in 1890 named after himself, Dunlop, and a new major industry was up and running. Rubber became the new gold, and Leopold was soon laughing all the way to the bank.
The huge rainforest of Congo teemed with wild rubber, and Leopold pressed his agents for more of it. This is when the genocide reached its peak. Tapping wild rubber was a difficult affair, and Leopold's agents had to use brutal force to get the people of Congo to go into the forests and gather rubber for Leopold. Any Congolese man who resisted the order, saw his wife kidnapped and put in chains to force him to go and gather rubber. Or sometimes the wife was killed in revenge.
As more villages resisted the rubber order, Leopold's agents ordered the Force Publique army to raid the rebellious villages and kill the people. To make sure that the soldiers did not waste the bullets in hunting animals, their officers demanded to see the amputated right hand of every person they killed. As Hochschild puts it, "the standard proof was the right hand from a corpse. Or occasionally not from a corpse. 'Sometimes', said one officer to a missionary, 'soldiers shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a living man'. In some military units, there was even a 'keeper of the hands', his job was the smoking [of them]."
Fortunately for the people, Edmund Dene Morel, a clerk of a Liverpool shipping line used by Leopold to ship out Congo's wealth, discovered on his several journeys to the Belgian port of Antwerp in the 1890s that while rubber and ivory were shipped from Congo to Antwerp, only guns and soldiers were going from Antwerp to Congo. This marked the beginning of his massive newspaper campaign to expose Leopold and his atrocities in the Congo.
Newspaper accounts of "sliced hands and penises was far more graphic and forceful than the British government had expected. In the end, the Belgian government was forced to step in and buy Congo from Leopold in 1908. Negotiations for the buy-out started in 1906. Leopold dragged his feet for two years, but finally, in March 1908, the deal was done.
"From the colonial era, the major legacy Europe left for Africa was not democracy as it is practiced today in countries like England, France and Belgium; it was authoritarian rule and plunder. On the whole continent, perhaps no nation has had a harder time than the Congo in emerging from the shadow of its past.

"When independence came, the country fared badly... Some Africans were being trained for that distant day; but when pressure grew and independence came in 1960, in the entire territory there were fewer than 30 African university graduates. There were no Congolese army officers, engineers, agronomists or physicians. The colony's administration had made few other steps toward a Congo run by its own people; of some 5,000 management-level positions in the civil service, only three were filled by Africans." , writes Hochschild.
Yet on the day of independence, King Baudouin, the then monarch of Belgium, had the gall to tell the Congolese in his speech in Kinshasa: "It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show that you are worthy of our confidence".
No cheek could be bigger! And you could well imagine how mad the Congolese nationalists like Patrice Lumumba were jumping.

After Leopold and Independence from Belgium in 1960:

In May 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Belgian Congo achieved independence under the name "République du Congo" in English). Shortly after independence, the provinces of Katanga (led by Moise Tshombe and the west) and South Kasai engaged in secessionist struggles against the new leadership at the behest of the Belgian expats.
Most of the 100,000 Europeans who had remained behind after independence fled the country, opening the way for Congolese to replace the European military and administrative elite.[( Katanga Rebellion).
As the neighboring Brazzaville based French colony also chose the name "Republic of Congo" upon achieving its independence, the two countries were more commonly known as "Congo-Léopoldville" and "Congo-Brazzaville", after their capital cities.
Within 4 months, Lumumba was arrested by forces loyal to Joseph Mobutu. On 17 January 1961, he was handed over to Katangan authorities and executed by Belgian-led Katangese troops. Lumumba had previously appointed Joseph Mobutu chief of staff of the new Congo army, Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC). Taking advantage of the leadership crisis between President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba, Mobutu garnered enough support within the army to create mutiny. With financial support from the United States and Belgium, Mobutu paid his soldiers privately. The aversion of Western powers to communism and leftist ideology influenced their decision to finance Mobutu's quest to maintain "order" in the new state by neutralizing Kasavubu and Lumumba in a coup by proxy. A constitutional referendum after Mobutu's coup of 1965 resulted in the country's official name being changed to the "Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1971 Mobutu changed the name again, this time to "Republic of Zaïre".
One more time we can see USA supporting the wrong guy to avert communism. The list goes on Mossadeh in Iran, Allende in Chile, Nkhruma in Ghana, Chiang Ki Shek in China, Arbenz in Guatemala, Aristede in Haiti, Saddam Hussain ( we installed him) in Iraq, Sandanistas in Nicaragua. In every country we have interfered the outcome has not been great for either parties. Our track record is as bad as the British.
Corruption became so prevalent the term "le mal Zairois" or "Zaïrean Sickness",]meaning gross corruption, theft and mismanagement, was coined, reportedly by Mobutu himself. International aid, most often in the form of loans, enriched Mobutu while he allowed national infrastructure such as roads to deteriorate to as little as one-quarter of what had existed in 1960. Zaïre became a "kleptocracy" as Mobutu and his associates embezzled government funds.
In a campaign to identify himself with African nationalism, similar to the local leaders in India who changed British given names that I am familiar with, Mobutu renamed the nation's cities: Léopoldville became Kinshasa (the country was now Democratic Republic of The Congo – Kinshasa), Stanleyville became Kisangani, Elisabethville became Lubumbashi, and Coquilhatville became Mbandaka. This renaming campaign was completed in the 1970s.
In 1971, Mobutu renamed the country the Republic of Zaïre, its fourth name change in 11 years and its sixth overall. The Congo River was renamed the Zaïre River.
During the 1970s and 1980s, he was invited to visit the United States on several occasions, meeting with U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union U.S. relations with Mobutu cooled, as he was no longer deemed necessary as a Cold War ally. No wonder no one trusts our foreign policy!.
Civil wars involving Rwanda and Congo (1996–present)
By 1996, following the Rwandan Civil War and genocide and the ascension of a Tutsi-led government in Rwanda, Rwandan Hutu militia forces (Interahamwe) fled to eastern Zaïre and used refugee camps as a base for incursion against Rwanda. They allied with the Zairian armed forces (FAZ) to launch a campaign against Congolese ethnic Tutsis in eastern Zaïre.
A brief history of the Tutsi- Hutu conflict / genocide needs to be explained here. In 1994, Rwanda’s population of seven million was composed of three ethnic groups: Hutu (approximately 85%), Tutsi (14%) and Twa (1%). The Tutsis historically were herders and therefore organized and administered their lives in a notable manner. This trait had established them as the elite in Rwanda then and as a model East African Nation today. The ruling Hutus were basically hunter gatherers and marginalized the Tutsis .
In the early 1990s, Hutu extremists within Rwanda’s political elite blamed the entire Tutsi minority population for the country’s increasing social, economic, and political pressures. Tutsi civilians were also accused of supporting a Tutsi-dominated rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down. Violence began almost immediately after that. Under the cover of war, Hutu extremists launched their plans to destroy the entire Tutsi civilian population. Political leaders who might have been able to take charge of the situation and other high profile opponents of the Hutu extremist plans were killed immediately. Tutsi and people suspected of being Tutsi were killed in their homes and as they tried to flee at roadblocks set up across the country during the genocide. Entire families were killed at a time. Women were systematically and brutally raped. It is estimated that some 200,000 people participated in the perpetration of the Rwandan genocide.
In the weeks after April 6, 1994, 800,000 men, women, and children perished in the Rwandan genocide, perhaps as many as three quarters of the Tutsi population.
Talking to Rwandan scientists in Odzala National Park in the ROC, I finally understood the reasons behind the genocide and penetration of Rwandans into Congo to kill the perpetrators of genocide. One interesting information that I garnered during several hours of conversation in the middle of an equatorial rainforest made me shudder: France, which was a peacekeeper in the Rwandan conflict allowed the fleeing Hutu criminals into Congo since they were Francophone while the Anglophone Tutsi army were watching helplessly.
A coalition of Rwandan and Ugandan armies ( Anglophone) invaded Zaïre to overthrow the government of Mobutu, and ultimately to control the mineral resources of Zaïre, launching the First Congo War. The coalition allied with some opposition figures, led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, becoming the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL). In 1997 Mobutu fled and Kabila marched into Kinshasa, naming himself president and reverting the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congolese Civil Wars, which began in 1996, brought about the end of Mobutu Sese Seko's 31-year reign and devastated the country. The wars ultimately involved nine African nations, multiple groups of UN peacekeepers and twenty armed groups, and resulted in the deaths of 5.4 million people
Kabila later requested that foreign military forces return to their own countries—he had concerns that the Rwandan officers running his army were plotting a coup in order to give the presidency to a Tutsi who would report directly to the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. Rwandan troops retreated to Goma and launched a new Tutsi-led rebel military movement called the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD) to fight against Kabila, while Uganda instigated the creation of new rebel movement called the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), led by the Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba. The two rebel movements, along with Rwandan and Ugandan troops, started the Second Congo War by attacking the DRC army in 1998. Angolan, Zimbabwean and Namibian militaries entered on the side of the government.
Kabila was assassinated in 2001. His son, Joseph Kabila, succeeded him and called for multilateral peace-talks. UN peacekeepers, MONUC, now known as MONUSCO, arrived in April 2001. Talks led to the signing of a peace accord in which Kabila would share power with former rebels. By June 2003 all foreign armies except those of Rwanda had pulled out of Congo. A transitional government was set up until the election was over. A constitution was approved by voters, and on 30 July 2006 DRC held its first multi-party elections. An election-result dispute between Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba turned into an all-out battle between their supporters in the streets of Kinshasa. MONUC took control of the city. A new election took place in October 2006, which Kabila won, and on December 2006 he was sworn in as President.

The DRC today:

In 2009 people in the Congo continued to die at a rate of an estimated 45,000 per month estimates of the number who have died from the long conflict range from 900,000 to 5,400,000.The death toll is due to widespread disease and famine; reports indicate that almost half of the individuals who have died are children under five years of age. There have been frequent reports of weapon bearers killing civilians, of the destruction of property, of widespread sexual violence, causing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, and of other breaches of humanitarian and human rights law. One study found that more than 400,000 women are raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo every year.
One more important fact that cannot go unmentioned here is the plight of the Pygmies. In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, told the UN's Indigenous People's Forum that during the Congo Civil War, his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. ( The German Colonists did the same to the Bushmen in Namibia in 1938). In neighboring North Kivu province there has been cannibalism by a group known as Les Effaceurs ("the erasers") who wanted to clear the land of people to open it up for mineral exploitation. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman" and some say their flesh can confer magical powers.
Makelo asked the UN Security Council to recognize cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide. According to Minority Rights Group International there is extensive evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape of Pygmies and they have urged the International Criminal Court to investigate a campaign of extermination against pygmies. The greatest environmental problem the Pygmies seem to be facing is the loss of their traditional homeland, the tropical forests of Central Africa. In several countries such as Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo this is due to deforestation and the desire of several governments in Central Africa to evict the Pygmies from their forest habitat in order to cash in on quick profits from the sale of hardwood and the resettlement of farmers onto the cleared land. In some cases, as in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this conflict is violent. Certain groups, such as the Hutus of the Interahamwe (of genocide fame), wish to eliminate the Pygmy and take the resources of the forest as a military conquest, using the resources of the forest for military as well as economic advancement. Since the Pygmies rely on the forest for their physical as well as cultural survival, as these forests disappear, so do the Pygmy.
Raja Sheshadri, one of my fellow Indian expatriates of fPcN-Global.org has conducted extensive research on the pygmies. This human rights organization states that as the forest has receded under logging activities, its original inhabitants have been pushed into populated areas to join the formal economy, working as casual laborers or on commercial farms and being exposed to new diseases. This shift has brought them into closer contact with neighboring ethnic communities whose HIV levels are generally higher. This has led to the spread of HIV/AIDS into the pygmy group.



Since poverty has become very prevalent in the Pygmy communities, sexual exploitation of indigenous women has become a common practice. Commercial sex has been bolstered by logging, which often places large groups of male laborers in camps which are set up in close contact with the Pygmy communities.
Human rights groups have also reported widespread sexual abuse of indigenous women in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite these risks, Pygmy populations generally have poor access to health services and information about HIV. The British medical journal, The Lancet, published a review showing that Pygmy populations often had worse access to health care than neighboring communities.[ According to the report, even where health care facilities exist, many people do not use them because they cannot pay for consultations and medicines, they do not have the documents and identity cards needed to travel or obtain hospital treatment, and they are subjected to humiliating and discriminatory treatment

In 2015 major protests broke out across the country and protesters demanded that Joseph Kabila step down as President. The protests began after the passage of a law by the Congolese lower house that, if also passed by the Congolese upper house, would keep Kabila in power at least until a national census was conducted (a process which would likely take several years and therefore keep him in power past the planned 2016 elections, which he is constitutionally barred from participating in).As of 2015 elections are scheduled for late 2016 and a tenuous peace holds over the Congo.

The ROC today:

Despite the military's claims that its interests are not divorced from those of the people, it is clear that the military undermines human security when it attempts to govern rather than follow the lead of the elected civilian authorities. The military barely understands the nature of its own institutions-and still less those of the democratic civilian governments. The military is undemocratic, order-oriented, and hierarchical, and does not tolerate differences of opinions. My own experiences during arrival into Brazzaville was a 2 hour ordeal. The local Government is not interested in tourism or world opinion since they are content with plundering and enriching themselves from their own people.
In ROC power is concentrated in the hands of one group. To consolidate its position, the power wielders exclude others from fully participating in national life. Violence is used to force them to cooperate with the authorities. Detention, persecution, mistreatment, and other human rights violations become a common practice. The victims of the politics of exclusion rarely achieve a fair hearing before courts, which further exacerbates their conditions. They are not allowed to become active players in the key areas of the economy, lacking access to agricultural lands, investment opportunities, or the higher positions that their counterparts enjoy. Modern African history is replete with examples of leaders enriching their own groups while paying little attention to the plight of their fellow citizens. Some leaders have even made their birthplaces into exclusive development zones.
I was traveling through the town of Edo en route to Odzala National Park in the north west of the country. The airline, airliner and the airport belonged to the daughter of the ruler Denis Sassou-Nguess. There were multiple checks on the passengers akin to traveling to Israel. Flights are only on weekends to suit his traveling needs. There are elaborate homes along the poverty stricken villages; a clear slap across the face of his citizens. In the west we are more subtle and have learned to hide them in distant places.
These powerful men live behind high walls, sun shades and automatic weapons unable to face their citizens. Internationally, Sassou's regime has been hit by corruption revelations despite attempts to censor them. One French investigation found over 110 bank accounts and dozens of lavish properties in France; Sassou denounced embezzlement investigations as "racist" and "colonial".
Around Edo new schools, colleges ,hospitals including a 4 star hotel have been built along with the nations only cattle farm to feed the elite( milk is imported from France and not affordable by most). None of these institutions have staff since the country has not developed any form of professionals other than gun toting militia.

In the Republic of Congo, where Pygmies make up 2% of the population, many Pygmies live as slaves to Bantu masters for over a millennium. The nation is deeply stratified between these two major ethnic groups. The Pygmy slaves belong from birth to their Bantu masters in a relationship that the Bantus call a time-honored tradition. Even though the Pygmies are responsible for much of the hunting, fishing and manual labor in jungle villages, Pygmies and Bantus alike say Pygmies are often paid at the master's whim; in cigarettes, used clothing, or even nothing at all. As a result of pressure from UNICEF and human-rights activists, a law that would grant special protections to the Pygmy people is awaiting a vote by the Congo parliament. Pygmies are often evicted from their land and given the lowest paying jobs. At a state level, Pygmies are not considered citizens by most African states and are refused identity cards, deeds to land, health care and proper schooling. Government policies and multinational corporations involved in massive deforestation have exacerbated this problem by forcing more Pygmies out of their traditional homelands and into villages and cities where they often are marginalized, impoverished and abused by the dominant culture.

Today there are roughly 500,000 Pygmies left in the rain-forest of Central Africa. This population is rapidly decreasing as poverty, intermarriage with Bantu peoples, Westernization, and deforestation all gradually destroy their way of life and culture along with their genetic uniqueness.
The End.
emailme @ ( [email protected])

PHOTO GALLERY

References:
King Leopold's Ghost- Adam Hoschild
Into Africa-Adventures af Livingston and Stanley by Martin Dugard
Blood River- A journey through Africa's Broken Heart- Tim Butcher
Extensive Wikipedia and Wiki Images
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/teachers/readings7.html
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Congo_River