A morning in Paris

Sometimes, I think that I've forgotten how to be a tourist in a leisurely way, as I've become quite adept at exploring some of the world's great cities in short blocks of time. Paris is a city I've visited quite a number of times, but never for more than two days at a time. I usually end up trekking around a new neighborhood each time I end up with a long layover at CDG. 

Today was no different, as I made my way by train from the airport to the Gare du Nord and then hiked a bit to the east to the neighborhood of Montmartre. I've certainly seen the neighborhood before. It is hard to miss, sitting on top of the highest hill in Paris, with the soaring Sacré Coeur Basilica sitting at its summit. 

The weather was more reminiscent of late March than late May -- cold, rainy, and in the 50s Fahrenheit. 

Paris is one of those cities that can, at times, seem a bit more trouble than it is worth. The swarming herds of tourists from every corner of the globe certainly take a bit of the edge off the charm. Yet I never fail to find a quiet, lovely backstreet with beautiful views that makes it all seem worthwhile. 

The Sacré Coeur Basilica is a beautiful space, filled with art that uses ancient techniques and subject matter (mosaic, religious iconography) but with a distinctly modern styling. I found myself strongly reminded of two churches of the same era in Russia and Ukraine - The Savior-on-the-Blood in St. Petersburg and St. Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv. Both were decorated using the same kind of mosaics-with-a-modern twist by the Russian artists Vasnetsov, Nesterov, and Vriubel. I can also see shadows of art and architecture in Vienna from the same time period. There seems to be a commonality of melding together ancient and familiar religious forms with artistic expressions drawn more from popular folk culture. 

A small-scale mosaic in the aisle, looking up into the central altar dome of Sacré Coeur

All of these grand civil/religious structures, together with so much of the grandiosity of cities like Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg reflect the fascinating and short-lived period when social, historical, economic, and geo-political realities allowed the great powers of Europe to build such monuments. It was a time of deep fascination with the intersection of nationality, tradition, and modernity. It now seems a world quite far away. 

Paris today is far removed from the city that spread below Montmartre in the early 20th century. Many neighborhoods around the area are now filled with African cloth and haircare shops, halal meat markets, and North African restaurants. I saw signs in Arabic, Turkish, Tamil, and Chinese. It's bewildering. In many ways, the attempts of synthesis of the ancient and the modern that is visible in the Sacré Coeur is still happening in its shadows today. 

Impressions of Detroit

A chilly spring day on the Detroit River - Downtown Detroit from Windsor, Ontario

I fell in love with the impressionist style of painting many years ago, during an exhibition of Monet's work at the Art Institute of Chicago during my college years. I love how impressionism tries to capture not how something really looks, but how the eye captures the interplay of the subject and light and the tricks-the-eyes-play. A different time or vantage or combination can give a completely different image. Our family's brief trip to Detroit this week brought impressionism to mind many times. The combinations of images that form Detroit are at times difficult to unite in one impression, yet somehow coalesce at the same time into a coherent whole. 

Detroit has the usual features of a large American city -- ribbons of freeways, ornate early-20th-century stone skyscrapers, shiny later towers, sprawl. Yet it is different from most other cities I've visited -- even other "rust belt" cities fallen on hard times -- in that the contrast between the monuments of the city's glory days of 1920-1950 stand in such stark contrast with the monuments to the city's dramatic fall in the second half of the twentieth century. I struggle to think of another major city that has experienced this kind of meteoric rise followed by such a dramatic fall. Detroit has some beautiful "bones" -- stunning art deco and beaux arts architecture, splendid museums (the Detroit Institute of Arts is one of the finest I have visited, both in its collection and presentations) -- all situated on the dramatic geographical space of the narrows of the Detroit River. Most of these gems continue to shine today or are in the process of being renewed. Some dramatic new buildings have also joined the skyline, as have sparkling new sports arenas in the heart of downtown. 

The ruins of Michigan Central Station (from historicdetroit.org - a great site)

Despite these positives, I have never seen the level of urban decay that I saw in Detroit. While cities like Akron and Cleveland and Indianapolis have highly blighted neighborhoods, it doesn't seem quite as systemic as the decay seems in Detroit, with quite literally falling-down buildings in the very heart of downtown. Beyond the core of the city, some neighborhoods seemed more like semi-rural areas, with only perhaps one of twenty original homes remaining amidst renewed prairies of grass. In one neighborhood, artists have taken to transforming abandoned homes into objects of art (which has played a role in renewal of that neighborhood). The iconic Michigan Central Station -- perhaps the grandest ruin in Detroit -- looms above the Ambassador Bridge from Windsor, Ontario. In so many ways, the influences that led to the decline of so many inner cities in America -- the advent of the automobile and highways that allowed for sprawl to suburbs, troubled race relations from the late 1960s, deindustrialization, dysfunctional politics -- were concentrated on the urban reality of Detroit. 

Yet from an impressionistic viewpoint, one that attempts to see the whole and not just the parts, Detroit is a fascinating place. Amidst a seemingly empty neighborhood, a shiny furniture store functions on a major avenue. Vast open grasslands grow under the shadows of the business district. Little by little the lights come on in long-emtpy downtown buildings. A restored Victorian mansion sits in its grandness as the only home left on its block. A thriving restaurant thrives on a street of largely abandoned buildings a block off of the Grand Circus Park. I really can't fathom the effort it takes to lead a city like Detroit and to face its political, social, and economic challenges (it has recently been taken over by the state of Michigan). But despite the brokenness, there is hope evidenced everywhere. People are clearly pouring themselves into the city at all levels. The sum of these parts, viewed from various angles, is indeed striking and beautiful. 

Eating in South Asia

Cuisine is rarely a simple affair. Just as every Midwestern farm wife has her own special way of making pie crust or beef stew, so do cooks all over the world differ in how they approach their cooking. This village-to-village variety is compounded in India and South Asia by the variety of ethnic and regional expressions of food. Thankfully, Indian food does go distinctly beyond the chicken tikka masala (which was originally concocted in the UK), saag paneer, and naan common to North American Indian buffets. 

A Karnataka Meal

One of the misperceptions of Indian food is that it is all spicy/piquant. Granted, the use of chili peppers is common throughout India and there are some dishes I've had that set your mouth on fire. But good Indian food is characterized more by nuance and the blending together of many spices and flavorings, including sweet spices (cinnamon, cloves, cardamom), savory spices (cumin, coriander), "wet" spices (onion, garlic, ginger - the "Holy Trinity" of Indian cooking), and other ingredients that affect the taste or consistency of the food (hing/asofoetida, tamarind, lime or lemon juice, palm sugar, coconut or coconut milk). "Curry" is rooted in a Tamil word that means sauce and is not a "spice" at all in Indian usage. Rather, "curry" indicates the blend of numerous sweet and savory spices (every cook has their own recipe) that is added to foods. 

Idli and Sambar

Indian meals generally consist of some form of starch (rice or rice-flour breads in the South, rice or wheat-flour breads in the North), some kind of dal (beans, lentils, etc.) cooked in a rich, savory broth, some kind of vegetable cooked with spices, and usually a chutney or pickle on the side. As Oprah Winfrey discovered in a mighty cultural faux pas in Mumbai last year, Indians usually eat with their right hands, working together the rice and sauces, scooping them up with the thumb, index, and middle fingers, and then using the thumb to delicately push the food into the mouth. It's actually quite an elegant process that, when done right, often results in hands as clean as when the meal began. 

One of my favorite Indian meals is firmly rooted in Tamil Nadu in the South but can be found throughout South Asia. It consists of steamed rice-and-lentil-flour dumplings (idli) served with a spicy soup called sambal and various chutneys. This is a traditional breakfast food. 

Food reflects culture. Japanese cooking is famous for its simplicity and understatement. Chinese food prizes local ingredients cooked in harmony with a few key flavorings and the harmony of the various dishes on the table. Thai and Vietnamese cooking prizes the balance of the spicy, sweet, sour, and salty. Indian food also seeks balance, but of a much more diverse set of ingredients, all combining together into a flavorful whole. 

Snapshots of India

I've had a very hard time putting together blog thoughts during this trip to India. The absence of spare time short of sleeping hours has probably played a part. But I think it's something else as well. India has an immensity about it that is very hard to define. 

Just a few "snapshots"

- Contrary to popular misconception in the West, Hindi is not spoken throughout India. While Hindi and related languages are spoken across the vastness of North India (approximately 250 million speakers, plus many more who use it as a lingua franca). In the South especially, local languages predominate -- Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada are just a few, spoken by tens of millions. Official things are labeled in three languages. Many things in the city are signed in English and the local language, but there are many, many things written only in the local languages.

Elevator labeled in Tamil, Hindi, and (British) English

- Religion permeates everything in India. As you drive through the streets of a South Indian city, you are about as likely to see a  mosque in the Mughal style as you are to see a Hindu temple or a Christian church. Although Hindus compose the vast majority of Indians, the numbers of Muslims (160 million) is the second largest Muslim population after Indonesia. Christians may compose up to 7% of the population, including ancient communities of Syriac Christians that go back to nearly apostolic times. 

A Hindu temple in Chennai

- If Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state, were an independent nation, it would fight with Brazil for fifth most populous in the world (200 million people). The region commonly called North India is home to 900 million people or 12% of humanity. This is about equal to the population of sub-Saharan Africa, just shy of three times the population of the United States, and and about 150 million more than live in all of Europe. 

- The new highways leading the the Bangalore airport (one of India's best) are still under construction and reconstruction, so they involve some creative driving. The occasional herd of cows can wreak havoc on traffic. Stepping into the B'lore Airport, however, you feel like you've moved into a parallel consumerist paradise. Enormous banners above the concourse announce that "Dubai Shopping Festival," showing photos of Indians in hotel rooms with amazing views of the Dubai skyline sheerly exhausted by their shopping endeavors, surrounded by the horde. India is a world of contrasts. 

New construction in Bangalore

- Indian airlines, in my experience, are quite an efficient affair. With the exception of one flight on this trip, I don't think my front door-to-boarding gate experience has ever been more than 15 minutes. They also manage to serve a meal (and not a bad one) on most domestic flights. A burgeoning budget airline industry is also connecting the nation as never before. The new airport in Delhi is a site to behold with sculpture parks, soaring atria, and futuristic electronic billboards announcing the latest entertainment "news." 

Domestic arrivals area - Delhi Airport

- I know of nowhere where the movies hold a greater cultural sway than India, be it the Hindi industry based in Mumbai or the south Indian (especially Tamil) industry in the south. Movie posters -- an artistic genre all their own -- blanket Indian cities. There are a few film stars that are probably among the world's most recognizable faces. 

A few movie posters (far from the best) in Chennai

You see so many things that contradict one another. Ridiculous wealth. Grinding poverty. Soaring, sleek skyscrapers. Crumbling, fetid slums. Remarkable efficiency. Mind-numbing bureaucracy. Yet it's all the same. Every nation has its complexities, contrasts, and ironies. China is another colossus of complexity. But India, if nothing more than in the scope and scale of its smack-you-in-the-face diversity, is in a league of its own. 

Disorder, perhaps

Kathmandu might be the most disorderly city I have visited. But perhaps "disorder" is not quite the right word to describe it. Words like "disorderly," and "chaotic" carry a lot of negative connotations. I think I mean "disorderly" in a bit more appreciative sense, although with firm acknowledgment that the place could pretty quickly drive an outsider crazy. 

16th-17th century royal palace in Kathmandu 

Kathmandu sits in a basin in central Nepal ringed by the foothills of the Himalayas. I'm told that on clear days, you can see the snow-capped front range of the Himalayas from the city. In some ways, the city is geographically similar to Los Angeles, in that it sits in a basin. Like LA, smog tends to settle in the basin, leading to very bad air pollution. Many people wear masks as they are out and about the city. 

Kathmandu strikes me as a place that was at one time quite sleepy -- a crossroads in a remote mountain kingdom. It has a very haphazard feel to it, with roads running at funny angles, tall, narrow buildings sprouting toward the sky, and temples sitting at odd angles right in the middle of intersections. Imagine something kind of the opposite of L'Enfant's Washington or von Haussmann's Paris. 

Entrance to the Taleju Temple, on Durbar Square (under renovation)

A view of part of Durbar Square, Kathmandu 

In the center of the city sits the Durbar Square. Durbar is an old Persian word used throughout Central and South Asia to denote the royal court and the assembly of ministers. Durbar Square and the Hanuman-dhoka Palace (Monkey-Door Palace) that dominates it was the seat of the Nepali royal family from the mid-17th century until the late 19th when they moved to more a more "European" place uptown. Again, the ensemble is quite the opposite of European palaces like Versailles or Schönbrunn, with their symmetrical galleries and gardens. The palace (now a museum) is a gaggle of passageways and towers looking out on courtyards. The areas around the palace are filled with several dozen Hindu temples, often sitting at odd angles to one another. The whole thing is very disorderly. But also very attractive. There's a surprise around every corner. 

The area around Durbar Square is a catch-all of touristy brick-brack and everyday Nepali markets selling everything from bras to beans. Motorbikes, cars, rickshaws, pedestrians, and the occasional cow bump up against one another on their way. As you move away from the center, the likelihood of a cow-enduced traffic jam appears to grow (in the world's most Hindu nation) if my taxi experience has anything to say. 

The entrance to Durbar Square

Yet amidst all of this, new residential and office towers are rising. Multinational firms are thick just outside the historic center. Kathmandu, like most of the world is changing. Rapidly. 

A disorderly city, certainly. A city that test's one's patience, certainly. But also one of the more explorable, inviting cities I've encountered. Kind of fun to have a half day to play the tourist… 

Reading the day's news in Durbar Square

A grain stall selling all manner of pulses and other grains on the edge of Durbar Square

The Complexities and Uncertainties of Progress

You cannot travel to China or India (or most other places in the world) without feeling the frenetic pace of economic growth combined with globalization. Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, and Delhi -- my Indian stops on this trip -- are perfect examples. These cities are undergoing remarkable amounts of construction. Cranes dot the skyline. Billboards tout brilliant apartment complexes. The streets near airports are like tiny dens existing under the shadows of new highway systems under construction. Chennai is in the midst of expanding its already significant light rail system along the coast to a city-wide transit network. Cities are exploding with continued rural migration to the cities. Mumbai -- a colossal agglomeration of 21 million -- is set to become the world's largest metropolitan area. 

Construction of new overhead train lines in Chennai

All of this constitutes something that we sometimes call "progress" as millions of human beings flock to cities, (perhaps) find greater opportunities, (perhaps) rise into the middle class, and (perhaps) pursue economic possibilities. This massive urbanization of India (and many other places, especially China) is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, migration of human beings in history. This migration is quite literally changing our world. Tens of millions of new cars flood the streets of Indian cities. Energy and water demands rise as standards of living of the wealthy and middle classes rise. The food needs of massive cities continue to grow. Instability breeds as some find that life in urban slums is not what they had bargained for. In many ways, the shape of our world is being set in these Asian mega-cities. 

It is easy to lose the humanity amidst the numbers. Yet it is a deeply human story. Some of the stories are indeed stories of success -- of poor, rural families finding new possibilities in cities and moving, by way of slums and later more settled communities into productive urban life. I've met many people like that whose grandparents or great-grandparents labored in subsistence farming with life or death at times depending on the timing of the monsoons. Yet there are many other stories too. I'm told that the construction of the new metro system in Chennai has brought in 35,000 workers from the poor eastern states of Orissa and Bihar. For some, this is a great opportunity, but for many at the lowest levels, I am told, it is a life of bonded labor that is exploitative and nearly impossible to escape. Thousands more end up in bonded labor as prostitutes. "Progress" truly takes a toll.

Construction of a new overhead highway in Chennai, India

These issues are not unique to India or to Asia. There are in many ways parallels to some aspects of life in the west. Many of these issues have existed for centuries. But the remarkable thing here is the scale and the speed of change. The number of Indians under 14 - 189 million - is 35% of the Indian population (compared to 20% in the US, which is also a young country). These massive urban centers - with their progress and their problems -- will continue to shape our global life, for good and for bad, for decades to come. 

Fishing

fishing on Lake Albert (from USB website)

Flying from Entebbe in southern Uganda to Bunia, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is not for the faint of heart. The flight across the planes and hills of western Uganda at relatively low altitude gives a sense of the contours of African communities. But the amazing part of the trip comes when you come to the Ugandan shore of Lake Albert and begin to see the outlines of steep mountains rising from the Congolese side of the lake. Lake Albert, along with many of Africa's Great Lakes, is formed by the geographic colossus of the Rift Valley, which stretches down from the Red Sea, across Ethiopia, before splitting into the Great Rift Valley of western Kenya and another, westerly Branch, that forms Lake Albert, the dramatic peaks of the eastern DRC border, and the other African "Great Lakes". As our flight came up over this ridge of mountains, the broad planes of Ituri opened up and the city of Bunia began soon spread across the horizon. 

Bunia has near trebled in size since the end of the war in the region in the middle of the last decade. Part of this has been the influx of security through the presence of United Nations peacekeepers. But mostly, this growth has resulted from a combination of urbanization as people from the surrounding countryside move to the city as well as through natural population growth.

Like a lot of smaller African cities, Bunia is spread out with broad, dusty streets and few tall buildings. Many buildings in the city center date to the era of Belgian colonialism. The city center is dusty in the height of the dry season, but neat and orderly, with traffic police in bright yellow shirts directing the modest flow of traffic at the city's main intersection, where the airport road meets Boulevard de la Liberation. Such a name begs the question "liberation from what?" It turns out that the avenue was named Mobutu Boulevard until his downfall in the late 1990s and the "liberation" for which the avenue is named was liberation from the Mobutu regime. 

One of the most striking aspects of central Bunia is the presence of dozens of poissoniers, or shops selling fresh fish. They are everywhere, ranging from tiny wooden kiosks to fairly imposing brick buildings. I'm told that fish is brought by way of a rather treacherous road up the mountains of the rift valley from Lake Albert. Since the 1990s, however, fish has grown more expensive as fish stocks have been depleted on the Congolese shores of Lake Albert. Ironically, much of the fish sold in Bunia is actually imported from Uganda, where it is caught in the Ugandan waters of the very same Lake Albert. Poor fishing practices have led to this decline.

Central Bunia

The Christian university I am visiting in Bunia, Shalom University of Bunia, has a program in fishery management, one of a large number of practical yet deeply rooted programs that have emerged in this remarkable place. In the post-war Bunia, Shalom University, with its sizable campus just off the city center, was one of the few social institutions remaining somewhat intact. Founded in 1961 as a theological school by five mission-founded denominations in Eastern Congo, the school has made a marked transition since 2005 into a vibrant Christian university with faculties of community development, agriculture, theology, business, and a number of other disciplines. These departments are not developed in order to form a coherent liberal arts program. Rather, they were founded because they were perceived to answer a glaring need in society. The whole place is permeated with an ethos of integration of Christian faith with active practices that truly respond to needs. I have to admit, this was the first time I've ever had a conversation about what it might mean to teach about fisheries management in a way that integrates Christian faith. 

Professional internships form a core of every training program at Shalom University. Last year's fisheries students spent several weeks at the lakeshore interacting with fishermen as well as government workers overseeing the nation's fisheries. All lamented the increasingly small catch and the attendant fall of incomes and taxes from fish. Over the course of their internship, the Shalom University students were able to suggest some small but meaningful steps to help strengthen the fish stocks of Lake Albert. Six months later, local officials from lakeside communities were asking the school to send more students for internships, as a noticeable uptick had been seen in fish stocks in those communities. While it will take years or decades for fish stocks to recover from overfishing, something changed. Motivated by a care for their country, a concern for stewardship of the environment, a concern for the good of their society, and some practical knowledge about fish, a few students made a fairly dramatic change. It is this sort of rooted and applied learning, it seems to me, that will help make this world just a bit better place.