Oh, to be a cat, sleeping on a Roman ruin or a pile of fine embroidery.
There’s feral cats all over Israel, and they’re the one thing that unites everyone across the Middle East – Jews, Arabs, religious, secular – everyone has a soft spot for them. There’s dishes of water and food put out on every street corner, and the cats are largely allowed to go as they please.
This one decided to claim my bag during a meeting in East Jerusalem – I was real close to taking her back to Canada with me.
I’ve got a whole bunch of Israel travel posts I want to make – there’s so much sublime and complicated and controversial. But I also want to share a very mundane, slightly silly, thing that I’ve fallen in love with: the Haifa Carmelit funicular.
Haifa is up in the north of Israel; you can see the hills of Lebanon on a clear day. It’s a relaxed port city, with a very mixed Jewish and Arab population, and a lot of Italian tourists. It’s also an immensely hilly city, built right into the side of Mt. Carmel.
My hotel was at the top of the hill, up by the top of the Baha’i Gardens. As much as I love hiking, with the heat of the Middle East in August, I quickly appreciated a quick and convenient route back uphill.
The Carmelit is the only subway in Israel (though they’re opening soon a partially-underground LRT in Tel Aviv). The funicular is extremely mid-century, opened in 1959, though the cars are more modern.
The weirdest thing is that it’s only two cars … on a single cable. The cars don’t move independently – when one leaves the top station, the other leaves the bottom. There’s a spot in the middle where the track splits so they can pass, always at the same place. It also means that the stations are all equidistant to each other – so some of the middle ones are in weird places.
Both the stations and the cars are terraced into steps, but since the hill is steeper at the top, it’s only at the middle stations that the train floor is even with the platform. If you ride it facing away from the hill, you’ll be leaning forward at the top, and back at the bottom – only slightly, but noticeably.
It’s only practical if you need to travel along the line, so the rest of Haifa is served by a good bus system. But I’m totally sold by this odd little underground train up a mountain.
A mix of podcasts I’ve been listening to this month on the Central African Republic – some English and some French. There’s a lot of reporting on conflict in CAR, but there’s also some good podcasts and interviews out there by Central Africans.
The Talking Point: Looking at Central African Republic (CAR) – (En) A South African podcast from 2019 that gives a good overview of CAR’s history that sets it in the larger regional context, looks at la Françafrique, the competition between French and Chinese interests in CAR’s natural resources, and current political dynamics. So much of CAR’s post-independence political history is a process of balancing outside interests – France, Russia, China, South Africa, Chad, and more – and this podcast helps make sense of it.
Elo Africa: Au coeur des conflits en République Centrafricaine – (Fr) A Gabonese podcast interviewing Bernice, a young man who fled as a child from CAR in the early 2000s because of ethnic violence. Bernice is Yakoma, a small ethnic group from the south of the country. The previous president, André-Dieudonné Kolingba, was Yakoma and had heavily favoured his own ethnic group for government patronage – when he was removed from power, the Yakoma faced attacks and persecution. Bernice speaks about his experience as a refugee, his education in Cameroon, his return to Bangui as a young man, and the current political situation there.
Smart Peace: Central African Republic – (En) CAR has been called the “world champion of peacekeeping” as it has had a non-stop revolving presence of French, UN, African Union, and EU peacekeeping missions. NGOs and peace organizations are trying various tactics to build stability – Smart Peace is a project by Conciliation Resources that looks at facilitating local solutions to peace. This podcast adds further detail to the reasons of CAR’s instability – instead of looking at big leaders or movements, they look at communities and how individuals navigate instability and build their own networks in the absence of institutions.
Juridiquement Vôtre: L’année 1236, la Charte de Kurukan Fuga – (Fr) Dr. Jean-François Akandji-Kombé is a Central African law professor, currently teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris. He has a series of podcasts, some on law and citizen engagement, some on Central African current events, and some on African legal history. This really fascinating podcast is on the Kurukan Fuga, the 1236 constitution establishing the Empire of Mali. It’s one of the oldest charter of rights, from the same era as the Magna Carta, and is noteable for setting out women’s rights (including political participation), laws on sustainable hunting, and inheritance and status rights. Dr. Akandji-Kombé frames it as an reclamation of African history and using this history to build a more stable legal tradition for African countries, and as a counter-argument to a narrative that constitutionality is a foreign import.
Reportage Afrique – Centrafrique : la course aux chenilles dans les forêts de la Lobaye – (Fr) A short trio of episodes through RFI’s Africa bureau on caterpillars as food in CAR – the first is on gathering them in-season, the second on the supply chains to get caterpillars to market and the risk of deforestation, and the third on cooking with caterpillars and their place as an effective and environmentally friendly source of protein – and a beloved one. I liked the smoky flavour of dried ones when I made yabanda, but I’d love to try them fresh!
I love these slice of life walk videos around the world – most of them are aimed at tourists, but this one is much more local. It’s a walking tour of …renewing a passport!
The traffic in Bangui also looks challenging but not insurmountable – seems like you just gotta be confident and aware of your surroundings. (As opposed to Dhaka, last month).
I love these casual, no-talking walking tours – it’s immersive, like you’re there yourself. This one is of Dhaka – I’ve also found some cool ones of San Salvador, Porvoo and Tel Aviv.
Of note is just how bonkers the traffic is, and that doesn’t even seem like a bad day! Dhaka has some of the worst traffic congestion in the world – infrastructure is totally overwhelmed, and there’s basically no public transit. There’s a really good documentary about Dhaka’s traffic from 2010, including what it’s like to drive a rickshaw, below.
It hasn’t gotten any better in the last decade – I saw a Bangladeshi news articles from this year lamenting the lack of progress on traffic and the wasted opportunity during the pandemic lockdowns. It’s so bad, in fact, that researchers estimate that 6-10% of Bangladesh’s GDP is lost indirectly to traffic.
Another haul of Bangladeshi snacks – this time from the little grocery stores along Danforth in Toronto’s Bangladeshi neighbourhood.
Well Food Ovaltine cookies – Extremely crumbly little cookies made with Ovaltine. Ovaltine is a chocolate malt drink mix that’s really popular worldwide – except in North America, where it’s almost unknown. (Malt drinks are also really rare here.) Apart from leaving crumbs all over my desk, these are not too sweet, with a bit of malty bitterness in the aftertaste.
Frutika – Another thick mango nectar drink, like the Frutta one I tried earlier. Not too sweet, and I think this is from a bigger company, because they have a lot of ads, including this absolutely emotionally devastating one (with subtitles). Remember, this is for a tasty little bottle of mango juice:
Banoful Energy Biscuits – These cookies are advertised as giving you energy, but from the ingredients, I think that’s just because of the sugar. Very soft melt in your mouth butter cookies, quite tasty. I really like the texture of these Banoful cookies – the orange ones were my favourite.
Haque Mr. Cookie Butter Coconut – Really airy and flaky cookies, almost like a rice cookies meets a butter cookie. The coconut flavour is really mild, tastes more like vanilla. But a really lovely texture, even if it makes a lot of crumbs!
Pran Jhal Muri – Jhal muri is a Bengali street food of puffed rice, mixed with chanachur, nuts, and other little treats. This one has peanuts and fried noodles. They’re wasabi flavoured, kind of like wasabi peas, on top of the more classic Bengal spice mix of cinnamon, cumin, turmeric, chillies and mustard oil. Not the flavour combo I was expecting but pretty good, it’s really satisfying to eat by the handful.
There’s really good streetview coverage on Bangladesh – I went down an absolute rabbit hole poking around, there’s religious and historic sites, weird borders, stunning natural beauty and massive urban sprawl. Here’s some neat ones I liked:
In Sylhet, up in the far northeast of Bangladesh, is the Tomb of Shah Jalal. Shah Jalal was a Sufi saint and leader involved in the both the Islamic conquest of Sylhet from Hindu rulers around 1300 and the spread of Islam to the population. Ibn Battutah sought him out on his travels, and found Shah Jalal in his later years living as an ascetic.
This Shaikh was one of the great saints and one of the unique personages. He had to his credit miracles (karamat) as well as great deeds, and he was a man of hoary age.He owned a cow with whose milk he broke his fast. He stood performing prayers throughout the night, and he was thin, tall and scanty-bearded. The inhabitants of these mountains had embraced Islam at his hands, and for this reason he stayed amidst them.
From Ibn Battutah’s Account of his Meeting with Shah Jalal of Sylhet
Much more recently, Bangladesh and India finally settled their really wonky borders, transferring dozens of enclaves (including second- and even third-order ones) in 2015. Only one enclave still exists, a community called Dahagram–Angarpota, that’s a small piece of Bangladesh surrounded by India. This enclave is in spitting distance of Bangladesh, and it connected by the Tin Bigha Corridor, stretch of road that’s less than 200 metres long. The land belongs to India, but is leased to Bangladesh – but there’s still border control, and it was only in 2011 that the corridor was opened for 24 hours a day. Previously, it was only open 12 hours a day, which caused understandable hardship on residents, since there were no hospitals in the enclave at the time.
On the other side of the country, down in Chittagong, there’s what looks like a possible standoff between the Google Car and security staff at the gates of a shipbreaking yard. Note the “no child labour” sign on the gate.
A dizzying drone shot of a hazy morning in Dhaka – look at that urban density!
And more serenely, a floating night market pier in the Meghna River delta. Look around behind you for a bonus beautiful sunset.
Our in the far east of Bangladesh is the Kaptai Lake – in contrast to the massive urban density, this area is remote, sparsely populated, and largely only accessible by boat. There’s stunning natural sites, including the Shuvolong waterfall.
Back in Dhaka, I was looking through the planes at the Bangladesh Air Force Museum, and this old DC-3 caught my eye – I love these old planes. They were introduced in the 1930s, and were built until the 50s, but they’re such successful planes that many are still in active use today (like for cargo flights in the Canadian Arctic). This specific DC-3 was a gift to Bangladesh from India. It had been used to drop paratroopers during the 1971 Independence War and is one of the founding planes of the Bangladesh Air Force.
And tucked away on a side street, the oldest surviving mosque in Dhaka – the Binat Bibi Mosque, built in 1454. It’s pre-Muhgal, erected during the Bengal Sultanate. There’s an inscription dedicating the mosque to Bakht Binat, the daughter of Marhamat – it’s unclear if she funded it or if it was dedicated in her memory, but it’s likely she was part of a local wealthy family.
The streetview is from 2013, and the mosque has been in pretty poor shape, despite it’s historic value. Since then there’s been some renovations and restorations, including a beautiful new minaret. It’s hard to see updated photos, but hopefully they’ve restored and kept the two starry domes.
Bengali is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. If you go by total speakers, it’s the 7th most spoken, and if you only look at native speakers, it’s the 5th most spoken language (and has way more native speakers than widespread languages like French). Speakers are almost all concentrated in Bengal, both on the Indian and Bangladeshi side, and the fight to make Bengali an official language beside Urdu was a big spur in that Bengali nationalism that led to the eventual breakup of the two Pakistans in 1971.
Bengali is the easternmost Indo-European language (or depending how you cut it, Assamese is, but the point stands). I love the evolution of languages, it’s like the evolution of species, and the spread of the Indo-European family always blows my mind. English and Bengali both descended the same Proto-Indo-European language spoken only about 5000 years ago in the Eurasian steppe – as well as almost every other language spoken between the North Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
It’s also hard to wrap my head around the fact that Bengali is more closely related to English than it is to Burmese, spoken right next door in Myanmar. (And likewise, that Swedish is more closely related to Bengali than it is to Finnish). Here’s a really interesting video on the Indo-European language family, and how people reconstruct Proto-Indo-European:
Bengali has a reputation as a poetic and “sweet” sounding language. There’s actually a lot of linguistic work that goes into why people perceive languages as sweet or harsh – it’s called sound symbolism – but this Indian video gives a good look at what about Bengali makes people perceive it as sounding sweet.
There’s also some fun slang in Bengali – this article on “The funky side of Bangla” from the Dhaka Tribune gives a primer on slang used in Bangladesh. I really like these ones:
Just sit back and enjoy this little video compilation of really beautiful mosques in Bangladesh.
Particularly beautiful in that video is the Red Mosque in Dhaka – it makes me think of a redwood forest. It’s meant to add a sense of cool spaciousness to a very crowded urban neighbourhood.
St. Sophia’s Cathedral, Kyiv, 2016
Donetsk Art Museum, 2016
National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos, Sebastapol, Crimea, 2011
Mariupol Beach, 2018
Aviation Museum, Luhansk, 2017
Rym restaurant, Bucha, 2017
Kharkiv, 2020
And some celebratory girl guides in Kyiv from January of this year.
Locally Foreign 
