I’m back after a little break to my regularly scheduled programming – another country picked at random. This month, I’ll be learning more about Papua New Guinea!

So, as always, what do I know off the top of my head about PNG before I start?

I know that despite sharing the island of New Guinea with Indonesia, it’s not part of Asia, but Oceania – geographically, culturally, and historically. I think it’s part of Melanesia. I’ve also mainly heard about PNG in outsiders’ ethnographic or exoticized terms, but little from Papuans themselves.

PNG is famous for having the most linguistic diversity in the world; there’s about 800 indigenous languages spoken there, many from unrelated language families. In comparison, there’s about 60-70 indigenous languages spoken in all of Canada – half a continent vs half an island.

I know they were a British colony, so English is spoken widely there, and like Canada, they’re a Commonwealth Realm with the King as head of state. I’m not sure how their government works on the ground, either in terms of function or effectiveness, and I know it isn’t the richest country.

From what I’ve learned from the other Oceanian countries I’ve looked at – especially Nauru – there’s no way Australia doesn’t have major involvement in PNG’s government and economy. And likewise, I’m sure PNG is also navigating China’s growing presence in the south Pacific.

I do know of some people who have been to PNG, but they were extended American relatives who went as missionaries. (Yes, missionaries. In today’s day and age! Or, well, the 90s.) I’m not sure how difficult it will be to find Papuan-made media, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a Papuan community in Canada – there isn’t a single PNG restaurant in Toronto, which normally has a restaurant from every country on earth.

When I picked the Central African Republic for this month’s country, I knew it was a troubled country with chronic instability. I had hoped learn more about everyday life in CAR and to focus away from “doom and gloom“. But what I’ve learned this month is that the instability in CAR goes bone deep in everyday life.

I learned more about the excesses of la Françafrique, the French supporting and deposing chosen leaders, like the infamous Emperor Bokassa, the subsequent string of coups, including the fighting between Séléka and anti-Balaka insurgents, which has added a new Muslim vs. Christian dynamic that did not exist before.

CAR is an extremely fragile state, with limited government control outside of the capital of Bangui and more coups than elections. It is, however, very rich in natural resources – diamonds, gold, uranium, and illegally ivory. This means that CAR is open to interference from both inside forces, like the various insurgent groups, and outside ones. Chad, Libya, and South Africa all have had had a hand in CAR, and France even today continues its neo-colonial influence, but China, the EU, and most recently Russia have all staked claims.

For more detail into the geopolitics of CAR, I’d strongly recommend Making Sense of the Central African Republic.

A lot of Central African popular culture reflects these influences on everyday life. Didier Kassaï’s startling graphic novel Tempête sur Bangui is an eye-opening example, but there’s also a long thread of artists navigating their political reality through their work – from Prosper Mayélé’s run-ins with Bokassa, to current artists resisting and adapting through music, to Majora’s calls for peace, and Jospin Pendere-Yé’s balalaika for Putin.

But there is lots more than just about the conflict – there’s interesting books and music. I learned about the history and use of Sango, and got to try a dish that was really new to me – caterpillars. It was also really interesting to learn more about the Pygmy communities in the south – their music, their work on wildlife conservation, and the discrimination they face from other Africans.

This month I’m going to be learning about my third French African country – the Central African Republic. So, before I start this month, what do I know off the top of my head about CAR?

Well, like Togo and Gabon, I know it faces a lot of the same history and problems as other French African countries – poor but resource-rich, a former French colony that’s officially sovereign, but still under French influence as part of La Françafrique. The use of the CFA Franc, preferential trade deals with France, and France’s political and military involvement is a pretty common factor for all these countries.

As for the specifics, the only real bit of history I’ve heard of is at one point CAR had a dictator, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who routinely shows up in listicles of “craziest dictators“. I know he declared CAR the Central African Empire and held such a lavish and wasteful Napoleonic coronation that it emptied out the country’s coffers.

I don’t know much more than that on his rule, or what CAR’s political path has been since then, though I know there’s been serious conflict in the country in recent decades. I’m sure CAR also isn’t immune to instability and conflict in neighbouring countries, especially Chad, Sudan / South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I read an Economist article a few weeks ago that mentioned in passing that CAR has gone all-in lately on crypto, though the main subject was El Salvador’s crypto crash, so it’s probably not going too well.

But I also don’t want to focus just on doom and gloom – I’m interested in learning more about CAR as a whole. Music, art, literature, history, architecture, religion, the landscape, the cuisine (is more like Gabon’s central African cuisine, or is it more influenced by the Sahel?) Who are the thinkers, innovators, and dissenters? What’s daily life like? How dominant is French vs other languages? What’s big for pop culture?

As an aside – I really like the design of the flag. Simple, visually engaging, and distinctive – it incorporates the “red/green/yellow + star” motif that’s iconic to African flags while not being visually confusing. (As opposed to Chad to the north, which has an identical flag to a totally unrelated European country.)

I also have a feeling that finding topics specific to CAR may be tricky, since the demonym is just “Central African”, or “centrafricain” in French – wider regional stuff comes up instead.

When I started this month, I knew a bit about Bangladesh – the bare details of Partition and Independence, that it’s a Muslim nation with a Mughal past, that Bengali is the easternmost Indo-European language, plus a vague idea about the cuisine (turns out, it is very spicy), but not much on culture, politics, or media. I was also going on a lot of assumptions. Some were right – the overcrowding and traffic is extremely bad, and the problems poor workers face, especially in the shipbreaking industry, are still very real.

However, Bangladesh is also such a dynamic country – there’s been serious economic growth in the last decade, a tech sector brimming with innovation, and political stability under powerful female leaders (who do, admittedly, throw each other in jail with a lot of regularity).

But what runs through so much of what I learned about this month is Bangladesh’s birth in 1971. While Bengali culture has a long, rich history, Bangladesh itself is a very young country. Partition created a split Bengal, with Bengali Muslims ending up tied much more closely to Muslims in Karachi rather than Hindus in Calcutta, their former neighbours. The dysfunction of two Pakistans collapsed in the face Bengali nationalism, and the bloody 1971 Independence War has left a long legacy. The war still shapes Bangladesh’s politics and culture, in films like The Clay Bird and Bapjaner Bioscope, in cricket, and in navigating its fluctuating relationships with Pakistan and India.

But there’s also a lot of really good media overall – DJ sets, upbeat music jams, Dhallywood songs, innovative fiction like Djinn City, cheesy fun natoks, beautiful architecture and landscapes, and deep love of Tintin, of all things. I regret not getting deeper into more classical Bengali art and culture this month, including indigenous Bangladeshi culture, and I totally missed touching on a lot of pre-Partition history and culture, especially Tagore’s works. I also still have no idea about the rules of cricket.

What blew me away this month was the food – it’s so good. In Canada, the dominant South Asian food is Punjabi, and it’s great, but we’ve been sleeping on Bengali cuisine. I had great meals from Bangladeshi restaurants in both Montreal and Toronto, and got to try everything from proper chai, shemai, all kinds of snacks (1,2), stuffed parathas and puri, fluffy desserts, savoury spiced drinks with green mango or yoghurt, Bengali biryani, wood apples, bhortas, how mustard oil fires up chicken, and the hottest damn peppers on the market. There’s such variety, and such wonderful use of complex spice mixtures – and when they say spicy, they mean spicy. I’d argue this may have been one of the best months for food so far, up there with Thailand and Trinidad and Tobago.

I spun my randomizer, and this month I’ll be learning more about Bangladesh! So, what do I know about Bangladesh already off the top of my head?

My main knowledge of Bangladeshi history was that it was part of the British Raj, then partitioned into East Pakistan – and so is majority Muslim, and lives with the same scars of Partition that all three of the countries created from it carry. I also know that Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in a war in 1971, but not much more about that – or how it’s relations are today with India or Pakistan.

I know that Bangladesh is extremely densely populated, and unfortunately tends to make the news due to natural disasters, vulnerability to climate change and sea level rise, or to issues with poverty, poor working conditions, and clothing supply chains.

As for culture, I know there’s a larger Bengal region that’s split between Bangladesh and India (Calcutta is on the Indian side), and that Bengali is the farthest eastern Indo-European language (and one with a huge number of native speakers). I don’t know much about literature, music, or art from Bangladesh, so I definitely want to use this month as a learning opportunity.

Food-wise, I know that Bengali cuisine tends to be focused on rice, beef, and fish, and both cashews and pistachios are common, which means I’ll have to do some creative allergy avoidance of those nuts. I’ve heard of pulao, a rice dish I think made with cashews, so I wonder what other nuts I might substitute and still stay pretty authentic.

I’m not sure how comparatively spicy Bengali cuisine is (I hope it’s hot!). My knowledge of South Asian food tends to be more on the Punjab-based cuisine that’s really common in Canada – I know there’s so much more variety all across the subcontinent, so this month will be a good regional focus for the larger area (kind of like San Marino was for the Italian peninsula).

I also know that Bangladesh is a strong cricket country – maybe this is the month for me to learn even just the basic rules of the game!

I was wondering why the Bangladeshi flag is ever just so slightly off-centre (unlike Japan’s, which is dead in the middle) – turns out this makes the red circle look centred when the Bangladeshi flag is hoisted on a mast. The difference in centring inevitably shows up in bilateral meetings:

Bangladesh, Japan, and Palau really should sit down and coordinate flags – Palau’s is also off-centre like Bangladesh, but at a different aspect ratio.

This month was the first time I’ve covered a country that’s an active warzone, and the first time I’ve covered a country that’s massively topical. Between Ukraine being front and centre in the media, being the nexus of major changes in the international post-Cold War political structure, and with me being from the part of the world with a massive Ukrainian diaspora, I wasn’t starting from scratch this month.

However, the war has really crystalized a major theme that kept on coming up this month – the battle for Ukraine’s identity. The challenges and nuances of establishing the idea of Ukraine as a nation are deep and complicated, and build to the heart of the ongoing Russian invasion.

Ukraine has been reinforcing itself as a nation and a people, building its own identity and independence out of waves of Polish-Lithuanian, Austrian, Russian, and Soviet control over the centuries. The Russian invasion is an attempt to nullify Ukraine as it’s own nation once again, and this tension comes out in everyday life and media. Zelenskyy’s May 9th address, stand-up comedy in bomb shelters, war songs about Bayraktar drones, and podcasts looking at Ukraine’s past, present, and future all hit on this.

Currently, the war is focused on Donbas, and going on Stanislav Aseyev’s dispatches and the dark satirical movie Donbass, this is not going to be the easy united war of resistance that we saw when Kyiv was threatened.

Apart from getting a better understanding of the current war, I also learned about some really interesting sides of Ukraine – I was pretty well versed on the Chernobyl disaster before, but I didn’t know about Chernobyl as a centuries-long centre of Hasidism, or Ukraine’s deep Jewish history. I also got to learn other pieces of Ukraine’s history – Saint Olga and the Kievan Rus (another source of dispute with Russia), the wild architecture of Horodecki, incredibly avant-garde films of the silent era, and the Soviet fighter pilot who allegedly turned up in an Indigenous community here in Canada.

Speaking of Canada, our large Ukrainian community (10% of my home province is ethnically Ukrainian) gave a good opportunity to try new Ukrainian food. There were old favourites like borscht, cabbage rolls, and pierogies / varenyky, and I got to try lots of new fillings, including Crimean meat, mushrooms and saurkraut, and sweet dessert pierogies. I also got to try for the first time both sweet and savoury pyrizhky buns, Ukrainian vodka and wine, herbal teas, chebureki, salo, and four posts’ worth of Ukrainian snacks (1, 2, 3, 4). I had a bit of a culinary failure making kasha, but I’m thrilled with how well pampushky garlic bread turned out, and how simple and utterly delicious the lemon horilka was.

I also got to try making pysanky for the first time, and while it was a very novice attempt, it’s really satisfying and fun – I think I’ll need to pick up some more eggs.

There’s plenty I wish I had looked more into this week – Ukrainian history and art and language, pop culture from before the war, more literature (including the dispute between Russia and Ukraine over Gogol) but I’m glad I got a good start. I hope there will be lots more opportunities to learn more about Ukraine, especially because despite the invasion, “Ukraine has not yet perished“.