Af-riikka

I thought of comparing a bit the different work environments I have been exposed to lately: the European Commission in Brussels, and the project Jappoo/Woomal by the Senegalese scouts where I am working at the moment in Mboro, Senegal. This post is thus dedicated to all my fellow colleagues at the Commission :) The climate conditions and surroundings are certainly different when compared to the grey skies of Brussels. There won't be a drop of rain in Mboro before June, for sure, and the daytime temperatures hover around 30 degrees – in the morning only 21-22 degrees with a bit of wind and clouds. During the 30-minute walk to work on the straight road to the center of Mboro from my house, I encounter approximately three cars, four horse or donkey carts, a few other people walking and one bicycle. Not much traffic here. This morning, for example, I passed by a woman who carried a huge pile of firewood on her head, had around a 3-year-old child on her back, and a teddy bear in her lef...

"Things work, anyway", would be the very rough translation of this quote from a night watchman at the tiny hotel where I stayed during a field trip to one of the Woomal project ("Woomal" meaning "development" in Wolof, the environmental education project I'm working with) sites, in Diofior. He asked me the usual "how do you like Senegal?" question, and I replied something polite, as usual. We continued by comparing the unemployment in Senegal and in Europe (which for most people here is just one country), and chatting a bit in the dark night in the Senegalese countryside, then still with electricity, later on with almost a daily power cut. How do I like Senegal? I'm wondering if it is possible to experience all the phases of a cultural shock in two weeks, since that is how I feel. It was even somewhat surprising for me to be shocked with...all of this: beggars, heat, garbage allover, discomfort and other things I had already gotten used t...

Time for another hobby post - last spring I wrote about my leisure activities in Finland ( in Finnish ), and I figured it would be time to do that in Belgium as well. Already six weeks (or seven?) have passed, and I have had plenty of time to slip into some kind of routine life rhythm. Dancing classes which I started promisingly in the beginning of October were annoyingly cut for some weeks because of a very persistent cough, which is now slowly fading away (I hope!). I have been able to go to flamenco classes for a few times, ballet and last Sunday also for a sabar class (Senegalese dance). A in the title of this post refers to another favourite sport of mine: the annual football league of the trainees is about to start. I was hesitant to join the team of our Directorate-General first, because it looked like I would be the only woman. In the end, that was a requirement for the team to play - to have at least one female player on the pitch during the whole match - and I'm now one o...

I went to Brussels for a week, and what did I get? First, the thing I went there to look for: an apartment, or rather a room in which to stay for five months. I made the decision already after seeing four different rooms during the first two days. Finding an affordable (read: less than €500 with all charges) furnished room for a short-term rental in a city with thousands of trainees coming there every year was not THAT straight-forward. It was still a lot easier than finding a place to stay in Helsinki right now. Not my house, unfortunately, but an art nouveau house of an architect Victor Horta, now a museum in Ixelles (a part of Brussels where I'll live). I'll have a smallish room with two little roof windows, facing some gorgeous art nouveau buildings across the street, in a house with five other trainees of various institutions. I'd assume it's around 20 minutes by public transport to the EU Commission buildings, and perhaps 30 minutes by foot, if I'll ever feel...

Although I'm not physically in New York City anymore, I'll probably keep on writing about it a few more posts. The previous post implied that there is a niche for every possible country or culture in New York - that is the essence of that city. Being an Africanist, I 'had to' get acquainted with the African-ness of New York and found it in very different places, some by coincidence, some I was really looking after for. African Music Night at St. Nick's Pub 773 St. Nicholas Avenue at 149th st. (subway A to 145th st.) Review on Not-For-Tourists website ; somebody's blog entry on the night with some blurry photos; on the history of the pub on their website I spent my last night in New York, a Saturday night, in St. Nick's Pub. Mainly because I was exhausted after all the packing and going around Brooklyn, rushing through the last places I still wanted to see and didn't want to go somewhere two-hour subway-ride or an expensive cab-ride away. St. Nick's...

Can a culture be destroyed by outside influences? There has been a growing concern on the vanishing cultures around the world, especially in the third world countries. The Western civilization is spreading through mass media (Internet, TV, newspapers), consumer products (food, clothes, make-up...) and accelerating movement of people around the globe. This cultural globalization, or McDonaldization as it also has been called, is normally thought as something evil and destructive, a view shared especially by the intelligentsia. On the surface it is true: even in the remotes village anywhere in Africa you can surely find a bottle of Coca Cola or Fanta sold in a tiny kiosk, whereas bottled water (being more expensive than coke and thus not accessible for ordinary people) is more of an oddity outside big cities. Sometimes the global products bring a whiff of familiarity in strange surroundings: I remember when our guests from South Africa last summer, when seeing the first McDonald's...

I have lately encountered presumptions about what I am supposed to be like. Funnily enough, they are often correct. For example: we started the Academic English study group by guessing what the other students in the class are studying. As everyone else, I was being examined by other 3 members of my small group solely based on my appearance. Everybody answered something such as: "I'd say you're a humanist, from the Faculty of Arts - maybe folklore studies or something?". Not single one of them guessed even the Faculty of Social Sciences, not to mention Biosciences or anything like that...I suppose I'm that obvious, then. Another occasion when I was being judged was one Tuesday evening at the Theatre Academy. I went to see a dance performance by their students and being a bit early, I decided to sit a while at the school restaurant. I was just glancing through their menu when the bartender asked me: "Red or white?". (I chose red :)) Or when someone entered...

Behind a fence at the Paradise Beach Resort , originally uploaded by rockriikka . I’ve been reading quite a lot of Edward Said ’s (1935-2003) texts lately. He is/was a brilliant writer, I have to say. Said was the one who raised the issue of representation of other cultures and criticised the present (then year 1978) academic scholarship, implementing the power theories of Frantz Fanon, Gramsci or Michel Foucault. Although Orientalism is The Book he is known for, he has written so much more – I especially enjoyed browsing and reading “Reflections on Exile and Other Essays” (2002), anthology of some of his writings. Said’s essays covered topics such as “Representing the Colonized”, “History, Literature and Geography”, an essay for honouring a famous Egyptian bellydancer – and lastly, one of my favourites: “Jungle Calling”, a praise of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan on the movie screen compared to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books. Quote: “Weissmuller’s African jungle was never filmed on location...

Meeting place of cultures Almost all the introductions to Zanzibar begin with a phrase: “Zanzibar has for centuries been at the crossroads of many cultures”. And yes, thanks to the monsoon wind blowing to and from favourable directions, flourishing trade did develop in Zanzibar and brought with it loads of immigrants, traders and seafarers from around the world. It is a mix made of all these influences and genes that construct Zanzibari people of today. Besides Zanzibaris, other Swahili-speaking peoples along the East African coast have also been multicultural by essence. The rich history can be seen in several cultural traits, such as language (Kiswahili has loan words from several languages: Bantu languages, Arabic, Portuguese, English, Hindi, Gujarati…), music (the most popular local music, taarab is a mixture of Arab, African and Indian influences) or food (Swahili food has a lot of Indian style spices, but they blend into a delicious mix of their own - I will have to do a posting...