The Light Traveller

Please check out my photos!

Elsje — Mon, 31 May 2010 15:42:32 +0000

The European Journalism Centre is running an online photo competition highlighting change around the world. They’re inviting users to submit photos and vote for the best. I’ve submitted a few entries myself – if you like them, please vote for them!

Here are the links to my photos:

New Tourists in Town

After the Levees Broke

Shanghai Noon

Teatime

Time Standing Still

Solstice at Stonehenge

Living on the Edge: Disaster Risk Reduction in Indonesia

Elsje — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:39:18 +0000

A women's group taking part in training - CC-Attrib / Elsje Fourie

The newspaper editor who had commissioned this article from me changed his mind with the explanation that “stories on development don’t sell” (!), so I let it gather dust for a while. But after an estimated 1100 died in the tragic Sumatra earthquake of September 30th, this piece–about working with lndonesians to prepare for natural disasters–suddenly seemed very relevant again. My heart goes out to those who lost their lives or loved ones in the quake, and I hope that the Indonesian authorities will take disaster risk reduction (DRR) more seriously than it does at the moment. Amidst the horror, the hopeful story of a town where careful planning prevented a single death, emerged this week to show that DRR does work. However, the scale of the destruction shows that Indonesians need help from the international community and their own government so that the lucky villages are not as few and far between…

***

For those who do not live above the world’s tectonic faultines, it is difficult to imagine: one morning you realize the lamp hanging from your ceiling is swaying, before the floor begins to roll underneath your feet like water. Or you are told to leave your home for three months, not knowing whether all you leave behind might be covered by a blanket of lava upon your return.

This is the reality for most in Indonesia, however. Situated almost entirely on the famously volatile Ring of Fire, Indonesia has 220 active volcanoes and suffers an average of 7000 earthquakes a year. Four months of heavy monsoon rains, aggravated by deforestation and erosion, causes flooding and hundreds of landslides each year. Forest fires, tornadoes and tsunamis add to the chaos. According to the UN, more disaster-related deaths occurred in Indonesia than in any other country in 2006.

Poverty, and more specifically lack of education, poor infrastructure and unsound construction methods, only exacerbates the situation. Often, nearly half the deaths attributed to an earthquake will actually have occurred hours afterwards on the roads, with people panicking and looking to escape the tsunamis and volcanic eruptions they fear will follow. Too little is spent on public works and safety measures such as dams and anti-tsunami walls, and corruption often hampers those initiatives that do get off the ground. Most of the damage caused by natural disasters, then, is all too preventable.

Happily, this realisation seems to be growing both in Indonesia and in the region as a whole. At the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in November last year, ministers from 47 countries pledged to integrate disaster preparedness and reduction into all socio-economic development and planning activities. An array of new regional institutions, early-warning systems and other mechanisms exist to prevent tragedies on the scale of the 2004 tsunami. Earlier this year, the Indonesian government launched a National Action Plan for Disaster Risk Reduction after a nation-wide consultation process with civil society and local government.

Disaster risk reduction is beginning to make its way into the national budget and discourse, and has cropped up everywhere from the Bali conference on climate change to the curricula of primary schools. And this extends far beyond the government—in Indonesia alone, many dozens of local and international organisations are engaged in disaster risk reduction activities.

In the latter half of 2007, I had the chance to contribute to this larger effort through a post-disaster reconstruction program in Yogyakarta, Central Java. In January this year, the NGO I worked for put the finishing touches on earthquake-resistant clinics in three villages in Klaten, a nearby district particularly vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters. Of these, there has sadly been no shortage—5778 local residents died in the devastating Bantul earthquake of May 2006, and the city lives in the shadow of Mount Merapi, one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

However, the international aid community has, fortunately, moved on somewhat since the days when all that recipients could hope for was a “here is your well/bridge/clinic—all the best and goodbye”. To this end, we worked with the community every step of the way, training its members in disaster preparedness and safer construction methods. Farmers came in from the rice paddies to meet with us, and women’s groups told us of their concerns for children still recovering from the trauma of seeing their houses crumble around them. The tightly-knit, highly structured nature of village life has been a boon, and I was able to meet with micro-loan cooperatives, youth groups and community leaders.

In each of these villages, the most dedicated participants formed a local Disaster Management Team to take charge of all future disaster preparedness, response and recovery activities in the community. They began to map hazards and risks in their area, and to plan for evacuation. In short, in the few months since we began working in Klaten, they communities started to take ownership of the project and engaged with us on a level that was truly inspiring.

Disaster preparedness programmes in Indonesia do face their own set of challenges and surprises, of course. After thousands of years of living dangerously, Indonesians have developed a complex animist mythology that exists quite comfortably, for the most part, alongside the country‎’s primary religion of Islam. Mount Merapi, for example, is regarded by the people of Central Java as sacred, the King of the old royal capital of Yogyakarta. To him, and to the Queen of the seas to the south of the city, the Sultan and his subjects pay homage in yearly rituals.

Thus, when lava began to roll down the volcano in the days following the 2006 earthquake, the villagers living on its slopes heeded not government warnings asking them to evacuate immediately, but the advice of the mountain’s spiritual “gatekeeper” who assured them that the gods would not destroy their homes. Only disaster preparedness programmes which demonstrate that a safer future is possible without doing away with local knowledge and traditions will reach the audience they desire.

The belief that natural disasters have mystical origins has another unexpected result—where homes are indeed destroyed, divine retribution from the many gods and spirits that watch over the archipelago is often suspected. In a study conducted in June 2006 by Survey Circle Indonesia, 78 percent of those polled saw the spate of recent disasters as a warning—in the view of many, directed towards a government out of touch with nature.

Never, then, has the time been so ripe for the country’s leaders to demonstrate their commitment to preventing and planning for disasters. The plans are well-thought out and far-reaching—now, with the help of civil society, they must be put into practice. The model must become one of preparedness in all aspects of society, rather than the mere fighting of fires as they happen. The villagers of Klaten, Yogyakarta, have demonstrated to me that this is both essential and possible.

For further information on DRR see the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. There is an Asia-Pacific regional site here.

For information related to DRR in Indonesia, see the website of local organisation the IDEP Foundation or Preventionweb’s Indonesia-specific site here.

Not White Enough to Work?

Elsje — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:44:51 +0000

This is a newspaper article I wrote a while back, but never got around to finding a publisher for. What better place for it than my second ever blog post:

She’s fresh out of university, talented, and longs to be a journalist. Yet she’s getting nowhere: “Just before my fourth interview, I realised that the obstacle to obtaining my dream job was my skin”. Ten seconds into this television advertisement, many viewers might be able to identify with the plight of this young woman trying to overcome discrimination in the workplace. One month later, however, she’s reporting live from a tent in the Egyptian desert and surrounded by admirers. (See the video here).

Has she campaigned to draw attention to unfair recruitment procedures, or taken her employers to a labour tribunal? Her solution is simpler: she has used a product by Indian cosmetics brand Fair and Lovely to lighten her skin and achieve “total fairness”.

And all over Asia, hundreds of thousands of women are listening to this message. The young lady above might be from the Middle East, but this advert–and the story it tells–is one that resonates even more strongly further east, where Fair and Lovely’s core market lies. There, skin whitening is a multi-billion dollar industry, with surveys estimating that between 40% and 60% of Asian women use these products. In 2006, 226 new whitening products—moisturisers, cleansers, makeup, even deodorants—were introduced.

Some contain acids that remove old skin to reveal newer, lighter skin underneath, while others inhibit the production of melanin. However, as has often been tragically clear in Africa as well, the health risks of skin whitening can be considerable. The cheaper (and, often, more effective) the product, the greater the chance that it will contain harmful chemicals such as mercury and hydroquinone. These can cause skin to become patchy, or lose its ability to produce pigment altogether.

Even more seriously, it is not only skin which is at risk. According to CNN, mercury is so toxic that when used to make top hats in the 1800’s, the psychiatric problems it triggered in workers caused observers to coin the phrase “mad as a hatter.” It is readily absorbed through the skin into the bloodstream, leading to poisoning of the central nervous system and kidneys. Hydroquinone, banned here and in many other countries because of suspected links to cancer, is widespread and often legal in Asian countries.

But perhaps the biggest difference between skin whitening in Asia and in Africa is the general social acceptance of the phenomenon. Virtually all of the large multinational beauty brands—Olay, Clinique, Ponds, L’Oreal, to name a few—aggressively market skin whitening versions of their products. Cosmetics such as White Perfect, Snow UV, White Purity and Future White Day boasting ‘heat-sealed technology’ and ingredients such as liquorice extract are seemingly worlds away from R5 creams sold on the black market. Critics have pointed out the irony in the fact that Fair and Lovely is owned by a subsidiary of Unilever, the company behind Dove and its ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’.

However, the belief that white skin is ‘purer’, ‘cleaner’ and more attractive is also deeply-rooted in many cultures in Asia. A survey by Asia Market Intelligence, for example, has revealed that three quarters of Malaysian men thought their partners would be more attractive with lighter complexions. Any visitor to the continent is familiar with the barrage of compliments handed out to light-skinned foreigners, and accustomed to seeing women covered from neck to ankles in layers of clothing—in many cases not for religious reasons, but to ward off a tan. A saying in China has it that “one white covers up three flaws”.

On the one hand, Asia’s fascination with white skin is linked to its colonial history, when the complexions of European and Mongol invaders became the template for beauty. Even more recently, Hollywood movies and the Western media have set a standard for attractiveness that has also accompanied an increase in hair colouring and ‘double-eyelid surgery’, so popular in parts of East Asia. And of course there is the advertising which show lighter-skinned women landing careers, boyfriends and social standing.

On the other hand, a love of white skin has a much longer history in Asia. When asked why she uses whiteners, Liu Yisi, 16, from Beijing says “All our traditional heroines and figures from myths and legends are said to have had beautiful pure white skin.” In Ancient China, those who could afford it swallowed powdered mother-of-pearl to whiten their skin, and the white faces of Japanese Geisha have long been iconic.

Many sociologists point out that white skin has noble and aristocratic connotations in Asia, much in the same way that societies in Europe for centuries prized skin untouched by the sun. Dong Qing, 18, and also from China, feels “When people see women with flawless white skin, they assume that these women have the time and money to look after themselves and protect themselves and their families from the harsh summer sun. So it sends the message that you are refined and need not work long hours outside like the peasants have to do.”

For Japanese Yukako, 26, the explanation goes even deeper: “although every Asian country I’ve visited has had different reasons for liking white skin, I feel all of these reasons stem from the same belief—that women should be hidden from public view and not out on the street.”

The irony, of course, is that as Asian women are trying to become lighter, Western women now lie for hours in tanning beds. This has led some to feel that skin whiteners provide harmless fun, or even, in the case of one Indian economist, to argue that these products empower consumers by giving them ‘choice’ and ‘dignity’. These, indeed, are often the arguments that the beauty companies themselves implicitly make.

Many others, however, are not convinced. Skin whiteners do not give women real choice, they argue, because they do not get to the root of the problem. This problem is not skin colour, but the discrimination and lack of real power that women face throughout the developing world. As Thai journalist Nikki Assavathorn asks “isn’t it unnecessary and demeaning? Are we so self-loathing that we believe we will be deemed more attractive if we have a lighter shade of skin?” As economies boom and disposable incomes continue to grow, this is an argument which looks to continue well into Asia’s future.

Hello World!

Elsje — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:59:04 +0000

Hello world. I see so much that is chaotic, beautiful and intricate as I drift above you, observing the goings-on below. Not that I feel I am ‘above’ you, not in that way. But I feel like a light traveller, never resting in any one place for long, going where the breeze takes me.

I didn’t always travel this way. When I was growing up as the daughter of a diplomat, I used to get very attached to the various places we were posted. I remember, as a nine-year old, standing in our backyard and singing a teary goodbye to the grey British skies I was being forced to leave behind. My father had heard we had a week to leave the country before the government kicked us out, and the next day at the school I’d just begun to feel comfortable in was going to be my last. But that’s another story for another post…

Since that day, I have lived in eight countries and had the chance to travel to many, many more. I rarely stay in one place for longer than a year or two. I’m not the only one to do this—us global nomads are a rapidly-growing species. Nor is it always easy, as I long, at times, to settle somewhere and put down roots. But I do feel I’ve had the chance to see a little of this world and to do some interesting things in it, so I’d like to use this space to explore some of it.

This isn’t really a travel blog, though. As a doctoral student of international relations, I’m fascinated by societies, culture and politics around the world. Broad topic, I know, but there is just so much out there in the way people live their lives from Trento to Timbuktu that intrigues me. This is another theme behind “the light traveller”: as I float lightly from place to place, so I often float between the many issues and ideas which interest me.

This does not mean I cannot be passionate about a belief, or that I do not also sometimes become unreasonably invested in a particular viewpoint. But I’m unable to make this blog about one topic in particular, because there is just so much rich detail in our global tapestry. Detachment can also be a virtue, because it allows us to see any issue from many viewpoints. I have no ideological axe to grind here, nor converts to win over. The trick is knowing when to throw off the sandbags and climb higher into the air, or when a special cause or idea is worth coming back down to earth for. It is a trick I am always hoping to become better and better at.

To narrow things down a little, though, I’m particularly interested in modernisation and modernity. Although I’ll devote a later post to what exactly these mean to me (it can be controversial), I want to know more about the ways our human condition changed after the Industrial Revolution, and how these changes continue to reverberate in different societies. My dissertation addresses the ways in which policy-makers in developing countries think and talk about modernization, and focuses particularly on China and India.

It’s largely for this reason that I’ve chosen to give this blog a vaguely steampunk feel (I hope it will become more so as I get more adept at the technical side of things). Steampunk, it is often said, represents the intersection of technology and romance. It takes the setting of the 18^th century Industrial Revolution and reimagines it in a darker but more beautiful parallel universe filled with zeppelins, airships, locomotives and brass.

In many ways, as the above link points out, steampunk captures the sense of wonder with which the Victorians approached modernity: the technology opened up new horizons and enabled heroic explorations into the unknown. On the other hand, steampunk is also post-apocalyptic and bleak. For this reason, the movement, to me, captures both the promise and threat of the modern world—the awe of the first aeroplane and the horrors of mechanized warfare. It is a legacy we are still dealing with today…

The Light Traveller, then, tries to travel without unnecessary baggage—both physical and intellectual. She does not always succeed, and sometimes she gets too carried away by the wind, but at least she has a lot of fun on her journey. So welcome to my blog; I hope I have given you some idea of what this space will be about. I look forward to your comments and suggestions!