Christmas Tidings!

Merry Christmas to all the MIE bloggers wherever in the world you may be. I hope you are where you want to be, and if not, I hope you get there soon.

Best wishes to all the fans and readers of crime fiction, here's looking forward to a productive and creative new year,  with good health and prosperity.

May covid leave by the back door never to return, taking its wee omicron friend with it.

May you get the correct amount of marzipan on your cake.

May  you eat less sprouts than you need.

Lang may yer lumb reek.

Raise a wee drinkie of an alcoholic variety  tomorrow.

Wishing you all the best of times and a peaceful new year.

Caro

 

Much ado about nothing

 Michael - Thursday

I have a friend who says you should never go to see a doctor – they always find something wrong. She’s a medical practitioner herself and has spent more time seeing doctors than she’d choose to, so maybe she has a point.

The first chapter of my story starts with a visit to my new GP to have a couple of skin issues dealt with and a prescription renewed. Since he’s a thoughtful and careful doctor, he asked me about my general health. I mentioned that my heart occasionally went into what I’d been told was an ectopic rhythm—a sort of double beat—that only I had noticed despite a plethora of ECGs and even a visit to a cardiologist some years ago. It seems to occur after too much wine (which does happen from time to time but I don’t consult doctors at that point). Although they never said so, the doctors probably suspected that the problem was more in my head than in my heart.

Normal ECG
Mine was different...I guess...

Nevertheless, my GP whipped out his stethoscope, listened for a few moments, and then muttered that he did hear something unusual. A resting ECG was called for. He considered the printout seriously for rather more moments and then pronounced that I was in atrial fibrillation, atrial fib to its friends. In atrial fib the upper chambers of the heart do their own thing without reference to the beats of the ventricles, the lower chambers responsible for the real pumping work. That didn’t strike me as a good idea at all, but he explained that this condition was not uncommon and that if one was going to have a heart complaint, this was the one to have. That struck me as a little like saying that if you're going to be poisoned such and such a substance is the best to use. His recommendation was that (a) I should immediately start on blood thinners because atrial fib can cause blood clots and thus strokes, and (b) that I should see a cardiologist as soon as he could obtain an appointment for me.

In the next chapter, I visit one of the top cardiologists in this area who practices at a cardiac unit in a town called Mossel Bay about an hour and a half drive along the coast from Knysna. (That’s regarded as a ridiculous amount of time to travel in this part of the world although taking that sort of time to reach a hospital in the same city wouldn’t be unheard of in many large cities.) The cardiologist did a suite of ECGs and ultrasounds and followed that by pronouncing the good news and the bad news. The good news was that I was no longer in atrial fib implying that it was episodic and could probably be controlled by drugs. This avoided needing a procedure like cardiac shock treatment. I was glad of that. However, the bad news was that the stress ECG had revealed an abnormality in the ventricle beats at high heart rates. This could indicate coronary artery disease. He prescribed an angiogram which could be used to obtain a complete picture of the arterial blood flow around the heart and to insert stents to open the blood vessels if needed. And if stents were inadequate, they would have all the data they’d need for the bypass operation.

I thought about my friend’s comment. I’d visited my GP to sort out a few small lesions on my face and the way things were going I was going to end up with a heart transplant. Seeing my lack of enthusiasm, the cardiologist was at pains to point out that the procedure was quite standard nowadays and very seldom led to serious problems such as a heart attack on the table. For some reason this didn’t increase my enthusiasm one iota.

Normal coronary arteries
Mine did look like this...I guess...

I have only good things to say about the hospital, the nurses, and all the staff who were efficient, responsive, and considerate. Even the food was good. And I didn’t have a heart attack on the table. I was awake for the whole process and actually managed to whip up some interest in the processing issues involved in the amazing images of the vessels around my heart that I was seeing in almost real time. Best of all, my arteries were all in good shape. I left the hospital the next day with a huge sigh of relief.

In the final chapter, we jump five days from the angiogram to last Saturday when I start developing a sore throat, stuffy nose, and headaches. Let’s face it. Hospitals are not great places to be in the middle of a covid wave, let alone our latest omicron-driven one. Hospitals are full of sick people. That’s why they go to hospitals in the first place. Despite the efficiency and care I mentioned earlier—to say nothing of the patients having covid tests before admission—one is exposed to doctors and nurses who work with patients, including covid patients. They are taking that risk every day.  

By Monday I was no better and coughing a bit. I was also—to use Caro’s wonderful word—quanked. I was supposed to visit Stan at his place in Cape Town and have Christmas lunch with him and two other friends. That was no longer a possibility unless I was cleared by a covid test, and I was pretty sure what the outcome of that would be. In fact, by that stage, I wasn’t too concerned about the outcome. I wasn’t desperately ill, I wasn’t getting worse, my oxygen level was fine, and I’m fully vaccinated. There’s even some belief that omicron is a great covid immunity “booster” in its own right, and while new covid cases in South Africa have rocketed, hospitalizations and deaths have hardly increased.

So I tried to get a test. It turned out that because of the pressure on testing, I needed to be referred by a GP. My new GP was away. My previous GP had recently died. I began to wonder if they only tested people who were not likely to have covid i.e. those wanting to travel overseas or being admitted to hospitals. What does that do to the statistics?

It took me two days before a friend’s GP kindly gave me a phone consultation and signed off on the form. His comment was that omicron was so contagious, and so mild in practice (if you were vaccinated), that I really shouldn’t bother about whether I had it or not. Everyone would get it sooner or later anyway and almost all of them would be fine. Nevertheless, I had the test.

It was negative.

Happy Holidays everyone!

The Face Of Literacy in Africa

 Wed--Kwei

Whereas in the USA we have the luxury of arguing futilely about whether to ban the masterful Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved, by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, children don’t have a single book to their name, and/or they cannot read a book even if they had one.

Literacy

What is literacy? On its face, it is the ability to read and write. It is, of course, more complex than that. Underpinning its 2030 Sustainability Goals, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) defines literacy in the modern age as “a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication."

While literacy rates in the highly industrialized countries tend to be 95-100%, developing nations have much lower levels, with some exceptions, e.g. Cuba, which has 100%. Literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa average around 65.5%, with some of the highest levels in Botswana (87%), Zimbabwe (84%), Gabon (82%); and in the next tier, Kenya, Egypt, Eritrea (all 72%); Ghana, Cameroon, Angola (all 71%).

Included in the lowest tiers are Côte d’Ivoire (41%), Chad (38%), Burkina Faso (29%), Guinea (25%), Niger (15%). Significantly, these are all ex-colonies of France, which is quite satisfied with the status quo of poverty and illiteracy in those countries because it makes it easier for them to be exploited, a prime example being Niger.

Literacy continues to rise in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and although the increases year on year have been small, at least they’re going in the right direction.

Twenty-year literacy rates, sub-Saharan Africa (World Atlas)

Unfortunately, a sharp gender gap exists in literacy, so while literacy trends upward for women and girls 15 years old and over, rates among male counterparts are 1.2 - 1.4 times higher.

Why are the literacy rates low in sub-Saharan Africa?

According to UNESCO, 27% of the world’s illiterate people live in SSA. It is stunning and appalling that in Niger and Burkina Faso, 90% of women and girls are illiterate. On the whole, in SSA, here are a couple of facts:

• More than 1 in 3 adults cannot read.

• 48 million youth (ages 15-24) are illiterate.

• 22% of primary aged children are not in school, about 30 million kids.

A number of factors contribute to this status, and while I won’t delve too deeply into all of them, some are worth mentioning.

• Poverty, obviously, is the major factor, relating to literacy in a chicken-and-egg fashion. In much of SSA, people are too poor to send their children to school, because, make no mistake, school fees, tuition and books are rarely free.
• Child labor, a politically loaded term because it’s sometimes used in the sense of indentured servitude. In the SSA context, however, children may be asked to help their parent(s) or other relative(s) with their trade, whether it be farming or other livelihood.
• Generational illiteracy means the passing down the inability to read from parents to offspring. An illiterate parent will not have personal knowledge of the advantages of being able to read in the world at large, and they may not realize what their kids are and will be missing.
• Government inadequacies lead to problems of distribution and supply, particularly to remote rural areas. In his article, Tony Read (an appropriate surname indeed) of the World Bank Group writes, “. . . despite decades of funding by governments and DPs [development partners], few low-income SSA countries have been able to establish sustainable systems for providing textbooks and other essential TLMs [teaching and learning materials] on a regular basis.

The efforts of NGOs

Several NGOs are attempting to compensate for the gaps and deficiencies in the provision of TLMs to schools and school libraries, particularly in rural areas. One is the African Library Project, another is World Reader, which focuses on both digital and hardcopy reading.

During my travels to Nigeria, I serendipitously discovered an NGO called African Rural Volunteers (ARV). This encounter came about because it turned out my Nigerian travel guides, brothers Evans and Confidence Aguiyi, who run their own company You Come Africa also run ARV. I hadn't known this before my journey, but I was immediately interested.

Aguiyi brothers, Confidence (L), Evans (R) and me (Photo: Kwei Quartey)

Evans Aguiyi, who is very passionate about his cause, points out that, “In most rural communities, there are not enough teachers, quality of education is low, and the schools lack or in most cases don’t have functional libraries. Most families are poor and can’t afford good quality reading books, textbooks, novels, or story books."

ARV partners with UK's Book Cycle, which in turn partners with Thrive Africa, a Ghanaian charity whose vision is to improve children’s education and women’s empowerment across Ghana, and who engages in library building and other projects.

ARV is a very comprehensive NGO with a number of different facets. Apart from donations, there are opportunities for volunteers to sign up for orphanage care, teaching, soccer coaching, construction, and so on.

ARV’s Book Project includes distribution of the books provided by Book Cycle with the ultimate goal of building mini-libraries stocked with these books. But this takes money. Book Cycle provides the books but not the funding for the clearing them from the ports and distributing them. Without that, the books are more or less useless.

Anyone who has traveled in SSA knows how difficult access to many rural areas can be. Invariably, tough off-road SUVs must be used to get through bush and bad roads. Gas isn’t cheap, either; in Ghana, for example, fuel prices run around the same level as here in the US, but unlike the US, those prices only ever go in one direction: up.

Evans Aguiyi relates a story of Sade (pronounced "sha-DAY;” yes, like the singer), a teenage Yoruba girl he met in Ilara-Akaka, which is a town in Ogun State, Nigeria. Sade was without a home after her family abandoned her for unknown reasons. She had no financial means whatsoever, but what she wanted most wasn’t money, it was a book of her own. ARV was able to provide her not only books, but a solar lamp for night reading. In the midst of an awful circumstance in her young life, Sade looked to reading for solace. What a poignant and heart-rending story.

Young students clamoring for books (Photo: African Rural Volunteers)

For an idea of the monumental task at hand, check out this video starring Evans Aguiyi.

The Nadir of the Year

 Ovidia--Every Other Tuesday

Only today isn’t just any other Tuesday—Tuesday 21^st December is Dōngzhì, meaning the most extreme low point of winter.

Traditionally, Dōngzhì is the festival celebrating the Winter Solstice and marking the shortest day and longest night of the year—at least for those in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in Singapore, we’re just one degree north of the Equator, meaning our shortest day is only eight minutes shorter than our longest.

This year especially, there doesn’t seem much to have a festival about. Omicron has arrived with over twenty imported and three (all airport staff) local cases. This means social get- togethers will remain limited to 5 fully vaccinated / pre-event tested individuals and the travel, hospitality and service industries will continue to suffer with their staff and their families bearing the brunt. And across the causeway up North, our neighbours in Malaysia are suffering the aftermath of flooding with over 20,000 people displaced, thanks to ‘the worst in one hundred years’ monsoon rains.

I have such happy memories of my year end school holidays that I’m especially sorry for today’s schoolchildren as this situation drags into another year. What kind of memories are these kids going to have? 

To top it off, in a surprise ban on Singapore travellers, Italy’s changed Singapore’s Covid-19 risk classification to ‘higher risk’.

No, I didn’t have plans to visit Italy, but it still feels like a snub. Plus my seventeen year old doglet is losing her eyesight, hearing and continence and figuring out doggy diapers is making me feel really old too. 

But the one really important thing about Dōngzhì is that it’s a reminder that things are going to get better from here on. 

The solstice, today’s absolute nadir is the turning point. Anyone who reads or writes mysteries will recognise it as the All Is Lost point where it looks like you’re about to be overwhelmed by the bad guys with better muscles/ connections/ zombies. This might be the end of you if you’re just a subplot. 

However, as all readers know, if you’re the protagonist of your own story, all you’ve got to do is hang on and keep turning pages. You know that if you just survive today, this Tuesday, the worst is over (for now) and things are going get better. But just as the ancient Chinese believed you had to invite positive energy to return to Earth, you should make sure you do something for yourself in your own story, so you aren’t dismissing yourself as a subplot.

For myself, I’m making tang yuan.

‘Tang yuan’ literally means ‘soup rounds’. In Cantonese it sounds like ‘Tuen Yuen’ which means ‘united togetherness’.  These soft glutinous rice flour balls with sweet fillings are shared with family and friends at Dongzhi to symbolise and celebrate our shared togetherness.

My late mother wasn’t fond of cooking, but luckily Mrs Next-Door was a super home cook. Since I was just one day older than her daughter, I remember getting to join in the making of their festive tang yuan. There would be immense batches of gleaming white and pink sticky dough in basins on their dining table. We children were allowed to help roll them into small ping pong ball sized balls that you thumbed an indentation in, pressed a spoonful of filling into, then pulled, kneaded and re-rolled to seal.

(This was after days of work soaking and grinding glutinous rice by hand and roasting and crushing the fillings. All I remember of that part of the process is being told to stay out of the kitchen).

These balls were then popped into a boiling vat of sweet soup and, after they were ceremonially offered to the ancestors on the family altar (another thing my Methodist mum didn’t approve of) we got to eat them. They look a little like mochi—but mochi are light and powdery and tang yuan are dense and slippery and always served in soup.

 Much as I love tang yuan, I’m not up to making them from scratch. Luckily, the supermarket came to my rescue.

But I am making my own soup. I’m trying to reproduce my favourite sweet ginger soup, boiling smashed old ginger and red dates, then adding yellow rock sugar to taste. And I cheated by using pandan essence out of a bottle instead of using pandan (screw pine) leaves, something that I know will get me into trouble with old schoolmates who grow them just for cooking!

The tang yuan sink when you first put them in, but bob around beautifully once they're done. 

Both the ginger soup and tang yuan turned out rather well, I must say. And I know what I want to do with them.

Two days ago on Sunday, Loh Kean Yew became the first Singaporean ever to win the World Badminton Championships—and he did this despite injuring his right ankle in the quarter-finals. This was a huge surprise because he was an unseeded underdog. 

What’s maybe less surprising is all the people (kids, grandparents, everything in between) now outside playing badminton despite the wind, inspired by our new hero's win. A little inspiration is a wonderful thing. And from what I can hear up here, it sounds like they're all creating wonderful memories.

After I'm finished here I’ll go down to see if anyone would like some tang yuan soup. The great thing about festival food is, even if we can’t share it with family far away, we can still eat with people close by who then become family. 

PS. We’ve just had a blip of good news re: Italy banning Singapore visitors. Mr Mario Vattani, Italy’s Ambassador to Singapore, reportedly told news agency Adnkronos: “It’s a mistake. Here in Singapore, cases are now at a minimum level, almost 100 per cent of the population is vaccinated. I want to believe that these (the restrictions on Singapore travellers) are the result of a clerical error or a typo.” 

Maybe I’ll read Transient Desires tonight. The latest Donna Leon is still the closest I’ll be getting to Italy for some time. Happy Dōngzhì Festival everybody!

Galapagos 1991

Annamaria on the go

When this Post launches, I will be arriving at Munich Airport on my way to Florence to spend the holidays and the winter months with my loved ones in Italy. I know!  I am an incredibly lucky person.

This past week, however, has been a challenge, and as I start to write today – Sunday the 19th, I have just returned home from a root canal operation. Yes, on Sunday morning. And just 12 hours before my plane takes off.  Since Wednesday, I have had three dental appointments, along other unexpected complications. The world seemed to sending me every negative message it could think of.  I pinned my hopes on my Covid rapid test. If it also turned out negative, I knew I was meant to take this trip.

I admit that I was a nervous wreck when I showed up at the dentist office at 8 o'clock this morning. But just as the dental surgeon was beginning to drill, the music system in her office played Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, singing "Cheek to Cheek." Readers in my age category will understand why that song made me laugh. It begins "Heaven, I'm in heaven…" in Louis's unmistakably marvelous voice.  Hearing those words, so appealed to my ironic sense of humor, it made me forget my worries!

Perhaps, given my trials and tribulations this week,  you will forgive me if all I have to offer today is remembrances of a trip from my past – one of the most memorable of my life. It comes with some advice at the end.  But first take a look at what my dear departed David and I experienced 30 years ago in a place that felt like the Garden of Eden:

When I was a child in Catholic school, the nun who taught us in kindergarten described Adam and Eve's home before the fall as a place where the animals were not afraid of the people. That's how Galapagos was. The animals, particularly the birds, did not avoid us. We could walk right up to them. Hence, in these pictures, almost all taken by David, the birds seem to be posing for him.

I call these next three Darwin's finches:

Penguins at the Equator!

Our ship held only 24 passengers:

I was reading Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle" on this trip. It is a diary of his fateful visit.  By chance, on the night before David took these next photos, I read his entry about the place I was going to visit the next morning. It was, as I recall, September 24--the exact anniversary of the day Darwin climbed this hill...

...and saw this lake!  I recognized the place immediately from his description!

The Boobies:

I loved watching the boobies fish.They circle over the sea in flocks of 50 or more, looking for a school of fish.  When one spots lunch, it dives. Then two for three follow, and then bam, bam, bam, they are all hitting the water.  A booby's goofy look comes from the fact that, unlike other birds, they are built to see straight ahead.  When they dive, they go under the fish and take one in their beaks on the way up. Then they fly away with their catch. 

This is a frigatebird. Since it was the mating season, he is ready to display.  When the lady of his choice comes by, he can inflate that red thing like a big red balloon to show her how wonderful he is.

I think these are called frigatebirds because of the way they "earn" a living. They wait for the boobies to catch fish, and then they pester them and attack them, get them to drop their fish, which the frigatebird then catches in midair. (The frigate birds cannot fish for themselves. They are so light and maneuverable because their feathers are not oily, and therefore cannot resist the seawater.). I think they were named after the British frigates that, from the 16th century on, hid in the Galapagos waiting for Spanish galleons laden with silver to come up the west coast of South America, where the Brits could attack and capture them and relieve Spain of some of its wealth.  I wonder if the birds learned this from Brits!

The giant tortoise, the most renowned of the Galapagos' wondrous wildlife.

Here below is one of my favorite pictures of David.  Yes, he is standing under an opuntia cactus, called prickly pear in English.  It's the size of an oak tree! And one of the great marvels of Galapagos, as far as I'm concerned.

I promised you a sermon. It will be short. I had no idea when I planned this trip for us that David and I would never have gotten to visit such a place if we had waited till retirement to go off and see the world. Do not postpone your life!!  If you want to go somewhere or do something, and you are lucky enough to have the means, do it right away!

CARPE DIEM!