Saturday 21 July 2012

Olympic Training

Every day more athletes arrive and the atmosphere is building with each new morning at the lake. I feel particularly fortunate to have a great role within one of the most beautiful Olympic venues at Eton Dorney. I've signed up to do more shifts and will now be at the venue for all but one of the competition days.

Due to standard procedure I can't reveal much of the details but I can say it has exceeded my expectations and everything is rapidly taking shape. One of the highlights of my day is the cycle to work. The route from Englefield Green to Windsor is surrounded with quintessential English countryside. As I cycle at sun rise, I have the crown farm on one side, with forever stretching golden corn fields, and the ominous Windsor Castle emerging from the pinky mist on the other. The roads are empty and the birds are the only animals making a sound. I'm going to take my camera on this journey next week.

Inside the venue I am starting to reap the rewards of the sponsorship of Coca Cola and I hope this will be replicated by Cadbury next week. My role operates within the athlete preparation area and this up close experience is one of the main reasons why I applied in the first place. Bag drop is one of the few positions where you can readily talk to the athletes whether this is in espanol or ingles, depending on the circumstances a lot of the athletes enjoy a bit of light conversation and banter. USA are particularly gregarious and are always fun when they come in. I will find out after the Games whether I have made it onto 'The List' although I'm not particularly hopeful at this time.

I'm spending a day exploring London tomorrow before starting the incredibly busy wind up to the start next Saturday. Everyone is very conscious of the magnitude of the event. Four years is a long, long time to prepare for one moment and its intriguing to see how the enormity of the occasion is affecting each person involved. It should be an interesting week.




Sunday 15 July 2012

Uganda, Part Two

This was a great week to end on. PSF was one of the main highlights of my trip and this experience reminded me of why that time was so special: working with a motivated, interesting group of people on a project that you care about. 

We met up with the volunteering team from Equipe on the Saturday which was headed up by Joe's parents. There were two main projects: one was teaching based at a school and another was a pastors conference. While Joe went to the latter, I spent my time at the school. At Pisco I was involved in 3 different teaching projects which made me interested to see how the system in Uganda compares.

While the facilities were more modest than what I found in Peru, the teaching was more structured and the children were genuinely interested in what you had to say. My work here was also more demanding as I found out when I was ushered into a class of 30 gaping 10 year olds and was instructed to teach them about some obscure part of English grammar that I hadn't heard of. You can do this without a TEFL course but in the future I would try and complete one before I went away as they are a useful tool in structuring information that you can then more easily pass on.

Geography and some pseudo economics were more fun to teach, sport was an easy crowd pleaser and music was particularly popular in the younger toddler classes. One disappointment of the system here is the complete lack of teaching for the humanities and arts. I can understand why you would want to prioritise maths and science but to not have history, geography, English literature, music or art in the timetable is a strange and short sighted decision. Humans aren't machines, they are creative and stretch far beyond the imagination of science and maths. Abandoning these areas of study, which underpin much of our identity, will be to our detriment in the future.

For most of the week we helped the PE teacher with preparations for their sports day which was the following week. Some of the favourites were on the list such as the sack race and egg and spoon race while some more cultural events included the slightly hygienically questionable race of 'bottle filling' which involved the child to carry water in their mouth to fill up a bottle that had been in circulation for a number of years. At least everyone seemed to be enjoying it!

As soon as I arrived into Manchester on the Friday I would have to get a train to London to pick up my accreditation and Olympic uniform in preparation for training the next day. Organising this didn't allow much time to reflect on the past few months but it is something I will consider more over the next week. I really enjoyed spending time with the team in Uganda and it's disappointing I can't stay any longer with them. Africa is a place that I will have to return to in a few years. It was also far more complex than I ever could have imagined. In Uganda, there are 33 tribes which make up the country and they all have their individual chiefs or kings. Combine this with most of the towns then having a separate mayor and finally add the president at the top. You are left with a very difficult power struggle which doesn't look like subsiding any time soon.

I think most humans have an inveterate desire to explore and travel. After 20 weeks on the road it is something that I would happily recommend to anyone. Just don't have a fixed idea of what you want to find.

Sunday 8 July 2012

Uganda, Part One

"Uganda is safe, but at a price", this was the amusing but accurate message we were told by Walter, our Boda Boda driver, as we slipped the army soldiers a few thousand shillings to 'see us on our way'. This is a country that I want to love but through various contrasting messages I'm struggling to fully understand its identity. Ideas of wealth are recurrently more central in a society where there is little and where they can see that we, the west, have comparably more.


The last point is particularly important. In a conversation with Joe we talked about the problems of aid. The aid in itself isn't generally an issue but the attitudes that change with it are what you have to be careful of. Yes, complacency and over-reliance are the two things that are most talked about but moreover, the messages that the west are promoting within the action. The message translates to false views that western societies have it all figured out and also the idea that 'wealth' is something that they are lacking and that is something that they need.


On the third day in Kampala we went for a Boda Boda trip ride around the city before getting a boat to an island on Lake Victoria. A Boda Boda is basically a motorbike which people use as a form of taxi. I would say that driving styles are similar to Vietnam except in Uganda you have the added fun of 50cm pot holes where ever you go. That's no exaggeration and some approach a metre deep, it's probably the first place where I've seen a car get stuck when in the middle of the road.


It was an interesting day which exposed us to many different aspects of Ugandan life. Our visit to the killing tunnel was one of the most haunting experiences of the trip. Under the former president Idi Amin, made famous by The Last King Of Scotland film,  over 300,000 Ugandans were tortured and murdered in this underground bunker. The bloodied hand prints and scratch marks are still on the wall as visible reminders of the horrendous conditions they died in and how they were trying everything they could to escape. The sheer numbers of his killing operation are put in perspective when you understand the reason for not simply shooting his targets was that he didn't have enough bullets in his armoury. Therefore he resorted to starvation and suffocation as two easy ways to kill his enemies. 


After driving to the lake we paddled across to the island on a highly questionable small wooden boat. We were given a machete armed guard who guided us to the peak of the island before taking us on a leisurely walk through the Ugandan bush back to our boat. On the walk we casually pointed out all the chickens that freely roamed the island, our guard told us that we were able to buy one for about 15,000 shillings (£4). Sensing a solution for lunch we negotiated which bird we wanted and were witness to our lunch being prepared from start to finish. From trapping it, cutting its head off with a machete, plucking it and then roasting it; I finally saw how some of my Sunday dinners had really been prepared. For the first time in my life I could maybe, almost, just about understand vegetarianism. 


Another key concept I have learnt over the past few days is 'Uganda time'. Similar to 'Fiji time' it involves you agreeing a time to meet someone and then adding on 3 hours to the time agreed. 3 hours is a rough average but it can extend to as far as 5 or the person not turning up at all. It keeps life interesting but it is something I won't be too sad in leaving behind.

Thursday 5 July 2012

Singapore

Another big city, an urbane Hong Kong; I liked Singapore. We didn't have long enough to experience everything, money also played its part but overall I appreciated what I saw.

It was a clearly defined and efficient city. Sky scrapers were present but not on a Hong Kong scale. The elegance of Marina Bay Sands epitomises the image Singapore are trying to project. It is potentially isolating, as Joe said everyone on the underground is glued to their smart phones and the endless malls bring an alienating feel to the streets. Modernity has sacrificed some character and charm which isn't a problem for the locals but diminished it in my eyes. It is provocative through its ideals making it noteworthy but not endearing.

The botanic gardens were a brilliant antidote to the metropolis. Beautifully kept and deftly designed; I spent an afternoon exploring the area. They were definitely worth a visit.

Less cultural activities included Nandos and a 4am viewing of the European Cup Final. Chelsea players bringing it to the biggest stage once again. I'd also like to take this opportunity to clarify a few common misconceptions about football fans outside of Europe. As a result of stringent empirical evidence, I can safely say that Chelsea are the dominant player in the worlds fake football shirt market. Even in Asia, Chelsea had 3 times the presence of United. City may as well not exist and Liverpool were a distant third.

Our long haul flight to Uganda with Qatar Airways lived up to our high expectations. Five films were seen: Chronicle, The Book Of Eli, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Young Adult and John Carter. Jason Reitman has never disappointed and EL&IC merited its Oscar nomination. The rest were a bit mediocre except for the start of Chronicle.

Uganda has been enlightening so far, not in all the ways that I had expected. I will bring thoughts soon.

Singapore Botanic Gardens

Tuesday 3 July 2012

North Thailand

After crossing the border into Chiang Khong we started to work our way down to Bangkok where we would catch our flight to Singapore. I was in Thailand for a few days last year and visiting the more 'cultural' North was something I had been anticipating.


In Chiang Mai we visited the Maesa Elephant Camp. I would cautiously say that I enjoyed the experience, the elephants are well looked after and are inherently playful animals. We went for a ride through the jungle and then watched as they skilfully showed off their painting, football and dart skills. While I wasn't completely comfortable with everything that went on, I think the camp is putatively better than the alternative; Which can either be more severe captivity (such as circus work) or into the wild (where insufficient protection exists to insure their safety). After spending the morning with the Elephants we visited the nearby Tiger Kingdom.


If the Elephants were borderline, Tiger Kingdom sprinted past the lines of acceptability. It is hard to write this and not appear particularly moralistic but I think, on some things, the issue of right or wrong can be fairly clear. Tiger Kingdom is a business where people pay money to take photos with the animals. The smaller the tiger the more you pay. People are able to get near to the Tigers as they have been heavily drugged which leaves them lying lifeless on the floor. The owners try several tricks in order to try and get the the tiger to lift their head off the ground, they do this so the tourists can get a photo which creates the allusion of the tiger actually being in a normal state. The tourists, when prompted by the owners and sadly also by their own initiative, take advantage and do various things which humiliate and degrade the prone tiger. These include pretending to bite the tail and by straddling the animals back. While others from our party went in, we looked into the cages from the café on the side. We were there for a couple of minutes before deciding to wait in the car park instead.


The View
It's not one of the things I will have fond memories of. I hate feeling powerless to stop something such as this. They are amazing animals and have had their dignity stripped away from them. As Thailand is one of the most popular destinations for my peers, the least I can do is raise a bit of awahness.


As is our wont, we visited several different wats and palaces during our time in the country. The White Temple or Wat Rung Khon was unique to anything we had seen before. It was pristine white and dotted with crystals and glass. The most quirky aspect was the wall of hell which I briefly mentioned last time; It had a fat, happy buddha at one end and a wall of hell (featuring anything remotely western) at the other. Its message is that through consumption of our converse shoes and superhero movies we become corrupted and are therefore unable to reach 'enlightenment'. I guess the monk we found conversing on his iPhone 4s is treating it as a work in progress. Other tourist check points included the Grand Palace and the worlds largest recling buddha at Wat Pho (he was huge). 


Moving past the everyday pad thai we experienced two extremes of the food scale during our time in Thailand. We had a representation of both its cultures, the traditional meal of roasted insects and a glowing tribute to the western world with its fast food on steroids. Two highlights from the latter were the double big mac from Mcdonalds and then the triple outlaw from Burger King. The double was literally two big macs one on top of the other, the outlaw was a triple whopper with onion rings and bacon squeezed in between. Needless to say, both were incredible. The insects, however, were foul and were only consumed on the basis that it was a 'cultural meal' and therefore it had to be done. Joe distinguished himself during the ordeal as we each worked our way through seven different weird and wonderful insects. The grasshopper was the final straw for me but Joe nobly went on and finished the brutal cockroach. 


Words:
Wont - An established custom
Putative – Generally considered to be