Making it Real

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I grew up attending a French immersion school on the very English speaking prairies of western Canada. Every subject, except English, was given in French by first language French speakers from Quebec or France. The problem was that when we stepped out into the freezing cold, the only French that existed for us was the obligatory translation on everything from chocolate bar wrappers to cartons of milk. 

Contrary to popular belief, only about twenty percent of Canadians speak French and the great majority of those live in the east. Out in the Wild West, exams were the sole motivation to use French and as the language didn’t exist to us outside the classroom, the system generally produced students with excellent receptive skills but only mediocre speakers. The added difficulty of learning everything in a second language only fueled the resentment that I used to feel while trudging off to school in the snow. 

It took me more than twenty years to finally thank my mother for her perseverance when I gave her a phone call from my first tour in Paris, thanking her for giving me the gift of another language. It’s with this experience in mind that I have always been a bit skeptical of the mad push for bilingual schools here. That is until the other day when I was given the chance to swap my normal workplace environments of concerts halls and adult classrooms for a crowded music room full of 5^th and 6^th graders in the Castra Caecillia. 

My bandmate, harmonica ace, Jose Luis Naranjo and I were invited to give a bilingual workshop on the Blues and in the talk we worked on the Blues as poetry and then showed them how to accompany the song they created on their instruments. 

It was one of those rare moments that every educator strives for, the learning was palpable in the room, the classroom fell by the wayside and the kids were learning without realizing it. Their language skills completely surprised me and the songs they played were excellent. With motivational activities like this, no wonder these hardworking teachers are making me reconsider.

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Cuatro Gatos y Un Burro...or the tale of Four Stray Cats and a Lonely Donkey

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

A few years ago, shortly before the outbreak of the neverending civil war, I found myself in northern Syria tracing the footsteps of the sixth century monk and embryonic travel writer, John Moschus. In his book, Spiritual Meadow, he had recounted his travels through Byzantium and I was looking for any remaining trace of his trail more than 1400 years later. Back in Juan’s day, the stylish Stylites were in fashion and the monastery where Buñuel’s Saint Simeon once predicated from his pillar is just a short trip away from Aleppo. The ruins are quite impressive but what struck me most about the visit wasn’t the monastery itself, but the abandoned villages that dot the surrounding countryside between it and the border with Turkey. Entire villages of Byzantine-era stone houses that reminded me of Alcuescar's Santa Lucia del Trampal pepper the Mediterranean landscape. Their open doorways gave the impression that their owners had just stepped out to buy bread, yet their homes now lay empty, deserted and doorless among the olive groves. The only sign of life was a lonely donkey tied to a tree, its owner nowhere to be seen. The area had been abandoned when it was the back and forth frontier between Christendom and Islam and since then, only the donkey has returned. A hollow museum of fifth and sixth century buildings that slowly crumble into oblivion because people chose, or were more likely forced, to live elsewhere. While the experience was interesting, I didn’t have to stay more than a few hours. I took my notes and pictures and left the ghosts behind, happy to return to a cold beer at an open air cafe in the warren of life in the old town of Aleppo. I sometimes fear that something similar will happen to my adopted home of Caceres. The give and take of the religious wars have long since passed on the Iberian peninsula but new foes have lately appeared. Ever increasing restrictions and calls for our UNESCO core to be turned into an open air museum, fit for films and festivals, might make for better pictures of stone but what about the people? Quaint medieval towns can be found all over this peninsula but few, if any, can boast of a still beating heart. You come for the palaces but you stay for the people. If it’s a choice between sword shops or hanging laundry, I’ll take the socks any day. 

The Beginning of a Quest, His and Mine

For many this was the end of the line, a place at the end of Africa to get lost in purple hazes and naked lunches. But long before Burroughs and Hendrix added their hipness, a local boy took the Tangerine brand far beyond the Levant. A medieval gap-year wanderer who saw it as a beginning rather than an end,  Ibn Battutah set off in 1325 from this white speck beyond Hercules' pillars on a pilgrimage that turned into a 25-year, 75,000-mile odyssey...all before coming home to dictate his tale. Get lost in the warren of the medina looking for this ultimate traveler-turned-saint's tomb, and pick up a bit of traveler's karma before setting out on your own journey. Or just try armchair travel by leafing through his Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling.

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Originally published on Trazzler