Let’s face it, holidays are strange

Photo by Vicko Mozara on Unsplash

Currently, I am on a northern hemisphere summer break, although I should say an alleged summer break. There are two reasons for this. 

Firstly, in Ireland and England, there is no summer. Summer is something you know everyone else is having while you sit in the rain, trying to remember what sunshine feels like. The easiest way to deal with this lack of summer is to travel abroad, but this is costly in these credit crunch days. So I find myself sitting at a British family resort trying to learn the difference between light showers, squally showers, rain and heavy rain. Secondly, I must admit, I also struggle with the whole concept of a holiday.

It is not that I am one of those grumpy people who do not like holidays. I love them – it is the idea I find weird.

People not only work to pay bills, but also so that they can have a break from work. Apparently, to enjoy your break, you cannot simply have a break – we are all so conditioned that we must do something with it. This something is called a holiday. Holidays cost money. So, in other words, you work to get money to pay others for the pleasure of not working. This strikes me as logical as banging your head against a wall because it feels good when you stop.

Of course, one option is to choose not to work at all and then go on holiday, which then means you are paying others to add something to your otherwise empty schedule. But being unemployed is not a comfortable state of affairs and makes buying time at a holiday resort rather difficult. The result of this is that it makes those of us who are employed happy enough to continue to pay not to work.

There are further problems. If you choose to stay at home on your break, now dubbed the ‘staycation’, it feels as if you are not on holiday. And if you choose not to stay at home, and if you are not lucky enough to have a second home at the beach or in the mountains, your choices are limited. Either you have to book a holiday home in some remote spot, or you have to sell your soul to a hotel group.

In exchange for money, hotels are happy to provide you with all the structure you need in your day to prevent you from feeling too far from work. They also promise endless entertainment from belly-dancing classes to parasailing and, unlike an isolated holiday cottage, guarantee your children can get to interact with others in play parks and swimming pools. This, in turn, helps your child learn valuable social skills.

For example, this holiday, my two-and-a-half-year-old son learned that one should never trust anyone, especially someone who wants the same toy as you. This valuable lesson was brought to him by a covetous toddler who attached himself to my son’s cheek with his teeth in an unprovoked playground attack. This left us wishing we had opted for the isolated holiday cottage.

For me, this sums up the core dilemma of holidays. Either you have to share purpose-built spaces and activities with others who might turn out to be little Mike Tysons, more interested in biting off ears than cooperative play, or you have to seclude yourself from the world, losing the advantage of having someone else laying all the entertainment you need at your doorstep.

So there is no perfect holiday, only moments of bliss and disaster. Every holiday has its price, whether it is inclement weather, a nasty souvenir bite, a little bit too much isolation, or too many structured activities that leave you exhausted and in need of another vacation. I long to find the balance, but I just don’t have enough free time to find it.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 22 August 2008 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Zimbabwe - not a crisis, but a little mix-up

Lately, words have been distressing me and increasingly alienating me from the world. This is because our world is now filled with words whose meaning is distorted unrecognisably. We live in the age of euphemisms.

Cars are no longer second-hand but preowned. The world economy is not in free fall but is correcting itself, with staff being rationalised, not being fired. No one sells products anymore but rather solutions. The American justice system does not poison people to death but administers a lethal injection. Civilians are not murdered by armies but are subjected to collateral damage. And who can forget Janet Jackson revealing parts of her upper body to the audience a few years ago and the act being referred to as a wardrobe malfunction?

A euphemism, according to the Webster Online Dictionary, is the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener.

But why have we become so hooked on the euphemism? Euphemisms serve multiple functions. They can shelter us from the truth, especially when it might be difficult to deal with or make us feel psychologically uncomfortable.

I recall my nephew asking, when he was about four years old, what we were eating for dinner. His mom replied, saying we were going to have lamb. He asked, "like lambs in the field?" She truthfully said yes, but he simply laughed in reply, saying, "No way." In other words, he did not believe that it was possible that lovely fluffy lambs had been recycled as dinner with mint sauce on the side. He instinctually protected himself from an uncomfortable reality.

What is remarkable about our ability to distance ourselves from reality is that this continues unabated into adulthood. Cow flesh gets converted into beef, pig meat into bacon and the poor become disadvantaged, not destitute or starving to death. This helps us cope.

Euphemisms, however, have a more cynical use that extends beyond psychologically protecting oneself from horrid realities. Politics is infused with euphemism.

George Orwell, in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, talks about 'B vocabulary', that is, language "deliberately constructed for political purposes – words . . . which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them".

Grace Mugabe with Robert Mugabe 2013

Credit: Dandjk Roberts / CC BY-SA

Robert Mugabe has been using B vocabulary of a sort for years now. In the mid-1980s, he deployed the Fifth Brigade, euphemistically known as Gukurahundi, meaning 'the wind that sweeps away the chaff before the rain'. The Fifth Brigade killed thousands of Zimbabwe's minority Ndebele speakers.

Today, in Zimbabwe, the doublespeak (incidentally, a term attributed to Orwell but which, in fact, he did not use) continues. President Thabo Mbeki is still apparently engaging in 'quiet diplomacy' and Mugabe continues to use his 'war veterans' (henchmen) to terrorise the population into submission.

On the wider international stage, condemnation of the Mugabe regime has become stronger recently, but sanitising language prevails.

Following the election of Mugabe as President for a sixth term, in June, after the opposition pulled out of the running because of intimidation, a spokesperson for United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon had this to say: "The secretary-general has said repeatedly that conditions were not in place for a free and fair election, and observers have confirmed this from the deeply flawed process. The outcome did not reflect the true and genuine will of the Zimbabwean people, or produce a legitimate result".

This was a welcome development, but, I think, it warrants a more honest translation. What Ban Ki-moon meant to say is: "The secretary-general is sick and tired of saying that Mugabe's thuggery has turned the elections into a sham. Observers have seen people being forced to vote for Mugabe against their will and brutal violence has been used repeatedly. The election process is damaged irreparably. The people want Mugabe out and the election outcome is corrupt and criminal in the extreme."

Need I say more?

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 18 July 2008 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Raytheon 9 Acquitted

I have been following this story closely as it concerns arm manufacturing in Derry. A very active group of protestors have been running a campaign against Raytheon for some time now. This resulted in prosecutions after the group occupied the Raytheon offices. But on 11 June 2008, 6 people, who had occupied the offices of Raytheon in Derry and destroyed computers, were acquitted of criminal damage by a Belfast jury, writes Danny Morrison.  He continues: "Raytheon is a huge US arms manufacturer, with sales of $20 billion in 2006 and over 70,000 employees worldwide.  It makes Patriot, Tomahawk, Cruise and Sidewinder missiles, and much more besides". You can read the full story here.

Viva the orange revolution

According to the publication Grocer, the number of oranges being sold in the UK is falling. Orange sales are dropping by about 2% a year, whereas the sale of easy-to-peel fruit, such as tangerines and satsumas, or naartjies, to South Africans is rising. Writing in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, Aislinn Simpson reported the sales of satsumas and tangerines rose 35% and 60% respectively.

Oranges are going out of fashion
because they take too long to eat?

Some have postulated that sales have decreased because it is difficult to carry a large bag of oranges about when shopping, compared with a neat little sack of naartjies. Others have commented that oranges are going out of fashion because they take too long to eat and people simply don’t have the time.

Stefanie Marsh, writing in the UK Times, feels it all boils down to the fact that Britons are too lazy or thick to eat oranges. She quotes a survey noting that 7% of children between the ages of 9 and 13 have no idea how to eat an orange. Consequently, Marsh laments the inability of so-called busy parents to pass on the “craft of orange peeling to the next generation”. To help, she provides a useful step-by-step guide on how to peel an orange, worth googling, if you feel your skills are on the wane.

However, I am not surprised to read these stories. I have long thought there is a correlation between oranges and the state of human civilisation and its discontents.

For example, it was the humble orange that facilitated the spread of colonisation with its miraculous ability to prevent diseases like scurvy. It was the orange that allowed explorers to circumnavigate the world, leaving oppression in their wake. However, it was, as is widely known, also the orange that finally overthrew apartheid when foreigners decided to stop eating Outspan oranges as part of the sanctions campaign.

I have also always found it telling that there is no word in the English language that rhymes with orange, suggesting its unique place in human evolution.

Thus, it is only fitting that the orange and its declining sales are the first marker, at least in the West, of the next major social upheaval: the lethargy revolution.

Seemingly, we have enough time to Facebook with friends, order pizza online, text until our thumbs go numb or spend hours playing computer games but not enough time to get to grips with the complexity of peeling an orange. What have we come to?

The orange is being squashed out of the market by the fast-food and consumer culture, which is, in turn, changing our understanding of what food should be. Do you know that, despite all that is said on cereal boxes about their enhanced fibre content, it would take seven cups of cornflakes to give you the same amount of fibre as one orange? Many of the vitamins cereals contain, such as vitamin C, have been sprayed on and are not naturally present.

Sadly, most citrus-related traditions seem to be on the decline. As a boy, I revelled in the ancient long-dead South African tradition of throwing oranges and naartjies at the opposition and players during rugby matches. My transition to manhood was also marked by the imparting of the secret of the abundance of citrus fruit at rugby matches. Oranges injected with alcohol made the perfect undetectable vessel for transporting vodka and had the added benefit of being delicious to eat, making you drunk and providing a good but harmless projectile once the alcohol had been sucked out.

So it is with great sadness that I read of the decline of the orange. I believe the time has come to start a campaign to save the orange. Let us break this cycle of lethargy and start peeling. Oh, unless the oranges are from Burma, China, Israel, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Florida or Iran.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 20 June 2008 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

A little less conversation, more unity, please

Currently, it is not possible to write about anything else other than the violence that has gripped South Africa over the last few weeks. Barbaric images of foreigners being burned alive and assaulted by xenophobic mobs have been splashed across most international newspapers and TV.

It has been sobering, leaving one feeling powerless, distraught and deeply ashamed. I imagine most South Africans feel the same way.

As I write, 56 people have been killed, 342 shops belonging to foreign nationals looted and 213 burnt down. Figures vary, but at least 25 000 people are said to have fled their homes, or, put another way, are now internal refugees. The police have arrested 1 384 individuals suspected of participating in the violence. When this article is printed, I fear these figures will be drastically out of date, but also a grave reminder of how quickly a life can be taken.

Everyone has a theory about the roots of the violence. Many say poverty is the major cause. Frustration of unmet expectations for economic change in the lives of the country’s poorest has finally bubbled over. The media has also been blamed for hyping up the illegal immigrant issue over the years, opening the door for a violent response.

Immigration authorities and the police have also received stick for their constant harassment of illegal immigrants, which has set a poor example. Still others say the violence is an orchestrated strategy to destabilise the ruling party, the African National Congress. Government is also blamed for ratcheting up anti-immigrant discourse on the one hand, but having an ineffective immigration policy on the other.

Thabo Mbeki’s dilly-dallying on Zimbabwe, according to others, was the tipping point. Zimbabwe’s implosion, in which the South African government has failed to intervene, has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean refugees flowing into the country.

There is probably truth in all of these explanations. But what is interesting, reading the different theories from afar, while knowing where different South Africans stand politically, is how one-sided and hollow most of the explanations seem.

Mbeki opponents are quick to jump on his ineptitude as the key issue. The unions and the Communist Party are quick to blame global capitalism, which has meant, they argue, that economic progress for the poor has been stymied.

Many in the ruling party are quick to roll out the counterrevolutionary discourse and propose that there is a hidden hand behind the violence bent on trying to pull the State down. And I have no doubt race or, more to the point, racism, typified by the meaningless label black-on-black violence, has been used as an explanation by some whites.

A discussion about the causes of the violence is important, but I was amazed when reading the editorials and commentary, one step removed from the reality on the ground, how self-serving they currently seem.

There have been rallies to call for an end to the violence, many have donated money for the people forced out of their homes, and public condemnations have been extensive. But what worries me is that as the condemnations fly, opportunists are seeing new openings.

Criminals can loot and rob on the tailcoats of xenophobic vigilantes, political parties can all have a dig at one another, and the newspapers are selling in their thousands. As for the majority, myself included, we can beat our breasts with exasperation and outrage, making ourselves feel better, but no-one else.

So what is to be done? I don’t have an easy answer. But I do know the constant mudslinging between different political parties and the media, all looking for the best analysis or who they can use as their next scapegoat, is counterproductive. Just as attacking foreigners will not bring the poor more jobs, vitriolic attacks and blaming political opponents will not bring an end to violence. Surely unity is more important now than division?

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 6 June 2008 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Environmentalism, war and diet coke

Unrestricted development and pollution are the best known ways of destroying the environment. However, war is also a major contributing factor that has, at least to a degree, been ignored in the debate so far. War wipes out lives and livelihoods through destroying farmland, resources, and environments necessary to sustain life, such as food, forests and water sources.

Conflicts over resources not only spur wars on but also lead to the plundering of other resources to fund the war machine. Then, immediately after wars, countries can be so desperate to rebuild their economies that they sanction unchecked development and the wanton mining of natural resources.

There are also the direct impacts of war. The first Gulf War resulted in an estimated 11-million barrels of oil being intentionally released into the Arabian Gulf. This destroyed coral reefs and more than 15 000 birds, besides other forms of marine life, and habitats. Did you know that, in Vietnam, biodiversity is still recovering from the use of Agent Orange over 30 years ago?

Credit Tommaso.sansone91 / CC0

Even more disturbing is that it is also now clear that global warming will create further wars, leading to a vicious circle of environmental destruction. Two of the European Union's senior policy advisers, Javier Solana and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, outlined warnings to this effect in a recent policy paper. In the document, they warn of mass migration and north-south conflicts as perceived injustice between those causing global warming and those affected increase, as well as wars over competition for water, energy and other natural resources.

An 'optimistic' view is that climate change will not cause such instabilities but be a 'multiplier, that is, it will make bad situations worse, such as destabilising unstable States and fuelling existing conflicts, leading to local and global insecurity. What is scary is that this process is already under way. According to Solana and Ferrero-Waldner, every humanitarian crisis the United Nations dealt with in 2007 was connected to climate change in some way.

This paints a depressing picture. It makes you wonder why we have been in a state of denial about the environment for so long.

One reason for this, argues George Marshall, on his blog, 'Climate Change Denial', is that environmental issues are painted as global and feel beyond reach. I guess even talking about war and its link to environmental catastrophe has this effect. It calls on us all to stop wars, but this can have the opposite effect. That is, ordinary citizens feel powerless to stop war and so do not worry about its worldwide impact.

Marshall feels we need to drop language like 'save the planet' because it allows us to create distance between ourselves and difficult issues. 'Save the planet' means we talk of 'climate', not 'weather'; polar bears, not hedgehogs; African children, not our own, writes Marshall. 'The planet' locates the problem miles away from your community and somewhere in the solar system, and ‘save' speaks to abstinence and sacrifice. As humans, we naturally shy away from them.

As an antidote to this, Marshall feels we should replace phrases like 'low carbon emissions' with 'light living' and other positive messages, such as 'Live light because it will make you feel complete and free'.

Marshall acknowledges that this sounds like ad-speak (and a Diet Coke ad, in my opinion), but he feels it is a lot better than stock phrases like ‘save the planet', and will result in more people taking action.

I agree with Marshall that positive messages and localising the impact of environmental damage are needed. There is something off-putting about tired slogans like ‘save the rhino' or whatever celebrity animal has hit the endangered list in the last six months. However, my worry is that human denial is even more resistant than Marshall thinks. There is a tendency to only react when a tsunami rushes through your own backyard, and then it is too late.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 28 May 2008 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.