Beauty and the Beastly

Over my many years I have been to lots of different countries.

Everywhere you go they will tell you that this country is God’s chosen land. They will tell you that, whatever it is that they do, it is the correct way, that everyone else is wrong.

They will also tell you that you will find no better food anywhere else and that their country is resplendent in its beauty.

They are, as one, absolutely right.

Each individual country is unique in some way. There is something about every country that makes it different, unforgettable and attractive.

Countries as barren geographically and socially as Sudan have their fine points. Things that make you remember it with some fondness in spite of the harsh cruelties that exist there. I remember the wonderful people who, in spite of having nothing, will give you everything to make you welcome. The warmth of the Sudanese heart is almost overwhelming.

China is a rat’s nest. The political situation that has existed for so many years has turned it into the ‘Land of the Zombies’. The only way to get any work done is to hire a young lady straight from school because she will want to prove she has worth, that she has value.

But the food in China. Warm, freshly made tau foo (soy bean curd) from the early morning market; tau foo that is still gently steaming and can be sucked into the mouth from a corner of the small block that it is formed into.

Do not buy anything remotely technological in China because it will either not work or cease to function in very short order.

The local people on the streets will follow you around in large groups; they are not threatening, they are curious—you are entertainment for people who have no television or radio and whose newspapers are glued to the wall each morning. Newspapers that contain only what the Government wants them to think.

No matter what you think of a place you will find something there that is good. Perhaps even something that is heartwarming.

That something is invariably the people.

You can insult people from other countries as much as you like because that is what you have been told to do by the media and, hence, your Government.

Iranians are, like most Arabs, loud and rough. But they are hospitable, warm, friendly. They have grown up through the aeons as nomadic peasant and that is what they still are—just that, now, they are rich nomadic peasants.

Iran was a great place to be. It was a place full of hope and ambition for a good future even though the war with Iraq had been going on forever—or so it seemed. It was not a place that was full of fear or despair, as we are sometimes told by the ‘news’.

America? Sorry, people. America is one of the most boring places on Earth. Of course you have street gangs and all sorts of weird people doing all sorts of weird things because they are desperate for some sort of excitement; some sort of release.

Where people live is flat, spread out and dull. Been to Texas? Yawn.

But the people are wonderful. They are, as one, warm hearted, polite, enthusiastic—extremely enthusiastic (see: ‘boredom’), generous and geographically illiterate.

They are also racist. They will deny this vehemently but one lovely young lady told me she yearned to go back to New York because, after ten years in Fort Worth, she was still an ‘outsider’—a foreigner, almost.

Everywhere you go. Everywhere, there are good things. Good people.

All over Africa from Sudan, down through Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa there are superb people.

So many times I have been told, “Don’t go there, it is dangerous.”

So many times I have ignored this and been treated warmly and generously.

In Yemen, in a ‘war zone’, I had dinner with an Arab friend and his wife in one of the forbidden zones and felt safe, welcome.

I have been in places where the temperature soared over fifty degrees plus in the shade and other places where we were down to minus forty degrees (all Celsius, of course). The common element was the good people.

There are no exceptions to this rule.

Say what you like about Fuzzballs, Ragheads, Eye-Ties, Frogs, Wops, Chinks, Dagoes, Spicks, Frogs, Porkies, Slants and Slopes they are all good people.

All of them.

But.

If you are looking for countryside to look at. If you are looking for sheer beauty that will whip your breath away every day then do not go to the African Rift, which is astonishingly lovely; never visit the Grand Canyon that is colossally impressive. Resist the Amazon Basin or the Jungles of Asia; avoid the scenic grace of Ayer’s Rock and the outback of Australia.

Go to New Zealand.

Trust me. There is no place on Earth for sheer majesty and beauty in varied abundance like there is in Hobbitland!