Perils of lies will await you on the roadside, watch your front and back, turn sideways and round in a circle. Look to the sky, this is the home of ancestors with their eyes of ten thousand splendid suns watching over you.

Beware of “enemies” in the shape of “friends”, you have to look INSIDE and walk on your toes……… Take chances but be wise and watch watch watch.

At the end of the thousands of miles you walked to find happiness, you may find the land is not so sweet, the people not so welcoming. Too late, dear child you cannot go home, not yet at any rate. Dont take off your shoes because you will have to run and run damn fast. When you do, just keep looking to the sky.

Thanks to Lance for his drawings which always stretch the imagination.

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Asylum Seekers
Lance Tooks
Afganistan
Immigration Europe
Greece

I am now Vegan - phew I have finally spoken the words in a public space. Am sweating from the admittance not because there is anything negative about being a Vegan, on the contrary I feel quite proud that I am no longing consuming animal bits. But a certain commitment comes with public admissions. I have to say though my veganism does not extend to me throwing away my shoes and leather jacket - I mean I have them so I might as well wear them. I was watching K D Lang when someone from the audience asked why she performs barefoot. “I’m vegan” she replied and went on to explain about the ugliness of plastic shoes. But what about the drums in the band are they not made of animal skins? I need help on that one but maybe I am only a “food vegan“?

Actually being vegan today is a lot easier than I thought and I have discovered some delicious foods and a few pretty disgusting ones. Loads of veggies and soya everything - tofu, flavored tofu, dried soya chunks and mince, tasty spicy soya pates, soya “fish” cakes, soya burgers the list is endless and of course Linda McCartney helps if you are in fast food mode. The only thing I miss is honey and cheap chocolate like bounty and crunchy bars.

It’s Saturday morning and sad as it is, I’m reading vegan blogs. From VegHaven which gives you a starter kit in case you haven’t a clue what to eat, is a Vegan/Vegetarian social networking site and no I am not joining. A Veggie Adventure has recipes like stir fried brown rice which might well send your stomach into free fall! VeganKid who I met as the USSF and whose report about plans to grow meat plants was probably the first time I started to think Vegan. Deep Roots Animal Sanctury also written by Vegan Kid is an animal rights blog. Which brings me to Zami. Do I have the right to deprive her of the dried meaty dog food she loves and turn her into a vegan dog? Even worse, no more cow hide bones to chew.

I want my bones back!

Tags:
Vegan

A friend of mine took this photo whilst in the Antarctic. I think it is beautiful, amazing, powerful, with all the movement and feelings of life.

It is all that SHE IS and all that WE ARE.

It is OURS TO KEEP, or it is OURS TO DESTROY with greed, selfishness and intolerance.

Arriving at Dubai airport you are first met by a huge red sign WELCOME TO TOMORROW. If this is the future, maybe I should bow out right now! Everything here is huge - the airport - the duty free shop, the immigration hall - endless free ways, glass skyscrapers reaching to the sky, and more cranes per sq meter than any other city (well it seems that way). I woke up the next day to find I had no voice. Lost and speechless in this material world I was taken to another Dubai phenomena, the Gigantic mall - what else do you do in Dubai? The Ibn Battutu Mall named after the famous explorer. The mall is divided into six sectors, China, India and Egypt, Tunisia, Persia and Turkey. My first thought was what happened to Morocco were Ibn Battutu was born? We entered at the India section, avoiding Starbucks on the way we sat and had very expensive but cosy chocolate cakes and skinny lattes - besides a huge elephant that looks like its made of paper mache and the top of which is encased in a wooden canopy that reaches up to the ceiling.

I am in a huge gated estate where every single house is exactly the same design and colour the only difference is the size. There are artificial lakes with ducks and beautiful flowers on the side, swimming pools for every block and private ones for those who can afford it. Each house has at least one huge silver grey 4X4 parked in the driveway and Hummers are everywhere. My hosts are saying they intend to buy one. I must have looked horrified as they made the excuse that driving was so dangerous only a Hummer would protect them from death and destruction on the road!

My throat got the better of me and I have not been out since but my voice is slowly returning. Enough for me to have a long conversation with Maria (not her real name) the maid who is from the Philippines. Maria has been in Dubai for three months. Before that she spent just over 2 years in Saudi Arabia, one of 25 maids for a high official. The whole time she was there she never went out on her own and whatever she needed to buy was bought by the driver. She worked 7 days a week sometimes up to 16 hours a day. She got the job through an agent in Manila and had to hand her passport over to her employers on arrival. Maria was lucky in that her employers were “good” people and she used to get extra tips from the family relatives but the other maids were beaten. She was spoken to in Arabic from the first day which she did not understand. But her madam would not speak to her in English so she spent the first few weeks in fear, trying to figure out what she was supposed to be doing until she eventually learned the language. There are many cases of employers and family members raping maids and of course there is nothing they can do as they would get beaten and end up being deported. Apparently less and less Filipino women are going to Saudi Arabia to work.
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A mixture of too much travel, personal issues, life changes, relocating and just plain old tiredness equals Blogger purgatory - that place you find yourself when you cannot think, read or write. Not only have I hardly written anything I have hardly read any blogs for weeks so today in the hope of finding some inspiration I checked out a few. I ended up feeling worse. All my daily and weekly reads full of pages of posts and still no inspiration. I did find one post that linked to a series of photos of the Burmese Buddhist monks protesting in Rangoon.

But seriously, these peaceful Burmese monks marching in their thousands for 7 days now in defiance of a repressive military regime - have given me my greatest inspiration this year.

I spent a long time staring at this photo hoping again to be inspired. I saw a young man with faith and courage standing in the rain for something he truly believed in. It should have inspired me but it just made me feel sad and humble as the drops of rain turned into the tears of thousands and thousands of people who just couldn’t take it any more.

Burma