Travel

Lake Titicaca: Peru & Bolivia

November 6, 2017 northlondonhousewife

We have seen a number of floating villages now, notably on Tonle Sap but in many ways this was both the prettiest and the saddest.

Th islands are built of reeds that grow within the lake and must be constantly renewed and replaced.

The islands are tethered in case of storms and parked up separate to their original family groups. The communities would originally have used boats made from reeds also but now use modern boats with engines. Paying for the fuel for these takes hard currency, which is where their barter system with the mainland falls down and tourism cash steps forward.

Each island comprises a group of friends, grouped together to make a living. Each vies for the attention of any new tourist group and each responsible tour guide will try to share out the tourists between the islands.

Once there you get an explanation of how the islands are put together, before being presented with some crafts, usually woven, that are for sale. As always it’s better to buy something than simply donate money.

On our trip we met up with a relatively young group. Although education is compulsory to around 16, most kids marry young and have children so Norma aged 19 with her 1 year old Elizabetta was not that unusual.

With the money from tourism these people would not survive. The lifestyle out on the islands is not “real” in that sense and very different to the living communities deep on Tonle Sap who rarely saw tourists.

The villagers can live long lives though they tend to be vulnerable to arthritis and chest infections from living so close to the water. Obviously living so exposed to the sun tends to increase the chance of skin cancers also.

But it is a persistent life choice for much of the community, maybe in part because they are not as well educated or well accepted by the people living on the mainland.

After visiting the floating islands we made the trip to Bolivia crossing the border near the lake and visiting a couple of islands on the way.

It is remarkably difficult to remember that you are essentially on the top of the world, very high up, given how flat it all looks. For someone from the UK, altitude inevitably involves high mountains and valleys, not plains.

Our first stop across the border was Copacabana where a festival was underway with both the local priest and shaman busy blessing cars for the year.

The Virgin of the church, who was “black” ie. looked more like an indigenous person than most of the statues, is one of the more popular so the church was busy.

Though not as busy as a very jolly, quite young looking priest.

Priest blessing the cars, Copacabana, Lake Titicaca

From there we headed out to the islands of the Moon and Sun to see some ruins and have a bite to eat.

Pre-Inca ruins, Island of the Moon, Titicaca

These islands are said to be where the original Incas came from and where they made a pilgrimage to each year.

Hmm. Not so sure the spring of life was that exciting, certainly not as exciting as crossing over to the mainland on the barge.

After a long and tiresome ride complete with detour to avoid an angry protesting mob on the motorway, we arrived in La Paz.

Unlike European towns, the best housing is at the bottom of the valley to avoid altitude rather than the top, to catch the breeze and avoid pollution. We headed down.

Male Violence, Rants&Rambles

Whose Problem? Who is the problem?

November 3, 2017 northlondonhousewife

The recent Weinstein scandal is ricocheting around the world. The UK parliament is caught up with accusations of sexual misconduct and assault floating up to the surface and everyone left wondering where the mud will stick.

Yet the interesting thing about the way this is taking off, is that by it’s nature the story is all about the perpetrators, about who has committed the crime rather than the victims. & in some ways this seems so reasonable. Articles reporting crimes typically focus on the criminal looking at their background and trying to understand the reasons why they’ve turned to crime, or occasionally just demonising them.

Not for sexual crimes though. As a society we focus on the victims of the crime and it’s a short step from focusing on victims to blaming them and erasing the perpetrators from the narrative entirely.

Thus,

John beat Mary; becomes,
Mary was beaten; and eventually,
Mary was a beaten wife.

John is the criminal and is gradually erased from the story with all focus moving onto the person beaten, the passive victim.

& it’s just a little bit ridiculous isn’t it? We don’t talk about theft in terms of the people robbed.

Over time there has been much more discussion about victims of male violence, more research into the type of people who become victims, than there has been research into perpetrators.

But recent research suggests that there are some commonalities between the men who rape. Scientists have been gradually filling out a picture of men who commit sexual assaults.

The most pronounced similarities have little to do with the traditional demographic categories, like race, class and marital status. Rather, other kinds of patterns have emerged: these men begin early, studies find. They may associate with others who also commit sexual violence. They usually deny that they have raped women even as they admit to non-consensual sex.

& obviously focusing on the criminals and understanding why they commit crimes, why they rape and assault women, children and other men, is the most realistic path toward changing behaviors that cause so much pain.

“If you don’t really understand perpetrators, you’re never going to understand sexual violence,” said Sherry Hamby, editor of the journal Psychology of Violence. That may seem obvious, but she said she receives “10 papers on victims” for every one on perpetrators.

This may be partly connected to a tendency to consider sexual assault a women’s issue even though men usually commit the crime. But finding the right subjects also has complicated the research. Early studies relied heavily on convicted rapists. This skewed the data, said Neil Malamuth, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been studying sexual aggression for decades.

Men in prison are often “generalists,” he said: “They would steal your television, your watch, your car. And sometimes they steal sex.”

But men who commit sexual assault, and are not imprisoned because they got away with it, are often “specialists.” There is a strong chance that this is their primary criminal transgression. More recent studies tend to rely on anonymous surveys of college students and other communities, which come with legal language assuring subjects their answers cannot be used against them. The studies avoid using terms such as “rape” and “sexual assault.”

Instead, they ask subjects highly specific questions about their actions and tactics. The focus of most sexual aggression research is acknowledged non-consensual sexual behavior. In questionnaires and in follow-up interviews, subjects are surprisingly open about ignoring consent.

Men who rape tend to start young, in high school or the first couple years of college, likely crossing a line with someone they know, the research suggests. Some of these men commit one or two sexual assaults and then stop. Others — no one can yet say what portion — maintain this behavior or even pick up the pace.

Antonia Abbey, a social psychologist at Wayne State University, has found that young men who expressed remorse were less likely to offend the following year, while those who blamed their victim were more likely to do it again.

One repeat offender put it this way: “I felt I was repaying her for sexually arousing me. There is a heated debate among experts about whether there is a point at which sexual assault becomes an entrenched behavior and what percentage of assaults are committed by serial predators.

Most researchers agree that the line between the occasional and frequent offender is not so clear. The recent work of Kevin Swartout, a professor of psychology and public health at Georgia State University, suggests that low-frequency offenders are more common on college campuses than previously thought.

“It’s a matter of degree, more like dosage,” said Mary P. Koss, a professor of public health at the University of Arizona, who is credited with coining the term “date rape.” Dosage of what? Certain factors — researchers call them “risk factors” while acknowledging that these men are nonetheless responsible for their actions — have an outsize presence among those who commit sexual assaults.

Heavy drinking, perceived pressure to have sex, a belief in “rape myths” — such as the idea that no means yes — are all risk factors among men who have committed sexual assault.

A peer group that uses hostile language to describe women is another one.

Yet there also seem to be personal attributes that have mediating effect on these factors. Men who are highly aroused by rape porn — another risk factor — are less likely to attempt sexual assault if they score highly on measures of empathy, Dr. Malamuth has found. Narcissism seems to work in the other direction, magnifying odds that men will commit sexual assault and rape.

What about the idea that rape is about power over women? Some experts feel that research into hostile attitudes toward women supports this idea.In general, however, researchers say motives are varied and difficult to quantify.

Dr. Malamuth has noticed that repeat offenders often tell similar stories of rejection in high school and of looking on as “jocks and the football players got all the attractive women.” As these once-unpopular, often narcissistic men become more successful, he suspects that “getting back at these women, having power over them, seems to have become a source of arousal.”

Most subjects in these studies freely acknowledge non-consensual sex — but that does not mean they consider it real rape. Researchers encounter this contradiction again and again. Asked “if they had penetrated against their consent,” said Dr. Koss, the subject will say yes. Asked if he did “something like rape,” the answer is almost always no.

Studies of incarcerated rapists — even men who admit to keeping sex slaves in conflict zones — find a similar disconnect. It’s not that they deny sexual assault happens; it’s just that the crime is committed by the monster over there. And this is not a sign that the respondents are psychopaths, said Dr. Hamby, the journal editor. It’s a sign that they are human. “No one thinks they are a bad guy,” she said.

Indeed, experts note one last trait shared by men who have raped: they do not believe they are the problem.

Travel

The Road to Puno

November 1, 2017 northlondonhousewife

The most unpleasant part of the trip to S America was a day long drive from Cuzco to Puno, lake Titicaca in the tourist bus.

The bus itself was large and comfortable enough, with plenty of stops along the way for the loo and to allow people to stretch their legs. As always, photographs within churches were not permitted which makes some of those stops a bit frustrating.

The ornate baroque 17th century church at Andahuaylillas was first stop.

But in many cases of course the outside of the building has it’s own interests.

Not to mention the roof decorations on the grooves of houses around and about.

We also stopped at an Inca settlement more obviously influenced by the Aymara culture, Raqchi.

The Inka site at Raqch’i was a primary control point on a road system that originated in Cusco and expanded as the Inka empire grew. It is located in a valley known for sacred sites. Most of the Inka structures are enclosed by a 4 km-long perimeter wall, but just outside it, on the Inka road that entered Raqch’i from Cusco, an enclosure with eight rectangular buildings around a large courtyard was probably a lodging house for travellers.

The complex of Raqch’i consists of several different areas each designated with a specific function. Some have noted that these buildings may have been for religious and administrative officials. Others speculate that these buildings, paired with the scale of defenses may have been used as barracks to house troops.

Nearby are approximately 220 circular buildings, likely used as storehouses, called qullqas

But it was the views along the way that were probably most interesting, from the scenery through people going about their business and even the political graffiti.

The change from the valleys to the high anti-plano was sudden and shocking.

But by the time we hit the pre-Inca museum at Pucara, we’d all had enough. If I was doing it again, this is the bit that I would throw some money at in an attempt to speed my way through.

Instead of which it dragged on for another four hours. Not even flamingos could cheer us up.

By the time Puno came into sight, we were all just too fed up to enjoy the view.

Food

Carrot Halva

October 29, 2017 northlondonhousewife

6 cardamom pods
25g ghee/butter
500g carrots, peeled and grated
250ml evaporated milk (or condensed milk but then no need to add 100g sugar)
50g white sugar
50g soft light brown sugar
Pinch of saffron
Handful of raisins/sultanas/cranberries
20g milk powder (optional)
Handful of pistachios, almonds or cashews, roughly chopped

Serves 4

Squash the cardamom pods to remove the seeds, then roughly crush these to a powder in a pestle and mortar. Heat the ghee in a wide, heavy-based pan on a medium high heat and fry the powder for a minute or so until aromatic, then add the grated carrot and a pinch of salt.

Fry for five minutes on a medium heat, then turn up the heat and fry for another five, stirring all the time. Repeat if necessary until the carrots are soft and dryish – this should take 10-15 minutes in total.

Pour in the evaporated milk, add the saffron and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to medium and simmer, stirring regularly, until most of the liquid has evaporated.

Add the sugar and dried fruit and continue cooking, stirring so the mixture doesn’t catch, until thickened, then stir in the milk powder if using and cook for another minute or so. Allow to cool slightly before serving with the nuts on top.

An alternative even richer halwa substitutes the 500g carrots with 500g grounds almonds.

Food

Stuffed Peppers (zeytinyağli biber dolmasi)

October 26, 2017 northlondonhousewife

This is the classic Turkish rice filling for vegetables to be served cold. Choose plump bell peppers that can stand on their base. I prefer to use red peppers because they are sweeter and for the colour, but in Turkey green ones are more often used.

Serves 6
onion 1 large, chopped finely
extra-virgin olive oil 6 tbsp
short-grain or risotto rice 250g
salt and pepper
sugar 1-2 tsp
pine nuts 3 tbsp
currants or tiny black raisins 3 tbsp
tomato 1 large, peeled and chopped
ground cinnamon 1 tsp
ground allspice ½ tsp
mint a handful, chopped
dill a handful, chopped
flat-leaf parsley a handful, chopped
lemon juice of 1
green or red bell peppers 6 medium
natural (full-fat) yogurt 250g, mixed with 1 crushed garlic clove to serve (optional)

For the filling, fry the onion in 3 tablespoons of the oil until soft. Add the rice and stir until thoroughly coated and translucent. Pour in 450ml of water and add salt, pepper and sugar. Stir well and cook for 15 minutes or until the water has been absorbed but the rice is still a little underdone. Stir in the pine nuts, currants or raisins, the tomato, cinnamon and allspice, mint, dill and parsley and the lemon juice, as well as the rest of the oil.

Retaining the stalk, cut a circle around the stalk end of the peppers and set on one side to use as caps. Remove the cores and seeds with a spoon and fill the peppers with the rice mixture. Replace the caps.

Arrange the peppers side by side in a shallow baking dish, pour about 1cm water into the bottom, and bake in an oven preheated to 190C/gas mark 5 for 45-55 minutes or until the peppers are tender. Be careful that they do not fall apart.

Serve cold, accompanied, if you like, by a bowl of beaten yogurt, with or without crushed garlic.

Travel

Peru: Agua Calientes, A Walk in the Garden

October 23, 2017 northlondonhousewife

Aguas calientes, the town that grew up to support tourists visiting Macchu Pichu, is a bit of a dump. As a Brazilian woman sitting next to us on the train back to Cuzco said, “How can a place with so much money passing through, be such a favello, an unfinished slum?”

But with a morning to fill, we found ourselves balancing a revisit to the Inca site versus a gentle still around the hotel garden and being told of the hour long queues for sunrise, plus the likelihood of rain and fog, the garden walk won. Easily.

It was suggested that 6am would be the best time to see any birds and other fauna. We balked. In the end we decided to head off at around 11am and aim to enjoy the flora.

& although this was sold as orchids, turns out there weren’t many in flower

But we got lucky with some rare-ish birds such as the ‘cock on the rock” or Rupicola peruvianus, a large passerine bird of the cotinga family native to Andean cloud forests. It is widely regarded as the national bird of Peru.

And is a very weird thing to see indeed unlike the various tanager birds to be found.

Thankfully there were plenty of brightly coloured birds to be found even amongst the densest of foliage, helped by the gardeners putting out bananas and syrup feeders for the wonderful hummingbirds.

Which of course are incredibly difficult to photograph but very beautiful to watch.

In many ways the orchids were the least interesting of flowers, but it’s always strange to travel half way around the world and find familiar bedding plants such as fuchsias and begonias.

And of course, being warmer, wetter and lower, there were a fair number of bugs about and even some mammals.

And a lizard mid-moult hiding on a rock

And at the very back of the garden a rock face carved with some pre-historic glyphs suggesting it was a significant gathering place, long ago.

We made the right choice – the garden walk was lovely.

Food

Lemon Drizzle Cake

October 13, 2017 northlondonhousewife

So I dug out this recipe from the Guardian for the lemon drizzle and since they both sold quickly and feedback was excellent, I thought I’d note down the recipe for next year.

175g butter, softened
175g caster sugar
2 unwaxed lemons
3 eggs
100g self-raising flour
75g ground almonds
A little milk
100g demerara sugar

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160C fan. Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin with greaseproof paper. Beat together the butter, caster sugar and the finely grated zest of 1 lemon until light and fluffy. Add a pinch of salt and the eggs, one at a time, beating until well combined before adding the next.

2. Sift over the flour and fold in, followed by the almonds. Add just enough milk to bring the mixture to a dropping consistency (so that it falls off the spoon), then spoon into the prepared tin and even out the top. Bake for about 50-55 minutes, until a skewer comes out dry (crumbs clinging to it are fine).

3. Briefly mix together the remaining lemon zest, and the juice of both the lemons with the demerara sugar, then poke holes all over the top of the warm cake and pour over the drizzle, waiting for the cake to absorb one lot before adding the next.

4. Allow to cool in the tin before turning out.

Food

Feted

October 12, 2017 northlondonhousewife

So there’s a fete coming up and I’m wondering what cakes and jams I need to commit to making.

There are some obvious ones that will always sell:

banana bread
gingerbread – but really only for ladies of a certain age
lemon drizzle (or similar cake such as marmalade cake)
Victoria Sandwich
chocolate cake, loaves are easier to knock up
coffee cake
chocolate drizzled flapjacks
party cakes

& then there’s some that are nice to make but may not sell so you wouldn’t want to make more than one

yoghurt cake with fruit, maybe apple or blueberries

Food

Quick Aubergine Curry

October 10, 2017 northlondonhousewife

This is a simpler version of an aubergine curry. It’s the one to cook when you want something quick. It has no onions or ginger to peel and fry (saving much time), and uses only chilli and turmeric for spice, rather than the usual ground cumin and coriander. For extra depth and flavour, you could add all those ingredients; but sometimes, most times, simplest is best.

Serves four.

4 tbsp rapeseed oil
5 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
4 big vine tomatoes, roughly chopped (or 400g tinned tomatoes)
1 ¼ tsp Kashmiri chilli powder (or regular mild chilli powder)
¾ tsp turmeric
1⅓ tsp salt (or to taste)
900g aubergines (about 3), baked until tender in a combination microwave (or griddle)
400g tin beans, drained
40g fresh dill, finely chopped, or coriander

Heat the oil in a frying pan on a medium flame and, when hot, add the garlic and let it sizzle for a couple of minutes, until it turns pale gold. Add the tomatoes (take care, because they might spit) and cook for 5 minutes, until creamy, then add the chilli, turmeric and salt. Cook for a couple of minutes more, then gently fold in the aubergine slices and pop a lid on the pan.

Cook for 15 minutes, stirring every five minutes, until the aubergines are soft and collapsing, then stir in the beans and cook for two to three minutes more, until the beans are hot. Finally, stir in the dill.

Serve with steamed basmati rice, chapatis and a non-dairy yoghurt of your choice.

Travel

Peru: Macchu Pichu

October 6, 2017 northlondonhousewife

Machu Picchu is an iconic site, one of those places that you have seen the pictures and yet still find yourself shocked by it’s beauty.

It also highlights the frustrations of a visit to Peru for almost every tourist since of course it’s the one site everyone wishes to see. Around 6,000 -9,000 people visit the site each and every day, shuttled up the mountains from the town of Agua Calientas for a time slot entry.

In theory numbers are limited but no one on site has seen any fall in the numbers and everyone cites corruption as the reason. Once within the walls, with a registered guide, there is a one way policy effectively clockwise around the site, though you are allowed to re-enter within a set time on that day.

Yet the site is large enough of most of the people to disappear but of course the damage done is accumulative, the grinding down of the site by all of those footsteps.

So the line for the bus to head up the mountain starts early, for those people wishing to see sunrise over the mountains with waiting queues lasting almost two hours for the early morning at around 4am when the buses start.

When we arrived in town from the train the queue for the buses to the site were non-existent so we had a painless transfer from train to hotel to bus at around 11am. We were also blessed with incredibly good weather, sunshine and blue skies.

We had not booked tickets for the second morning, having decided to leave it until the weather forecast became clear. Mostly, people book two visits just in case of fog or rain but I was quite prepared to stand in the queue for a second set of tickets of that happened, and despite what you are told about restrictions on numbers, everyone who wants a ticket seems to find one to use.

Talking it over with our local guide, they also pointed out the problems with early morning visits to the site at this time of the year – fog. Mostly the mornings are grey and drizzly, with the mid-day sun burning away any grey for the afternoon. It would be a bit of a bugger to queue for two hours at some ungodly hour just to arrive to the damp grey of fog.

The site also highlights the limitations of what is known, or rather unknown about the Incas. They do not know why the site was abandoned, possibly just because of smallpox brought in to the town by evacuees escaping the Spanish. They don’t know why it was sited in such an inhospitable though beautiful spot at the very end of the valley.

So you wander around a town, built by a culture which had no money, only a barter system where every citizen owed it’s ruler 3 months of the year as work. There are no shops, just houses and fields on endless terraces, some peering down from the tallest mountain just in front of the town.

It is a mad place, madly beautiful but astonishing to believe anyone could rationally site their palace on top of a mountain so far from everywhere that it effectively just disappeared.

It is the detailing of the place that stays with me. The fact that the town is built on a geological faulting that is causing the site to slip apart ever so slowly yet the Incas managed to identify this slippage and build terraces that could cope with it.

It is the constant echo of angles, of the slope of the mountains being echoed in the slop of the roofs of the houses.

The trapezoidal doors, windows and niches in rooms built to slightly lean in on each other, to effectively increase their stability by existing in a state of constantly falling in on each other.

And everywhere around you, the constant shock of such beautiful scenery.

And llamas, always llamas.

Who is mad enough to put their terraces for growing crops at the top of a peak so high and so steep, looking down on Machu Picchu.

And in the houses, the clear stone supports for mezzanine sleeping areas that we saw still in use in a house in Ollantaytambo.

Maybe it isn’t the town ruins so much as the mountains that shock the visitor, but then maybe that’s why the town was built. Maybe it was just so damn beautiful that some local warlord had to live there.