Memories of an airfield 6 August, 2010

We apologise for the delay in take-off

Thanks to some good friends whom I had better leave nameless, in case someone later decides they were inadvertently breaking any rules, I had the chance to retrace some of my earliest steps before we left Cyprus in June.

Going nowhere

A visit to the old Nicosia International Airport, now a UN-guaranteed de-militarised zone, provided an interesting glimpse back into my own childhood and a poignant reminder of how corrosive has been the modern history of the island.

It didn’t, sadly, provoke any new recollections, nor did I discover much in the way of scenery and buildings that I could remember.

Did I once live here?

My earliest memories are from Cyprus. There aren’t many of them, and most have been augmented by later family story-telling, but I have some clear glimpses burned into my neurons by strong childish emotions that accompanied the events in them.

Careful where you point that ...

My parents were serving with the Royal Air Force when I was a toddler in the late 60s. It was a time of ferment, post-independence and featuring efforts by Greek Cypriots to control their Turkish peers and drive out the British. It was before the Turkish invasion of 1974, which was itself triggered by an attempted coup by Greek soldiers.

Little of that made much impression on me. I remember the first time I gleefully ran away with the other kids across the ‘bondoo’, an area of rough ground behind the house which my mother was convinced was home to a thousand venomous snakes. I could hear her shouting, but deliberately pretended not to hear. I must have been three or four. This is how I know that children are not born innocent.

Broken windows and guano

I can also remember walking alone on a path to visit my friend Karen. It could only have been 200 metres away. A stranger was walking towards me. He stepped to the outside of the pavement at the same time I did. He stepped to the inside, while I mirrored the step. We both made one more spontaneous effort to get around each other and failed – and I ran home crying. How curious that, with everything else going on, that event carries such weight in my mind.

Another moment that has affected me all my life was the birthday party of a slightly older peer across the road. I didn’t know many of the other children and was shy. The mum sat me down at the table and asked me what I wanted to eat. I indicated a slice of bread and what I suppose I took to be a jar of chocolate spread. They let me spread it, and I put it on thickly, then shoved a huge bite in my mouth. And that, oh reader, is the last time I ate Marmite. Even the smell makes me gag, to this day.

Anglican church, Nicosia Airport

We lived in “married quarters” near the airfield on what was called East Road – east of the runway, presumably. No-one I spoke to at the airfield this year could identify where that road might have been; most of the remaining roads are named after trees. There is a large area in which old houses and buildings have been demolished, and I suspect our old house is one of those.

The Anglican church at which I attended Sunday School is still there, and the old source of food, the NAAFI. The school I was too young to attend is now the headquarters of the British military contingent.

Dog-tired on the long airport road

The airport itself is a virtual corpse, held in paralysis between its once vibrant life and a decent burial. You walk through two inches of bird excrement to trace the route past the ticket desks and passport office, through duty free with its crumbling, filthy seats, and to the cavernous empty departure hall. A generation of filth and decrepitude has not erased the recognisable marks of its former trade, but it has turned it into a nightmare parody. It is a film set from Planet Of The Apes, a vision of the post-apocalypse.

Outside, there are at least two more corpses, the remains of aeroplanes that did not make it out when the Turkish exercised their ‘rights’ as a guarantor power and invaded in 1974. One civilian plane was apparently shot down after take-off; the other never made it off the ground.

The airport is now part of the 180-kilometre-long buffer zone protected by the UN and keeping the Turkish controlled north from the Greek-influenced south. This zone, which includes almost 350 square kilometres of land, is said to be a great wildlife reserve, and is more than seven kilometres across at its widest – but in the pedestrianised heart of the capital, Nicosia, it can be crossed in three steps.

This works for nobody

There is no doubt that it also represents the preserved agony of a generation on both sides of the divide. Like my own fleeting childhood glimpses, it is a powerful memory fixed by the howl of emotion that accompanied it. The politics that led to the division were stupid – on both sides – and the lack of a resolution ever since still is. But the impact of that actions has divided communities, families and a nation for nearly 40 years and more than a hundred thousand displaced people would like the dividing line to disappear so they can return to their family homes and lands and take up life on a united island once again.

Northern Cyprus … branded 29 November, 2009

The flag is clearly visible on Google Earth, even at a relatively high altitude

It isn’t easy to get too involved in the political life of Cyprus, especially as a recently arrived visitor. Every argument has a counter, and every historical grievance has antecedents on an island that has been so strategic for so many empires … including, historically, one’s own. But some things can’t really be avoided – if only because they keep cropping up in your photographs.

Point your camera north from any high ground in the capital, and there’s a strong chance that you’ll get a Turkish flag in the shot. Clearly visible on the Kyrenia Mountains, in the Turkish-occupied northern part of the island, is the giant flag seen at right, in the image.

At night, the section on the left (“proud to be Turkish”) is illuminated in flashing lights.

This is propaganda on a rub-it-in-their faces scale, celebrating the 1974 occupation of the north by Turkey. They’d say it was protecting the Turkish-Cypriot population after a coup by Greek Cypriots; the south (and most of the rest of the world) consider it an illegal invasion that has left thousands of Greek Cypriots displaced from their homes for a generation, tens of thousands of Turks imported into the north of the island, and Nicosia the last divided capital in the world.

Getting nearer to the controversial flag

All that aside, the scale of this effort to brand the geography of the north with the Turkish flag is extraordinary. It’s visible on Google Earth, the source of the top image (once you find the flag and zoom out, you can still clearly see its location while most of the island’s outline is visible). It’s visible from across the great plain that makes up the centre of the island, and it’s increasingly visible as you head north.

The scale of the job is clearest when you’re nearest

When you drive up to it, the scale of the endeavour to produce it becomes ever-clearer. It helps to produce this kind of thing if you have an occupying army measured in the tens of thousands, I suppose, but that’s a lot of paint and a lot of electricity by night.

Religious leaders rebuke politicians 19 February, 2009

In a move recalling the days of dissent at the end of former President Daniel arap Moi’s regime, Kenya’s religious leaders today lambasted the current president and prime minister to their faces.

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga were on-stage during a public memorial and fund-raising event for those who died in two recent, horrific fires.

The leaders of various Christian denominations, the Moslems and the Hindus took it in turns to get behind the microphone, fix the country’s “elite” by the eye, and tell them what a mess they have made of things.

The media reports Bishop Boniface Adoyo of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya as saying: “When you joined hands to sign the National Accord, Kenyans expected the best leadership ever. However, Kenyans are concerned that they are witnessing the opposite. They are discouraged, ashamed, disillusioned and angry.”

That’s a pretty good summary of how informed Kenyans feel.  A friend in my gym sat on a bench last week, shaking his head and grimacing.  “This lot are worse than any of the ones who came before,” he said.  “People in Kenya are starving, and now they find that the leaders are stealing the maize and selling it in South Sudan for their own profit. They have no shame.”

John Githongo, the former Kenya government anti-corruption “tzar” who had to run for his life when he, err, tackled corruption, is back in town. John works for World Vision now, though I suspect the fire in him to denounce the awful and morale-sapping lack of leadership in this country is a powerful temptation to return to his old professional territory. He is touting a book, co-written with author Michaela Wrong, titled, It’s Our Turn To Eat.

That’s an East African euphemism that enshrines the idea that a leading politician is expected to rake off money from the country for his tribal peers while he’s in power – knowing that his successor will do the same, just as his predecessors did. Kenyatta, the first president, was Kikuyu. Moi was Kalenjin.  Kibaki is Kikuyu but his Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, is a Luo and (most observers believe) won the presidential election a year last December, but had the victory stolen from him. That led to the worst rioting this country has seen since independence and brought us to the brink of a civil war because … the Luo felt it was their turn to eat.

I’m not sure that anyone but the most naively optimistic really believed the ‘Grand Coalition’ that was cobbled together to put an end to the violence really would achieve righteousness, peace and harmony.  We got what we expected – what Githongo calls a ‘feeding frenzy’, with a double allocation of ministers ripping into the country’s resources.  They are not only shameless, they are crass and amateurish in the way they steal, and now it’s unravelling because every citizen has it thrown in their face every day.  The poor get poorer, while … well, you get it.

“You have been reluctant to punish your friends who are greedy; you have neglected the internally displaced persons; you have not acted decisively on insecurity and extra-judicial killings,” the statement by the religious leaders intones.

The question is, what will Kenyans do about it?  We saw in December 2007 that, if nothing is done, some elements are quite capable of rising up in dreadful violence. But over and again it is the people who suffer, the fellow citizens, not the leaders who have ripped them off.

The decision by the religious leaders to throw off caution and speak out is the best hope for this country today. We need a moral voice which can name the sin and call for action without violence.  It could be a dangerous decision, because campaigners have died in the past in similar circumstances and repression is always possible.  How far our esteemed leaders will go to protect their food supply remains to be seen.