Ruminations from Hurghada: Environment, Climate and Development in Egypt

Recently I was in Hurghada. Maybe not a name that immediately strikes a light in one’s head but still quite a significant place on the Egyptian Red Sea, not far south from the more famous Sharm El Sheikh. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) had agreed with the Egyptian government to organize the 6^th National Evaluation Capacities conference there.

Upon arrival, the participants found themselves in an all-inclusive resort surrounded by thousands of half-naked German, Russian, British and other tourists indulging in numerous different pools, water games and, less so interestingly, the beautiful sandy beach lining the sea. And of course, the watering holes in this dry seashore where numerous. We found ourselves navigating towards the massive conference center in our dark suits and ties in the heat that in the daytime exceeded 30 degrees Celsius past the inquisitive looks of the sunbathers.

Egypt is one of the world's most vulnerable countries to climate change. Its lifeline is the Nile river that gets its start from two branches beyond the national territory: the White Nile at Lake Victoria in Uganda and the Blue Nile in the highlands of Ethiopia. Merging around Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan and Egypt’s southern neighbor, the river flows into the country that was the birthplace of an ancient civilization that predated that of Rome and Greece. Already that civilization, 5,000 years ago, was dependent on the Nile for enabling food production.

Still today, most of Egypt’s almost 100 million people live along the banks of the Nile. Cairo, the chaotic and fabulous capital city of 9.5 million, lies in the northern parts of the country where the fertile river delta begins to fan out. Cairo is defined by the existence of the river that cuts through it. The famous pyramids of Giza are located just outside of the city where the Saharan sand dunes overtook them already a long time ago.

Decades ago, as a young researcher and evaluator, I well remember driving north – downstream, as the Nile somewhat counterintuitively drains into the Mediterranean – in a Peugeot with some much more experienced experts whom I was lucky to have joined on a joint FAO-IFAD mission to define priorities for new investment projects in the Nile delta. The road was straight but rather narrow and the traffic already then was heavy, which did nothing to make me less uneasy shaking at the back of the car in the African heat. We stopped by the Suez Canal, for some refreshments on our way to Port Said on the Mediterranean coast. I remember vividly seeing the tops of great vessels passing through the canal like ghost ships in the desert.

Our goal was to investigate the environmental status of the coastal lagoons – Lake Burullus and Lake Manzala in particular – in the widening delta of the world’s longest river. Conflict had arisen among fishermen and fish farmers in these parts due to overexploitation of the resources and our task was to figure out initiatives that could help the fisheries and lessen the tensions.

The year was 1986 and climate change was still far down the list of worries of those of us concerned with sustainable use of natural resources, including freshwater. We bunked up in the coastal city of Alexandria and soon walked down to the Mediterranean shore. Our senior team members with the linguistic and bargaining abilities strolled to the fishermen pulling in their nets and secured us a delicious meal of freshly caught shrimp that was cooked right there on the beach.

More than two decades later, I was lucky enough to visit Alexandria again and actually spend time in the fabulous reincarnation of its legendary library, the original version of which was destroyed during the Roman period. I was stunned to see how the city had grown, an almost interminable string along the Mediterranean coast. For it was virtually impossible to expand inland in a more concentric manner: the lagoons prevented it as did the soon encroaching Sahara. In Alexandria, I read Naguib Mahfouz’s lovely and melancholy novel Miramar and imagined how the city must have been in the 1960s: a beautiful and cosmopolitan city, distinctly part of the Mediterranean cultural sphere, where cafés dotted the waterfront. It was still lovely, but had grown with too little planning, with traffic on the coastal boulevard threatening pedestrian life both with its speed and its pollution.

Meanwhile in Hurghada by the other sea, a traditional fishing village was being developed with an intrusion of foreign money. In a couple of decades it grew from a small sleepy settlement into a conglomeration of resorts to cater to wealthy Europeans who wanted to explore the fabulous corals of the Red Sea (or just turn coral red themselves from the sun and booze at the resorts). I’ve been to such resorts in the Caribbean and the only thing different in Hurghada was the accent of the people working there and the fact that their first instinct was to address you in German rather than English.

The Red Sea corals suffer equally from multiple threats: sewage from the tourist industry, the massive onslaught by the visiting snorkelers and divers who can’t keep their hands and feet away from them, as well as the global problems of climate change and ocean acidification. Surprisingly, it has been found that the corals in the northern parts of the Red Sea appear to be rather resilient to climate change, but those in the south are barely surviving at their maximum temperature tolerance.

At the conference that focused on how evaluation can contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with its stated goal of “leaving no one behind,” my plea to the participants who included high government officials from Egypt (including a Deputy Minister) and from numerous other countries in the South and the North, as well as staff from UN organizations, civil society, private sector and academia, was that “sustainable development” as it is proclaimed rests on the foundations of the natural environment. If there is someone or something that should not be left behind, it is the natural environment with all its wonders.

Today, climate change combined with population growth that continues at an annual rate of 1.9% is posing tremendous challenges to Egypt, as it is to many countries in arid North Africa and the Middle East. The scarce water resources of the country – 85% of freshwater in Egypt is supplied by the Nile – are overused and abused by urban, agricultural and industrial development (another threat is posed by the upstream countries that need the water to develop their own economies, thus potentially leading to conflict: as I write this, Ethiopia is building a massive dam on the Blue Nile). The unique biological diversity along the Nile is also on the verge of extinction, just like the coral reefs in the southern parts of Red Sea.

A country that has invested so much in its role as a political, economic, cultural and touristic hub in the region, is seeing its natural and cultural assets erode. And it is facing a problem of burgeoning numbers of young people with little hope for advancement despite better education This latter issue, of course, is a major contributor to discontent, social upheaval, rise of Islamism and all the issues that these bring along.

Alexandria, the seaside center up north with a population of more than 5 million, the port where not only fish, but also cosmopolitan ideas and cultural tolerance have landed for millennia, is slowly taken over by the Mediterranean. Sea-level rise has led to rapidly increasing and more frequent floods that severely disrupt life and cause massive amounts of economic loss. The rising Mediterranean also leads to saltwater intrusions into the fertile delta that threaten both agriculture and freshwater resources.

The country that contributes less than 1% of the global greenhouse gas emissions is feeling the brunt of the impacts. As always, when the going gets rough, it’s the poor people that suffer the most.

The good news is that the Government of Egypt appears quite aware of what these challenges mean to the continued economic and social development of the country. The government has attempted to integrate its national strategy for climate change adaptation into its National Development Plan. A number of initiatives related to energy, water, agriculture, coastal zone management and other factors to enhance sustainability and resilience are underway. For the sake of the ancient country and the whole world, we need to hope that these succeed in time.

Sources

Altzitser, Sonia (2019). Red Sea Corals may be Resilient to Climate Change. The Maritime Executive [https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/red-sea-corals-may-be-resilient-to-climate-change]

Conniff, Richard (2017). The Vanishing Nile: A Great River Faces a Multitude of Threats. Yale Environment 360 [https://e360.yale.edu/features/vanishing-nile-a-great-river-faces-a-multitude-of-threats-egypt-dam]

Eissa, Hesham (n.d.). Egyptian Development & Climate Change. Presentation to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) [https://unfccc.int/files/adaptation/application/pdf/nwa_1.2_development_planning_and_climate_change_in_egypt.pdf]

Fine, M., Cinar, M., Voolstra, C.R., Safa, A., Rinkevich, B, Leffoley, D., Hilmi, N. and Allemand, D. (2019). Coral reefs of the Red Sea – Challenges and potential solutions. Regional Studies in Marine Science 25: 100498.

Khalil, Maha T. (2019). Egypt’s Lukewarm Response to Climate Change. Worldcrunch [https://www.worldcrunch.com/tech-science/egypt39s-lukewarm-response-to-climate-change]

UNEP (2018). How Climate Change and Population Growth Threaten Egypt’s Ancient Tresures. United Nations Environment Programme ;https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/how-climate-change-and-population-growth-threaten-egypts-ancient-treasures]

Randy Weston's African Rhythms Quintet

Randy Weston is one of the first and foremost American artists to convincingly incorporate African sounds into the jazz vocabulary. Wait a minute, you might think, African sounds and rhythms have been around in jazz for a long time. Well, so has Randy Weston. The concert at New York’s Jazz Standard club I heard on April 8th, 2010, was part of the weeklong 84th birthday celebration of the maestro. The last time I had heard Weston live was during his 80th birthday celebration at the same venue.

Although jazz has its roots in Africa, it is a quintessentially American invention. The roots were dug up a long time ago, replanted in the soil of the new continent, and cross fertilized with implants from many other traditions. True, band leaders and composers like the great Duke Ellington inserted African influences into their music, like the Duke’s 'Black and Tan Fantasy.' But this was not African music. The real exotic influences from Africa and the Middle East were really introduced only by men like Randy Weston and Yusef Lateef starting in the 1950s.

The big man—Randy Weston stands 2.03 metres (6ft8) tall—came on stage and sat behind the grand piano. The solo introduction soon led to a slow blues in 3/4 tempo in which his long-time band, African Rhythms Quintet, joined, all five musicians donning white African Muslim style caps. The crisp-toned alto saxophone of TK Blue took the lead in stating the theme of the tune and continued with a lively solo. The band’s rhythm section differs from the average jazz combo as it does not include a regular drum kit. Instead, Neil Clarke sat behind three large congas surrounded with cymbals and other percussion instruments. Another feature that makes the rhythm section distinctive is the presence of Alex Blake, another long-term Weston collaborator whose work on the double bass is just unique. In a world full of amazing bass players, I am not aware of anyone else quite like Alex Blake. In these hands, the slow tune soon developed a tension that forced me to sit on the edge of my high bar stool.

Following the alto solo, Randy Weston himself began a solo using distinctly North African tonalities. He was on firm ground, having studied the region’s music for the past half a century. The atmosphere was ripe with Saharan winds as Weston hit the keys carefully choosing the notes using a scale that contained the telltale 1.5 step intervals. As the tension further increased, Blake and Clarke would alternate the slow tempo with sudden bursts of double time.

Sitting down on a low stool and hanging onto the fretboard high above his head, Blake picked the strings with the four fingers of his right hand. He slapped the thick strings and beat the big instrument as if it were a flamenco guitar. At the times I’ve seen him perform, I’ve always feared that any time one or more of his fingertips would just be severed and fly across the room.

The second tune, 'Saucer Eyes,' also started with Mr. Weston’s solo piano introduction. This time it displayed clear ragtime influences, as the leader launched into some mean stride piano. Like all real music reformers, Randy Weston is deeply aware of the history of jazz and stands firmly on the shoulders of his predecessors. The song turned more into a conventional jazz tune, with Neil Clarke playing the role of a conventional drummer with a cymbal ride above the congas. Alex Blake slapped his bass irreverently in the up-tempo piece. The tune also gave the opportunity to the trombonist, Benny Powell, to join in and to show his chops. Again, TK Blue took a solo, his clear alto soaring with references to well-known classics such as 'Take the A Train' and 'St. Thomas.'

Randy Weston was born in Brooklyn in 1926. He is a New Yorker who grew up listening to American piano jazz à la Fats Waller and Duke Ellington (he even recorded their songs in the 1950s) and, later, Thelonius Monk. You can still hear this tradition clearly in his playing.

But his adventurous mind led him to explore other musical styles. At the end of World War II, Weston was sent to the Pacific Theatre where he served as staff sergeant in the Philippines and Okinawa. This experience exposed him to Asian music, which in these archipelagos has a particular flavour and rhythm. In the late-1950s, he started exploring the integration of African musical forms into jazz. Already at that time he created a number of highly original and to my ear extremely successful fusion records, such as Uhuru Afrika and Highlife celebrating the newly independent African states. During those years, Randy Weston travelled to West Africa, visiting countries such as Nigeria and Ghana to study their music and culture.

In fact, Randy Weston clearly sees the connection between jazz and its African roots. According to him, there is no contradiction between the tribal traditions found in the villages of West Africa and the urban culture of New York. This is demonstrated, for example, by his masterful composition, 'African Village Bedford-Stuyvesant,' featured on the wonderful double LP The Spirits of Our Ancestors recorded in 1991. The album features a 9-piece jazz band amended with African percussion and instruments, such as the stringed genbri and karkaba metal castanets, all arranged by Weston’s long-time musical partner Melba Liston who regretfully passed away in 1999. The music benefits from guest appearances by two other great musicians who have sought to expand the geographical limits of expression, Dizzy Gillespie and Pharaoh Sanders.

Like all tunes that recent Thursday evening, the next one also started with the leader’s solo piano. Randy Weston again introduced new elements in his prelude to 'African Sunrise.' Playing a powerful bass with his left hand, Weston combined liberally traditional jazz elements with atonal quirks reminiscent of Monk. After the lengthy introduction, the trombone joined the piano in a low ostinato that evolved into a slow Latin tinged rhythm in 7/4. The alto again took the lead, backed by Blake’s bass and Clarke’s conga and maracas.

The next tune was a ballad featuring the horns. TK Blue’s alto was this time so old-fashioned lyrical that one could imagine sitting in a smoky Harlem jazz den of the 1940s. Alex Blake’s bass highlighted the big instrument’s amazing melodic and percussive possibilities in the right hands.

My first introduction to Randy Weston’s music was his 1972 album Blue Moses. I remember as a young schoolboy visiting the NK record store in Stockholm with my mother and choosing this album based on the intriguing concept that the cover and the names of the tunes conveyed. I also recognized the sidemen listed on the jacket. They included both established veterans, like Freddie Hubbard and Ron Carter, as well as rising stars of the calibre of Billy Cobham and Grover Washington, Jr. Perhaps most importantly, the cover informed me that the group included Hubert Laws, who was a great idol and inspiration to me as an aspiring flute player. While the record was a Creed Taylor production on his successful CTI label, there was nothing too sleek or superficial about it. The music was raw and its North African influences unapologetic. Don Sebesky's arrangements featured more instruments than most of jazz orchestras, including such unusual additions as oboe and the French horn.

Randy Weston himself played the Fender Rhodes throughout the record, which somewhat oddly did not distract from the genuineness of the music. On the contrary, the reverb of the Rhodes produced a haunting atmosphere in the rubato parts of the music against which the vocalist Madame Meddah could wail her Berber voice. At times when exotic rhythms took over, the Rhodes sounded more like a West African balaphone.

The interplay between Carter and Cobham is impeccable, the latter refraining from displaying his most showman-like pyrotechnics. The trumpet, tenor and—yes!—the flute all play inspired solos. Still today, the record holds a central place in my collection and, every time I listen to it, I get the goose bumps when, after a complex rhythmic element on the title track, Cobham cracks the rim of his snare drum indicating the beginning of the most swinging straight drive ever and Hubbard dives into a broad-sounded trumpet solo. Or when the electric piano intro of 'Night in Medina' turns into a compelling slow melody played by the horns, with Laws’ flute and percussionist Airto Moreira’s voice hovering mysteriously around it. Yes, indeed, Blue Moses is still just about the best record ever made.

A number of years ago, I was lucky to catch Randy Weston at the World Financial Centre in downtown Manhattan. That time he had brought with him a group of Gnawa musicians from Morocco to supplement the African Rhythms Quintet. The vast atrium with its evergreen winter garden and huge windows giving to the Hudson River and skylights allowing sunlight in from the blue sky was an appropriate location for the music that really should have been played outdoors. The Gnawa are a Moroccan ethnic group belonging to the Sufi Muslim sect known for their music that involves hypnotic rhythms, call-and-response vocals and string instruments.

The concert turned into a riot. The mood was so celebratory that Randy Weston himself, dressed in a flowing Berber gown and wearing a white North African cap, spent more time dancing with a big smile on his face to the music of the Gnawa than playing the piano. I remember that my wife Yoko and I went home completely exhilarated and exhausted, although it was only afternoon and no other stimulants had been involved apart from the music and the general joy.

Back at Jazz Standard, the final full piece the band played was another slow blues in 3/4 time, with Alex Blake producing rubbery glissandos on his bass. As the concert ended and the big man rose from his piano chair, TK Blue finally picked up his flute. Throughout the concert I had watched longingly at the flute and soprano saxophone that he had brought with him to the stage. Alas, he had until now chosen to focus on the alto. This was the first set in the series and I am sure he’d play more on the smaller winds later in the week. At least I was happy to hear the husky flute blow against the slow North African rhythm as the gentleman we had come to celebrate walked backstage.

I truly wish for many, many more happy birthdays to celebrate with the musical force and genius of Randy Weston.

Tripoli

Libya does not have a great reputation amongst Westerners. That’s too bad, because the country actually has a lot to offer for a visitor: it has unique historic sites—including what is said to be the best preserved Roman ruins outside of Italy in Sabratha and Leptis Magna—decent food and a beautiful Mediterranean coastline. Yet, the US State Department keeps Libya on its watch list and even the Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler included Libya in his travel book Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil.

Libya’s bad rap of course has its roots in the unorthodox rule by the country’s long-time dictator, Muammar al-Gaddafi, whose larger-than-life pictures adorn all public spaces in Tripoli. There are so many of them and most of them different from each other: some depict the leader scanning the horizon for new challenges with a far-sighted look in his glinting eyes, while others show him smiling at his subjects in a fatherly and encouraging manner. Some are clearly from his younger days; others show a more mature Gaddafi sporting a moustache and a goatee. There are even posters of him praying on his knees at a mosque. The pious colonel is personally well-known for travelling with a troupe of gorgeous but lethal female bodyguards.

In 2009, the nation celebrated 40 years of Gaddafi’s rule. Libya has been accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism, and most likely for a good reason. Already in 1986 during the Reagan administration, the United States bombed Tripoli and the Benghazi region accusing Libya of terrorism. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992. These were suspended in 1999 and finally lifted in 2003 when Gaddafi agreed not to pursue weapons of mass destruction and voluntarily gave up his nuclear program. The relations with the West took a new hit in August 2009 when the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish prison due to his terminal cancer. Unwisely, Gaddafi gave the convicted terrorist a hero’s welcome back home.

Personality cult aside, Gaddafi has done many good things for his country. He has posited himself as the self-proclaimed champion of Pan-Africanism, but his is probably the only country on the continent where abject poverty really does not exist. Women’s position is also quite equal compared with most other Arab countries. Women still wear headscarves and dress modestly in Islamic garb, but in all offices that I visited there were many highly professional and outspoken women in senior professional positions. Women’s literacy rate at 78.4 percent is almost as high as that of men—and exceptional in the Arab region. Today, the UN ranks Libyan Arab Jamahiriya—as it is officially called—as a country of ‘high human development.’ Its GDP per capita has doubled from $7,250 in 1990 to $14,364 in 2007 and life expectancy of the Libyans has risen from 62 to 71.6 years (and for women it is now 76.8 years, at par with many industrialized nations!).

One obviously unintended consequence of the international sanctions was that over the decades when the country was isolated ordinary Libyans suffered from deficiencies in education. Due to the isolation, the generation that today occupies important positions is largely monolingual Arabic speakers. Some people speak English, but the language skills of even well-placed government officials tend to be meagre.

The capital, Tripoli where I spent several days in December, is a historical city, dating back to 7th century BCE when it was apparently founded by the Phoenicians. Today it is a clean, white city, despite being Libya’s main port and commercial centre. Coming from anywhere in the neighbouring countries east or west—or north across the sea, for that matter—it gives a neat and organized impression. The architecture is quite attractive and most of the buildings are white, irrespective of whether they are of colonial or Arabic origin. Many have been renovated or are now being renovated. There is no litter on the streets and the traffic is more orderly than in other cities of comparable size.

My travel companions, Ragaa Makharita and my colleague Mike, and I had to visit a number of government offices, many of which were located in the suburbs outside of the city centre. Driving in the daylight confirmed what I had already observed during my first drive into town from the airport at night time. The suburbs were generally neat and orderly. Plenty of new housing seemed to be available and most of the complexes looked rather attractive. I asked Ragaa, an old Libya hand, whether there were any slums in Tripoli. He said no. All the slums that used to be there were or are being cleared and new housing is being created for the inhabitants. There are apparently many new projects that are being constructed by Korean firms. It was striking to see large groups of African day labourers gathered at virtually all major junctions outside of the centre waiting to be picked up for the various construction sites. This entire arrangement thus bypasses the traditional 'development partners' in Europe and North America.

One of the institutes we visited was the Libyan National Meteorological Centre on its new and impressive premises outside of the city. The UN has supported the centre in upgrading its operations and facilities with technical assistance from the World Meteorological Organization and the French Meteorological Services. The spic-and-span facilities now contain state-of-the-art computer systems capable of receiving satellite information and translating it into accurate real-time weather reports. This has been one of the most successful international collaborations in the country in recent years and a flagship project for the UN. What characterized the project and also lay behind its success was that weather services are largely technical and their political dimensions do not seriously challenge any mode of cooperation. The UN Development Programme that was managing the international effort was able to procure equipment and expertise where it was available without getting into the ill-defined issues of governance and democracy.

I had an interesting discussion with two senior officials at the centre, Muftaf Khdashi and Hisham Ganedi, Director of Forecasting and Director of Technical Directorate, respectively, about cloud seeding. Libya, located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara desert, is dry, its natural climate characterized by sparse and erratic rainfall. The country's leader has for long attempted to overcome such challenges to boosting agricultural and industrial development through various schemes, many of them quite bold to say the least. One of the more ‘visionary’ (read: ‘dangerous’) schemes has been the Great Manmade River, which aims to transport huge amounts of water from the Nubian Aquifer to Tripoli, Benghazi and other cities. While Gaddafi has called it the 'Eighth Wonder of the World,' it has been widely criticized for its unknown and potentially disastrous ecological impacts, including exhausting the huge fossil aquifer it draws upon in possibly just a century. But the project has proceeded since 1983 when the Colonel passed it through the General People’s Congress.

Another scheme, implemented by the Libyan National Meteorological Centre where I found myself on that particular sunny but extremely dry morning, pertains to cloud seeding. The aim is to distribute silver iodide into the clouds so that moisture in them will condense around these artificial particles and fall onto the ground as rain. Such technocratic solutions to natural problems are embraced also by other hubristic countries, notably China, with little consideration for their potential unforeseen negative impacts. How is the work going?, I interrogated my hosts as we strolled along the long corridors inside the centre’s headquarters. Not very well, was the answer. While cloud seeding appears to increase rainfall, it is very difficult to manage. Of course, it can only be applied from November to April when in the first place there are some clouds and rains might also appear naturally, so it’s actually hard to verify the actual increment caused by the seeding. More importantly, it’s impossible to accurately direct the rains. The Mediterranean weather patterns are unpredictable and orographic rains fall as moist air cools down while climbing the slopes behind the coastline. Sometimes, the rains become torrential and destroy the very crops they were intended to sooth.

Our visit to the meteorological centre took place on the day following the end of the 2009 climate summit, which had in the last minute produced only a watered down version of the Copenhagen Accords disappointing many activists. One of the many frontlines in the climate change debates is between those who urge serious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and those who believe in technological solutions. On a small scale, the Libyan cloud seeding experiments demonstrate the practical difficulties in managing weather. Influencing global climate through technological means—many of which are now being cooked up in the wild dreams of mad scientists—would be infinitely more difficult and wrought with unimagined and possibly catastrophic consequences.

Clearly, one area where improvements are still needed if Libya is to attract more visitors is service. Ragaa, Mike and I stayed at what used to be one of the better large hotels in the centre of Tripoli. The building had all the necessary attributes to be fine—a solid construction, an elegant old-fashioned lobby, spacious rooms—but it wasn’t. The guest rooms had absolutely awful, narrow beds with only shallow flat mattresses and shabby linen thrown on them. The bathroom had hordes of uninvited non-paying occupants who would scurry to their hiding places brown antennae wagging always when I unexpectedly turned on the lights. After a couple of times, I learned to wait a few seconds before entering the bare room.

Most bizarrely, the hotel would want to receive payment for the room every evening in advance, although I had a reservation with them for the entire period I would stay in the country. Needless to say, this was a cash economy and no credit cards would be accepted. Like in cheap New York eateries that don’t either accept credit cards, there was an ATM in the lobby. So, one had to withdraw the funds and provide the lazy cashier a thick pile of well-worn dinars in order for him to agree to open the room door for you. On my last night, I had carefully miscalculated my supply of dinars, so that I wouldn’t have any left over upon leaving, and fell short by four (amounting to very little in any convertible currency). The man who knew me by then did let me into my room while I tried to contact Mike to lend me the missing notes. Unfortunately, he had gone out and couldn’t help at that very moment. Later, the cashier made a big joke about this to the both of us, repeatedly telling in halting English that I wouldn’t be able to leave in the morning without doling out the money.

On the last evening, our small group headed to the Alsaht Street fish market along the Mediterranean coast. Ragaa was our eager guide, as during his last visit to Tripoli he had been very disappointed to find the entire market closed. The evening was already dark when we arrived at the open door market but the numerous stalls were filled with fresh fish and other sea creatures. The vendors were all calling to us to inspect their catch. We approached one friendly fisherman and each selected a silver sided medium sized Dorato and instructed the delighted man to simply grill it to perfection. As a next step, we selected the restaurant where we would enjoy our meal. This was easy, as Ragaa led us directly to his favourite establishment, Astakosa, a spacious but warm restaurant spread over two floors. The system was interesting. The fishermen and the restaurants were independent of each other and one could order the former to bring the prepared fish to any one of the restaurants established adjacent to the fishing port. The restaurants made their money by selling the accompanying rice, cous-cous and vegetables. We started our meal with a wonderful assortment of olives, fresh salads and various mezze, as well as delicious seafood soup. When the fish came, it was grilled to perfection and tasted heavenly with ample lemon squeezed on it.

The enjoyable dinner helped me to endure the innate jokes of the lethargic cashier at the hotel and my full stomach provided a needed extra cushion against the hard cardboard bed before leaving Tripoli in the wee hours of the morning.

Casablanca

Casablanca. A city made legendary by a movie. The name conjures up images of intrigue, danger and, most of all, romance in a distinctly unromantic time. Casablanca is the largest city in Morocco and a major port on the Atlantic coast. The city, like the country, is quite liberal and rather cosmopolitan, defying the stereotypes of today’s Arab world. In fact, the North African nation of originally Berber culture is a relative newcomer to the ranks of Arab nations having been conquered by the Arabs arriving there via Andalusia only in the 8th century. Spain is just a stone’s throw away, only 14 km from the north coast across the Strait of Gibraltar.

Morocco has changed rapidly in the past couple of decades, much of it to the better. I was in town attending an international conference on national evaluation capacity, which focused on monitoring and evaluation for public sector accountability. The idea is that if citizens follow and assess the performance of their government, the latter has an incentive to ensure results that benefit the people. Transparent systems that monitor the performance of authorities and evaluate in an independent and credible manner the actual results of policies and programs can be powerful tools for democratic governance. The conference was organized jointly by the UN Development Programme and the newly established National Human Development Observatory under the Moroccan Prime Minister’s Office, known as ONDH based on its French name (Obvervatoire National du Développement Humain).

On the evening before the start of the conference, I was sitting in a lovely traditional restaurant, La Fibule, serving wonderful Moroccan cuisine. The host was Rachid Benmokhtar Benabdellah, president of ONDH, an intelligent and gentle man with a warm glint in his eye. Benmokhtar had studied IT engineering in France and started his working life with IBM. He had made most of his career in the private sector until he had been appointed Minister of Education by the King. He told stories about him being the first minister in the country to visit schools in remote rural areas and how his staffers were horrified when the minister wanted to talk freely with the local people.

The meal started with an amazing selection of mezze, small plates of North African starters ranging from hummus, babaganoush, tomato and beet salads to tasty pastries with meat and vegetable fillings. There were fantastic ornaments in the ceiling and the walls carved so delicately that one could only stare in awe at the craftsmanship. We were sipping good locally produced Cabernet Sauvignon and discussing the situation in Morocco.

“We’ve had some bombings here,” said Benmokhtar, “but always when there’s trouble here there’s some link to Europe, usually Belgium or France, from where the radicalized Islamists come from.” The soft spoken engineer continued: “Moroccans are not strict Muslims. It’s all mixed up with other traditions here.” This was confirmed by, Salima Aissaoua, a young woman who had only recently returned from France to join ONDH. Many Moroccans, like her own family, are not even believers but enjoy all celebrations, whether of Muslim, Christian or Berber origin. I noted that I had seen very few headscarves during my brief stay in Casablanca. Salima said that there was absolutely no pressure to wear a headscarf and that in the countryside it was even freer. This sounded counterintuitive, but on second thought may be understandable, as the Berber culture remains strong in the rural areas.

Another ONDH colleague, Mohammed Bijaad, was a Berber from Agadir. He had never learned English, so our discussion relied on my halting French. Bijaad originally went to a French school in Agadir. Then in 1960 a major earthquake struck his hometown and little Mohammed had to be evacuated with his family. Just when it would have been time for him to start learning English, his new school in the interior introduced Arabic instead.

As we continued with the main course, a delicious pot of chicken, rice and vegetables baked in a clay pot, Tajine, we were entertained by a highly skilful musician playing Oud, a traditional lute, and singing joyous songs whose lyrics mixed love and longing with religious themes. Some Moroccan colleagues joined in the songs and enthusiastically clapped their hands to the complex rhythms. It was a spontaneous and relaxing evening with excellent food and wine and delightful entertainment.

The conference started the following morning with more than sixty participants from twenty-two governments in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as select representatives from international organizations. One of the key discussions from the beginning focused around who has the right to evaluate government policy. The room became divided. On the one side were those, like Angela Bester, a former government official from South Africa now with the private firm Deloitte-Touche, who in her opening salvo questioned the assumption that policy was always right and the tendency to blame everything on poor implementation. On the other side were some government officials, vocally led by a gentleman from Ghana, who argued that only the government itself could assess policy and, ultimately in a democracy, the voters would decide whether it worked. The role of independent evaluation was only to focus on programs and projects. This debate would be a recurrent theme over the coming three days.

In the evening I wanted to escape the hotel where the conference was held and where all the participants stayed. I went for a walk in the city centre—Centre Ville—where we were located. French is more commonly spoken in Morocco, at least in the big cities, than Arabic and I had noted that amongst all the government officials and academics I had met French was the language in which they would communicate with each other. I crossed l’Avenue de l’Armée Royale and entered into lively quarters with narrow streets and shops. I passed a bar from where an animated cacophony of discussion was flowing to the street. Its name was Chatan. With only a second’s hesitation, I entered the premises and ordered a Stork (bière de luxe première). The place was a far cry from what one could expect in an Islamic country. It was far from sophisticated (an understatement). Everyone—every single one of the patrons—was smoking and the air was thick with blue cigarette smoke. The age bracket was wide, I would say from people in their twenties into their sixties, which suited me just fine. I would melt in, I gathered. The present king and his father, King Hassan V and VI, stared from the wall above the bar counter. The old Italian hit Volare turned into Michael Jackson, while Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones were silently robbing a vault on the small old TV screen. A large elderly woman in a pink kaftan was gesticulating agitatedly to her companions. A guy leaning on the counter already had five empty beer bottles in front of him—and it was only 7 pm on a week night. In one corner, a young woman dressed in jeans and a sweater stood alone smoking and drinking beer. At a nearby table, a shabby looking man was pouring beer into the mouth of a woman wearing a baseball cap.

While I was taking in the scene, I felt a bump and thought the man with a moustache and dirty red jacket had accidentally crashed into me. To my surprise, he handed me another bottle of Stork and said in gruff English that it was for me. We went through an elaborate handshake, shifting grips and ending in a rough bear hug, as I was profusely thanking him. The man returned to his table and his red wine. In Casa, the lingua franca is French, yet the man had spoken to me in English. Apparently, I hadn’t quite melted in and passed for a local. Maybe he was a seaman who had sailed the seven seas and visited bars like this in innumerable ports? Or was I just romanticizing things?

The port remains an important part of this city of some 3.5 million inhabitants. The architecture is today mostly modern. Wide thoroughfares cross the centre. The old town, Medina, still stands and is surrounded by the tall wall since time immemorial. Inside it is bustling with endless alleys, small shops and a bazaar. There are also cafés and small hotels. It is a place where one had better keep track of the wallet, both for pickpockets in the crowded and winding alleys, as well as the shopkeepers determined to part you from your money. Bargaining was never a sport I mastered, so I mostly focused on enjoying the colourful scene in which locals and visitors mingled. Casablanca is not a touristic city. Its raison d’être is purely commercial.

Morocco’s economy is doing relatively well. On my first day while driving from the capital of Rabat to Casablanca by the fine houses lining the churning ocean front, I asked the driver, Habibi, about the economy. His initial comment: “Ça va.” But the business was still good, he elaborated, and generally things were looking up.

The United Nations ranks Morocco as a ‘medium human development’ country. The country has made strides in the recent past. Its GDP per capita has more than doubled from $1,700 to more than $4,000 in just two decades. Social indicators show similar improvements: life expectancy has risen from 62 to 71 years and adult literacy from 34 to 52 percent. Especially female literacy levels have improved rapidly. While in 1987, only 22 percent of the women could read, this figure is now 43 percent. In particular, during the rule of the present youthful King Hassan VI, the human rights situation in Morocco has improved significantly. Still, big differences do exist between urban and rural dwellers. Some 14 percent of Moroccans still subsist on less than $2 per day.

On the day after the conference, I walked to the Mosque Hassan II, which took me about 45 minutes along a main street. It passed between the wall of the old Medina and the harbour; then onwards past the fashionable restaurants of La Sqala and Rick’s Café, which successfully capitalizes on its imitation of the scene where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman meet. There was a segment that was quite slum-like, although nothing compared with the shanties in other African countries further south. Women there wore their traditional djellabas. Like everywhere, poverty and tradition went hand in hand here.

The mosque, while not a historical building, is impressive nevertheless. It was commissioned by its namesake King Hassan II in 1980 and was completed only in 1993. The construction is said to have cost $800 million. It is located in a gorgeous spot right on the shore of the open Atlantic Ocean. The huge yard with the smaller buildings surrounding it reminded me of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The mosque has a capacity to accommodate 25,000 worshippers and its minarets rise to the height of 210 metres.

While I was admiring the considerable waves breaking to the shore by the Corniche, Casablanca’s seaside entertainment district, I met Mohammed Sharif, a man of my own age or perhaps a few years older. He introduced himself as a tour guide and after some chitchat offered his services to me. I told him that I unfortunately didn’t have time for sightseeing. This was partially true, as I had reserved the afternoon and evening for myself, having spent several days in the company of many people. We nevertheless talked for a while. Today was Hijra, the Muslim new year, marking the Prophet’s and his followers’ move from Mecca to Medina in the year 622 CE. This was a big holiday and a long weekend all over the Islamic world. Here in relatively secular Morocco people enjoyed the long weekend. Like Mohammed said: ”In Morocco religion is not that important. We welcome everyone here, Christians, Jews, Muslims.”

A powerful wind blew from the sea raising dust into the air from the dry sidewalk. My eyeglasses were dimmed by the salt in the air spraying from the breaking waves. Mohammed knew that this northerly wind had brought first snow into the Atlas mountains.

I walked back to Centre Ville. Everything was dusty and my throat was dry. I bought a Fanta from a kiosk and found an old shoeshine man. He did a good job on my dusty shoes. There was a Moroccan man standing next to me having his shoes shined. I asked him how much I should pay; he told me 5 dirhams. When I gave the shiner his five dirham coin plus some change, he protested wildly. Expectations are that foreigners should add another zero at the end of the bill.

I had indeed decided to enjoy my last evening alone in Casablanca. I started it with a visit to a sauna to relax my sore muscles after my walk of several hours earlier in the day. Clean and equipped with an appropriate thirst, I then again crossed l’Avenue de l’Armée Royale and entered Saillant, a bar that I had already visited on earlier occasion. It is in the same neighbourhood as Chatan, but a notch above in style and clientele. It still is just a simple establishment with a long counter and a few wooden tables. Like on my earlier visits, I was the only foreigner. I ordered a Stork from the bar maid who reminded me of Herman Munster. When I took out a 100 dirham note to pay, she pleaded with me to find smaller change. The equivalent of $12 was far too large a denomination for this place. She only relented when I promised to have a second beer afterwards. Having served me, she returned to her own beer and cigarette while Egyptian style pop played on the background.

I continued my trip and followed a route that I had memorized from a map that I had studied prior to leaving my hotel this evening. The shop-lined pedestrian streets and plazas with fountains in the city centre were crowded with people and the lights from the various establishments provided a cosy atmosphere in the darkening night. After one junction, the street turned dark and quiet and I started to doubt my mental map. Just when I was about to turn around, I detected the sign to Al Mounia. A wooden door opened to a garden and I walked through it to the restaurant known for its authentic Moroccan cuisine. The two small rooms were decorated with elaborate carvings. A sofa circled the walls and small round copper tables were arranged in front of it. The place was not crowded yet. In a nearby table were three men discussing in Swedish. The waiters, all men, wore red fezzes on their heads, pasha pants, vests and pointed slippers. While thinking about what to eat, I started the meal with succulent olives and delicious bread, which I washed down with local Cuvée du President Cabernet. I decided to order brochettes kefta—Moroccan grilled meatballs—which came with six plates with different kinds of salads of tomato, onion, eggplant, zucchini, carrots and peppers. The food was exquisite both to the palate and the eye, and one could hardly eat a healthier yet fulfilling meal. By the time I left around 9:30 p.m., the place was starting to fill up. With the Swedes also gone, all customers were locals.

Not quite done yet, I headed to Cas-Bar, which I had heard was a hot nightspot in Casa. At 11 p.m. the place was still sedate but people were starting to arrive in groups. The majority appeared to be young women and all were Moroccan. The theme turned out to be karaoke, but what a feast it turned out to be. With the exception of a few English pop songs, all of the songs that evening were in Arabic. A bald headed DJ in the corner made sure that the right discs were turning. Without exception, the singers were good. They attacked with flair the polyrhythmic songs with meandering melodies. Two men sang a series of duets in complex harmonies. A particular young woman in a black miniskirt stood up to sing several songs with the panache of a professional karaoke star. The only place where the Islamic propriety was evident was the videos accompanying the songs: instead of people, they showed bees pollinating flowers. Their meaning would hardly elude the revellers.

On the last day of the conference Benmokhtar had once and for all settled the question of who could evaluate policy. In his final speech, he recalled how King Hassan VI was concerned with the lack of development in the country. While in purely economic terms Morocco was almost as wealthy as Portugal, it was lagging seriously behind in terms of human development. The King appointed a group headed by Benmokhtar to evaluate the policies of the past decades to find out what had gone wrong. The evaluation was highly critical and identified all the areas where the country’s policies were amiss: education, distribution of resources, gender, democratic governance, health inequities, and the differences between urban and rural areas. All findings of the evaluation were made public and decisions were taken to revise policies accordingly. Evaluating policy requires political will and courage, concluded Benmokhtar. As he said, the King did not have to worry about re-election. The point didn’t go unnoticed by many political appointees in the audience.