Kathmandu and Bhaktapur: Growth and Conservation

Kathmandu had changed in the 21 years I had not visited. The city had swelled with migrants from the countryside and was now home to more than 4 million people. In the meantime, the valley in the Himalayan foothills where the city is located had not miraculously expanded. Consequently, the place was now crowded. It was no longer the quaint village-like old town it had been in the late-1980s and early-1990s when I used to come here. On my first morning back, I went to the New Road area in the center of the city. Most of the buildings were still the same old ones, now distinctly rundown, although new commercial buildings with glass walls that reflected the scenery and shiny malls had sprung up here and there. The Chinese center looked particularly impressive. The leisurely pace was gone and the place was bustling with people hurrying to get wherever it was they were going. There were peasant looking women and men carrying huge loads on their backs and heads, their sun-drenched faces lined and leathery making them look old (although many were probably younger than me). Women wearing colorful saris mingled with young people dressed in jeans. A couple of farmer women sat on the pavement selling fruit from baskets amidst the busy pedestrians.

Most obviously, there was the traffic. Where there had been lots of bicycles and few cars, the bikes were now almost gone—I only saw one pedicab that morning—and cars, motorbikes and scooters ruled the streets. A lone traffic police stood on the pedestal of a status at an intersection trying to create order in the chaos. The officer’s mouth and nose were covered with a cloth mask, wisely, as the exhaust fumes would choke anyone standing in the middle for any length of time. The driver from our office who had taken me downtown had things to say about the traffic and the pollution. “These people are from the rural areas. They have never lived in the city and don’t know anything about traffic rules, nor did they ever learn to drive in the first place,” he lamented. As we waited at another junction where another officer, this time a woman, made valiant efforts to directing the crowds, the driver had a long story about futile efforts to control air pollution that had been in place for the better part of the past decade. The bottom line seemed to be that the government did not want to enforce the rules, as it would have meant replacing all the official vehicles that the city nor the national government could never afford. Consequently, everyone continued to use the noisy motorbikes and old cars without catalyzers, and the antique buses continued to belch thick smoke into the mountain air. It’s not that there were no new cars, as well, just that these had been added to the existing fleet of ancient vehicles.





Even under normal circumstances, developing country cities grow at breakneck speeds. People move to the cities for the economic opportunities that exist in them, even if it means living in a slum. At the same time, they continue to have many children, as if from an old habit, although the children in the city no longer provide the same useful workforce they were on the farm. With improved healthcare, sanitation and nutrition, child mortality has decreased and more children survive. All this contributes to a huge boost in city sizes. Now more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, many of them enormous mega-cities. Out of the 10 largest cities in the world, 6 are now in the developing countries (and 7 in Asia).


Kathmandu’s growth was still a special case. A long-lasting Maoist rebellion had chased people away from the countryside. Originally, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) declared an armed rebellion on February 13, 1996, with the objective of establishing a communist state. The Maoists opposing what admittedly was rather a feudal system prevailing in Nepal terrorized people for a decade. There were forced ‘land reforms,’ whereby poor farmers lost their lands to collectivization, and plenty of violence against perceived enemies of the revolution, as well as between the Maoists and the government forces. Many people died during the conflict. At the same time, as so often happens, some revolutionaries descended into criminality, while criminals saw the opportunity to make money by pretending to be revolutionaries (think of similar cases in, say, Colombia or the southern islands of the Philippines). Kidnappings for ransom became common and the victims often got killed by the bandits whether their family or company paid up or not. In the Terai region in the south, gangs would haul their victims across the border to India not to be seen again. The situation only changed when a comprehensive peace accord was signed on November 21, 2006, which allowed the Maoists to join the transitional government. While they later emerged as the largest party in the Constituent Assembly, they never gained the majority. Instability in Nepalese politics has continued.

The purpose of my trip related to an evaluation my office had conducted about UNDP’s contributions to national development results in Nepal over the past 8 years. These had been particularly turbulent years in the history of the country. Apart from the internal conflict that had peaked during the period, an extraordinary event had added to the extreme political turmoil. On June 1, 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra in an alcohol fueled craze shot and killed nine members of the royal family, including his own father King Birendra and mother Queen Aiswarya. It is said he was mad at his parents for opposing his marriage to a girl from a rival family. The revered royal family had been virtually the only institution that had kept the kingdom together. Following the regicide, a new king, Gyanendra, was crowned. This signaled the beginning of the end of the monarchy. Gyanendra dissolved the parliament and suspended elections indefinitely in 2002 following the failure of peace talks with the rebels. The state of emergency was lifted only in April 2005 under international pressure and the parliament was finally reinstated a year later. Immediately afterwards, the newly established parliament, quite understandably, voted unanimously to curtail the king’s political powers. In December 2007, the parliament voted to abolish the monarchy altogether and the constituent assembly declared Nepal a republic on May 28, 2008.


During this period, UNDP had done its best to support post-conflict recovery and a transition to democracy. Things were peaceful now and Nepal had been turned into a parliamentary democracy (with the Maoists learning to play by the rules in the parliament) with an emerging federal structure. Local elections had not yet been held—the security situation did not yet allow for it and there was too much uncertainty in the government—and consequently appointed local officials did not feel accountable to the electorate. We heard lots of complaints about rampant corruption in the rural areas.

One afternoon I had free time and joined one of our local consultants, Kanta Singh, who had promised to take our South African consultant Angela Bester to visit Bhaktapur, a World Heritage Site just half an hour’s drive to the east from Kathmandu. Half an hour, that is, without traffic. Including the driver, we were four people crammed into the tiny Hyundai as we hit the traffic. We started in Lalitpur, a peaceful neighborhood of small streets on a hill where I was staying, and headed across the city. The road towards the airport was being widened. For already two decades, apparently, there had been a ban to construct buildings within a certain limit from the existing road because of the eventual plans to widen the road. However, people had ignored it and now, finally, when the road project was underway, the authorities were in the business of leveling illegally constructed houses. We passed official buildings heavily guarded by police in camouflage uniforms and riot gear armed with guns and long sticks. The congestion got worse before we reached the city limits. In one spot, hundreds of small vans and buses transporting people seemed to stop to let off their passengers and to attract more, thus creating a near standstill. The road passed just below the landing route to the airport and several planes appeared to be heading straight towards us only to roar past almost touching the rooftops.

Once we hit the highway towards Bhaktapur, the traffic eased and our car picked up speed. “Ten years ago, this was an agricultural area and we came here to get our vegetables directly from the farmers,” Kanta explained. Now the entire road was lined with new construction, buildings of up to 5 stories high. In between there were still small patches of agriculture. Rice paddies could be seen on the slopes leading to small creeks. What struck me was how shoddy the construction looked. Most buildings seemed to consist of red bricks piled up on top of each other, often in a seemingly haphazard way. Nepal did have a building code, according to Kanta, but nobody really enforced it. Sitting on the edge of the Indian and Eurasian plates, this was earthquake country and I suspected most of the new buildings would not stand a chance if a big one hit the area.





Bhaktapur, just 13 km east of the modern capital, is considered the cultural capital of Nepal. It has been restored with technical cooperation from Germany and is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Originally an agricultural market and artisan town, its history can be traced back to the 7th century C.E. It is built on a hill with narrow winding roads. According to tourist information, it is “geographically shaped as a conch-shell and geometrically designed into the Tantric fabric shaped Shree Yantra.” I take them at their word on this. Suffice it to say that the city is lovely and wonderfully preserved. It is still a perfectly living piece of history. The artisanal legacy of bronze-casting, carving, masonry, painting and other crafts lives on, while much of the economy seems to have turned to the tourist industry, with numerous small shops lining the streets. As we headed towards the Durbar Square in the middle of the town, we met with a wedding celebration. The proceeding was headed by a brass band that was blowing away with abandon, the trumpeters, other horn players and drummers dressed snappily in red jackets. Old men and women carried traditional items and candles in front of the small car wrapped in celebratory decorations that was carrying the wedding couple. The guests—men dressed in Western suits, women in gorgeous saris of deep red, yellow, green and gold—followed behind on foot.






Separating ourselves from the celebrators, we explored Bhaktapur on foot for the next 3 hours. Here in the town between the fabulous squares, like the Durbar, Taumadhi and Dattatreya Squares, that housed all the incredible temples and palaces, regular people lived. Their houses were old and many still not renovated. We could see signs from old earthquakes that had bent and twisted old brick walls into odd shapes. Even the amazing five centuries old Fifty-Five Windows Palace was badly damaged in the powerful 1934 earthquake. A beautiful little girl was leaning against the wall of her house—several stories high—that had cracked so badly that the residents had erected a pole in the adjacent alley to prevent the side wall of the building from collapsing.








One of the beauties of Bhaktapur and Nepal in general is how for hundreds of years Buddhism and Hinduism have existed peacefully side by side. Bhaktapur has temples for both religions, but sometimes they seem so mixed that it is hard to say which religion they really belong to. I suppose the correct—and most beautiful—answer would be: they belong to both. On another morning when we had a few hours of free time between appointments, Angela and I walked over to Patan Square, another restored World Heritage Site in Lalitpur. In its museum I again reflected with fascination upon the intermingling of the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Not only were they practiced side by side, their very deities and sacred texts were intertwined. (Similarly in Japan, where it is said 90% of the people are Shintoist and 80% are Buddhist, religions—or perhaps more correctly traditions—coexist. One cannot help wonder what it is with these Middle Eastern religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—that makes them so intolerant of what each sect perceives as the only correct orthodoxy.)





We had a good guide in Kanta’s driver whose home was close by and he was quite familiar with Bhaktapur and could show us out of the way attractions. At one point he led us through a small porch leading to a tiny inner yard in between residential buildings. The yard contained a small Hindu temple with an altar for sacrifices attached to it. The altar and the ground beneath it were splattered with the red of the blood of the chicken and goats that had been slaughtered there. A beautiful black cat with a shiny fur presided over the square languidly strolling around, ignoring us.


One of the interesting parts of the walking tour was to observe how the old social mores still prevailed. Kanta showed us a number of water wells, which were traditionally social gathering points for women. A particularly large one was protected by a statue of a cobra, with a serpentine carving surrounding it. The water points could be found in many places of the city and it was clear they still served a social function for the women. The men stuck to themselves and when the afternoon advanced one could see pairs and groups of them sitting around the squares, often on the steps leading to temples or palaces making them part of the everyday life of the town dwellers.




I wanted to buy some good Nepali tea, which is similar to but less well known than Darjeeling (some tea connoisseurs even consider the Nepali variety to be superior to the Indian). I was guided to a small store kept by a sweet and rather sophisticated young couple. On the wall there was a snapshot of the couple in Paris where they had gone for their honeymoon. They showed me the various varieties from the most highly priced white-tipped tea. My goal was to settle for the second flush, which is harvested in the season between May and July, and has a lush mellow taste.

While inspecting the teas, I couldn’t help getting carried away by the lovely flute music coming from the stereo. I asked the husband about it and he explained it to be traditional Nepali music. The band, Kutumba, plays traditional Nepali tunes and instruments—flutes, strings, drums and bells—in an improvisatory style. When we had established that I was particularly fond of Asian flute music, he introduced me to a contemporary version by Kala Chakra, which was now popular in Nepal. “Lounge,” I suggested as we sampled the music; “Fusion,” corrected the owner. Either way, the music captured the tradition in a contemporary electronic, yet lovely manner. Later in the evening, beautiful flute sounds again drifted to my ears. It turned out that there was another wedding procession that had made a more traditional musical choice, with a band of young people playing the bamboo flutes from the region.





By the time we returned to Kathmandu, the night had fallen and with no streetlights it was pitch dark. The driver decided to take a shortcut through Patan. Its narrow streets were full of people, cars, motorbikes, dogs, an occasional goat. Three-wheeled motorized rickshaws, here called ‘Tempu’ and larger than the famous Tuk-Tuks of Bangkok, were cruising the streets and abruptly stopping for passengers. Our tiny Hyundai zipped in between buildings, people and vehicles, filling any small space that would open up. At times we got stuck for a minute or two as a truck or a larger vehicle would come from the other direction (luckily, most of the cars in Kathmandu are small). Then again the driver would accelerate to what I considered a dangerous speed when he’d see an opening. Horns were blaring all around us as every user of the road employed the same strategy of advancement. On several occasions I was certain that we’d hit a lady waddling on the side in a sari, or a family walking in a group as if they had all the space in the world, but nothing happened. It was just me who was not used to the going.

Finally we reached Lalitpur and our hotel, a veritable sanctuary so close to the madness of the commercial city. The dry air had been so saturated with dust that I noticed my throat was parched. That was helped by a cold Everest beer before washing off the dirt in a hot shower. Somehow despite its uncontrollable growth and seeming chaos, Kathmandu has maintained its charm and humanity. Efforts to restore and renovate old towns like Bhaktapur and Patan are important beyond their value as repositories of history and culture, as they are attractions that bring much needed income to the country. The fact that both are also living environments where people lead their lives is a highly positive aspect. The harmony that exists between the Buddhist and Hindu traditions should serve as an example for many other places.





Upon my return home, I rummaged through my bookshelf for some old books about Nepal to revisit how the country was described just two decades or so ago. (In the dust jacket of one, Nepal: Socio-Economic Change and Rural Migration by Poona Thapa, I discovered the invoice from Ratna Pustak Bhandar booksellers in Kathmandu where I had purchased the book on May 16, 1990, for Rp. 327.60.) One striking figure was that in 1991, Kathmandu had had a population of just 421,000, indicating that the city had actually grown ten-fold since then. But even before that, the growth had been tremendous, as the 1981 data showed a population of only 235,000 for the city! Many issues that were highlighted by the older publications are still valid concerns: poverty, major inequalities between regions, heavy internal migration. Despite these challenges, much progress has been made, especially since the worst of the political troubles have calmed down. Measured on the UN Human Development Index, Nepal is still on the 138th place amongst the 169 countries included, but its rating is constantly and rapidly rising. One must hope that this trend will continue. Much will depend on the continued political stability, peace and security in the country.

The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a travel book focusing on modes of transportation that most travellers would prefer to avoid. Carl Hoffman’s stated desire was to circumnavigate the globe on the cheapest and most dangerous forms of mass transit. For most of humankind, travel was no pleasurable touring, but a necessary movement from point A to point B often involving terribly long and uncomfortable, not to mention perilous, trips on decrepit buses that would plunge into gorges from the winding mountainside roads that they travelled, on overcrowded, capsizing ferries, unmaintained ancient aircraft, and trains that were so stuffed with people that they just fell off on the tracks. Hoffman’s travels over several months involved all of the above, as he left his home in Washington, DC, and toured around the Andes and Amazon basin in South America, the roads and railroads of East and West Africa, the notorious deathtraps that ferries in Indonesia and Bangladesh were. He had weeks of relative leisure in India before flying to Afghanistan on the national airline Ariana (a.k.a. Scariana). Then returning home by train and gas truck through China, Mongolia and Siberia. Through all these segments of travel he reports on the exotic places he encounters, the hairy situations arising and, most importantly, the various people he meets.



Carl Hoffman is plagued by wanderlust. He is middle-aged, married with three kids, a journalist, but for a long time he has felt compelled to leave the comforts of home behind and travel. This is the other theme of the book: man’s struggle between loneliness and belonging. The book gets quite personal, as Hoffman misses his family while at the same time feels alive only travelling in risky places amongst strange people. At times his descriptions of his own addiction to danger seem slightly too heroic, but at least I personally can very well relate to his contradictory feelings. He observes with some envy people in the poor countries that he visits and interacts with, how they all have strong bonds in their communities and families; at the same time, he knows that he could never live that way, with no privacy or time alone. When he finally is returning home, he notes that he was settling in and getting a little bored on the trip. He concludes that it was time to go home: “Travel was only worthwhile when your eyes were fresh, when it surprised you and amazed you and made you think about yourself in a new way. You couldn’t travel forever. When you stopped seeing, when you lost your curiosity and openness to the world, it was time to return to your starting point and see where you stood” (p. 263).



I found the book to be well worth reading, well written, even quite wise. Although the narrative was generally entertaining, I found there was a certain unevenness to the chapters (probably reflecting the interestingness of the segment and the people Hoffman happened to meet). The cover of my edition touted it as a “Wall Street Journal Book of the Year.” I wouldn’t go that far and the accolade baffled me initially, before I realized that for an average WJS reader the book would cover territory that was strange and likely unsightly. The Lunatic Express certainly serves its purpose as an antidote to seeing travel only through the lens of comfortable business travel or relaxing tourism. Carl Hoffman made a superb effort to experience travel the way the majority of the world’s people experience it. In the process he met numerous interesting and hospitable people whom he recalls frequently with warmth, always with understanding.



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A Week (or Two) in Music: Only in New York

It’s been a New York week—well, I guess every week is like this in New York. Actually, I only listened to three live performances, although there’d be something worthwhile to hear every night and I in fact had noted a couple of more possible concerts in my calendar. That’s what I do: I scan the opportunities to listen to some interesting music in advance and mark them in my Google calendar, so that I won’t forget about them or won’t be at a loss if one evening I just feel like catching some act. The reason why I thought of jotting down this week’s crop is because the three acts were all quite different from each other but represented broad categories of music that are all close to my heart. All were also played in quite intimate settings and mostly with acoustic instruments.


First, on Tuesday night (October 4), there was a duo performance by two of my favourite instrumentalists at the Living Room in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As it happens, I also know both Oran Etkin and Ben Allison personally and they are both the nicest boys in the business. What I didn’t know is that they played together—and apparently it is a perfectly new thing. Their performance was part of celebrating the Independent Music Awards—Oran had just won the ‘Best World Beat’ award for his album Kelenia—and there was a succession of winning bands at this bar-cum-performance space. Oran and Ben had a half hour slot in the middle of the evening, which they filled with three pieces of fantastic communication with acoustic wooden instruments. All compositions were Etkin originals, starting with the hypnotic Kelenia from his African music project. This time played only on bass clarinet and contrabass, the tune produced a wonderful atmosphere with its ostinato-like theme. This was followed by Wake Up, Clarinet!, an entertaining number from Oran’s popular children’s album. It’s easy to see why kids would find it irresistibly fun when the cheerful bearded guy has a great time communing with his clarinet. The duo’s last piece was Lacy—dedicated to the soprano saxophone innovator Steve Lacy—a quirky jazz tune in which the musicians’ interplay was again seamless, with Ben providing a solid basis for the music as he pulled double stops on his bass.


(Exceptionally, these pictures are not mine, but by Yoko Takahashi, so that I could get into the photo with the guys.)







The following night I headed to the City Winery to catch a concert with Bebel Gilberto, the famous contemporary Brazilian singer. The star spent last summer as artist in residence at City Winery and performed several sold-out concerts. I only managed to get my act together and buy a ticket to the last extra one organized as an in August due to high demand. Alas, the concert was rescheduled due to the rare Hurricane Irene that hit New York just on the evening when Gilberto was supposed to perform. It thus took more than a month to organize the concert until Wednesday, October 5. In August, the extra concert was supposed to be an intimate evening only with the songstress and an acoustic guitarist. When I entered the crowded hall on this Wednesday evening, it was clear we would be now treated to the full band. There was a drum set, keyboards and amplifiers on stage. There was tangible electricity in the air—and the audience would not be disappointed. The diva, dressed in a tight black dress, was at her best, chatting with the audience in between the tunes, with a glass of wine constantly at her side. The daughter of legendary Brazilian musicians, Joao Gilberto and Miúcha, Bebel carries the torch of the bossa nova tradition that her parents were amongst the core group creating. Despite the five-piece band, the music remained very intimate and the volume at a very moderate level. She performed a long set consisting of hits from her own albums as well as a number of older songs. Personally, I was most taken by Jorge Continentino, whose alto flute provided an atmospheric ambience to most of the songs. On one tune, he switched to a horizontal bamboo flute, which he handled very nicely and entirely in tune (not always so easy with a bamboo flute). There was also a trombone in the band, which together with the alto flute produced a pleasant mellow addition to the music. At one point of the evening, Bebel asked an audience member to pass a candle from the table to her. Then she started the birthday song, approached the trombonist for a hug and passed the candle on to him. The birthday boy was so moved that he started to weep. “More than 20 years of friendship,” Bebel declared to the audience. Clearly, the star has a faithful relationship with her musicians. We were allowed to witness some intimate moments of her singing accompanied only by Bebel’s long-term guitarist, Masa Shimizu. On some of the later pieces of the evening, the tempos increased. Continentino switched his small pipes to a large curved baritone sax with which he joined in funky riffs with the trombonist. All in all, a superb concert.


Then, on Sunday, Yoko and I headed to one of our favourite Sunday afternoon places, the Noguchi Museum in Queens. The afternoon Music in the Garden promised shakuhachi music with Elizabeth Brown. We couldn’t have been luckier, as after a cool spell of autumn weather New York was experiencing Indian summer. We sat out in the garden with some 50 other listeners enjoying a most beautiful sunny afternoon amongst Isamu Noguchi’s sculptures and the verdant trees. Elizabeth Brown is an award winning composer and performer on the shakuhachi, the western flute and theremin. She took her place under a large aspen whose leaves had already turned largely bright yellow. Her set alternated traditional shakuchachi honkyoku—Oshu Sashi and Sokaku Reibo—with her own compositions, Hermit Thrush (1991) and From Isle Royale (2005). Her own pieces combine contemporary music aspects with traditional Japanese tonalities. Both pieces were inspired by the sounds of birds she had listened to while composing the music in the middle of nature. Here, the meditative sounds of shakuhachi mixed with the more urban soundscape of the inevitable helicopters and cars crossing Queens. For the last piece, Shika no Tone—another honkyoku tune in Kinko-ryu style—Elizabeth Brown called Ralph Samuelson to join her. She introduced Ralph “her mentor, teacher and friend.“ The two flutists moved to the opposite sides of the garden creating a lovely echo mimicking the distant cry of the deer that the tune’s title implies. Moving slowly closer to each other, the stereo effect created by the two shakuhachis was purely lovely.














Originally, I had intended to just describe these three exquisite concerts in such disparate styles and venues all played during the same week in this city—hence the title of this blog. But as I failed to complete writing this in time, I feel compelled to add to the mix. On the following Sunday, October 16th, we took our friend Masako, visiting from Tokyo, to Le Poisson Rouge to listen to a piano recital by Peter Hill. The concert was constructed around the music of Olivier Messiaen, whose premier interpreter the British pianist is. He made a smart strategic move by starting the modern concert with J.S. Bach, making the connections that both Bach and Messiaen were organists and both also superb improvisers. The beautiful start served its purpose of focusing the attention of the audience in the concert venue that doubles up as a restaurant. The rest of the evening consisted of pieces by Messiaen, with the exception of one piece by Toru Takemitsu composed in memoriam of the French composer. The highly sympathetic Peter Hill explained that he had selected the program around Messiaen’s compositions inspired by birdsong (something in common with Elizabeth Brown’s shakuhachi music!), starting with La Colombe that Messiaen had written in 1926 when he was just 18. Later pieces from the 1950s and Cantéyodjayâ that Messiaen composed while in Tanglewood in 1949 demonstrated how his musical language had evolved. The last number was lovely, contrasting the dark night when the composer had been driving in France with his wife, with the competing coloratura of a pair of larks and a nightingale they had observed. Messiaen was an accomplished ornithologist who incorporated birdsong systematically in his music. I was absolutely delighted to have decided to come to the concert. Messiaen’s music was not very familiar to me and this recital, enhanced with Peter Hill’s commentary, truly opened up his music to me. As an encore, Hill played a piece that Messiaen had written as a sight reading exercise for his students. Apparently, the master had written many such exercises but this was the only one that had survived—a tragedy of 20th century music, as recounted by Hill.


Then finally, on Tuesday, October 18th, Masako’s last night in New York, she and I went to the Jazz Standard while Yoko was rehearsing for her own forthcoming performance. The work we heard was Race Riot Suite composed by Chris Combs and performed by the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. The lengthy suite in 12 parts turned out to be an incredible tour de force by both the composer and the orchestra. I had picked the show only based on the description, which explained that the suite had been composed to tell the story of the evolution and destruction of Greenwood, a highly successful African-American neighbourhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma (the centre of Greenwood was known as the “Black Wall Street”). On May 31, 1921, in an occurrence of exceptional racial conflict, white mobs invaded Greenwood and as a result at least 40 people were killed and over 800 were hospitalized. Some 35 city blocks were destroyed by fire and an estimated 10,000 people were left homeless. The all-white Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey hails from Tulsa and consists normally of four musicians: Brian Haas, Josh Raymer, Chris Combs and Jeff Harshbarger. A unique feature of the band is that to the normal piano trio is added a lap steel guitar played by Combs, the writer of the Race Riot Suite. For performing the Suite, the band was strengthened by three horn players: Steven Bernstein (trumpet and slide trumpet), Mark Southerland (tenor and soprano saxes) and Peter Apfelbaum (tenor and baritone saxophones). This was one of the best and most innovative pieces of new jazz music that I have heard in a long while. The composition builds upon a long tradition of New Orleans jazz and ragtime and contains clear nods towards the great composers and band leaders, such as Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. The expression is contemporary and the harmonies very interesting, with the steel guitar’s wails often blending in with the horns. Every player contributed wonderful solos throughout the music, so I would just highlight a couple that stayed with me. Overall, I loved Apfelbaum’s work on both of his saxes. The tenor was exceptional warm (and contrasted well with Southerland’s stormier approach) and there was an interesting moment when the baritone soloed only against Haas’ piano accompaniment (and what a rare treat it was to hear a second excellent baritone player in just two weeks!). Overall, Haas provided some entertaining piano playing, while Bernstein’s trumpet channelled Roy Eldridge and Cootie Williams transported into the 21st century. Harshbarger and Raymer on bass and drums soloed less, but ensured that there was a solid rhythmic structure—at times chaotic, but always firmly rooted—to this complex music. This was programmatic music at its best.

Sikkim Earthquake, 18 September 2011

On Sunday, just when I had arrived, there was an earthquake. It didn’t really register with me. Delhi shook gently, enough for many others to notice, but I was jetlagged and went to sleep. My colleague Gus thought he was suddenly feeling the symptoms of old age as dizziness set in and he had to sit down on the sofa, he told me afterwards.

What had taken place was an earthquake with an epicentre in Sikkim, hundreds of kilometres away from the national capital region. The quake hit the Sikkim-Nepal border area at 18:10 hours near the boundary between India and Eurasia plates. It was 6.8 on the Richter Scale and, given the style of construction and rough hilly terrain, it would turn out to be the most destructive earthquake to hit India in ten years. People rushed out of the houses that started to collapse. In addition, there were reports of extensive landslides and downed power lines. “Tremors were felt between 30 seconds to one minute in some parts of Sikkim, including Gangtok,” the State capital, said Shalesh Nayak, Secretary in the Indian Earth Sciences Ministry, said according to The Times of India (19 September 2011). Nearly everyone in Sikkim and Darjeeling spent Sunday night in the open as aftershocks triggered fears of a second wave of destruction.

Sikkim is a Himalayan state in the Indian northeast, bordered by Nepal to the west, Tibet (China) to the north and Bhutan to the east. Its southern border is with the Indian state of West Bengal. The mountainous State is quite sparsely populated—according to the latest 2001 census, the total population was only 540,000 people—and only 11% of the people live in urban areas. “Sikkim is sheer magic,” gushes the State’s official website. “This is not just the most beautiful place in the world but cleanest and safest too,” it continues. This pristine idyll was shattered by the quake.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Sikkim’s Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling, who reportedly described the damage as serious. Early reports confirmed 15 dead in Sikkim and across the border in Nepal, but the death toll would keep on rising. By the following Saturday, 24th of September, there were reportedly 75 dead and more than 61,000 left homeless in Sikkim alone. In addition, 10 people were reported dead in Bengal and 7 in Bihar. And the rescue crews had not yet reached the most remote areas due to landslides and heavy rains.

On Tuesday, 20 September, The Times reported that virtually nothing was left intact on the 100 km long road connecting Gangtok to Chungthang, and that roads and bridges between Meeli and Namchi in south Sikkim and Rawangala in west Sikkim had been severely damaged. All of this hampered rescue operations.

Rumtek, a major Buddhist monastery, located at an elevation of 1,768 metres some 24 kilomters from Gangtok, was badly damaged, leaving some 400 monks without shelter. A team of ten South African engineers were in the Teesta River area working together with the locals to develop a hydroelectric scheme. Two of the men had been inside a tunnel when the quake took place. They were barely able to escape as a major crack developed and the tunnel was suddenly flooded with water from the river. These kinds of stories catch the eye as they find themselves into the newspapers. Inevitably, rumours would emerge that the Teesta hydroelectric project was somehow connected to the earthquake. Needless to say, such rumours are obviously baseless.

The official response to the disaster was quite rapid and effective, it would seem. The Government of India immediately declared Sikkim a disaster area and promised funds for reconstruction and recovery. Prime Minister Singh would visit the quake stricken areas in Sikkim on 29 September 2011. Nearly 6,000 Army and paramilitary forces personnel were deployed without delay. However, their work was hampered by the landslides and it took days for the troops to reach Mangan, the quake’s epicentre, and nearby areas of north and west Sikkim, where the heaviest damage had been reported. The rescue convoys were stuck at various locations with fallen trees, downed power lines and landslides. It was reported that two young Army men and a junior engineer had also been killed.

By Monday, Army helicopters started dropping food and supplies to people in the worst affected areas. They also started evacuating people to safety. Apart from the general destruction and lost homes caused by earthquakes, death often comes afterwards from diseases that spread when people must stay in the open and without adequate food, clean water or sanitation.

On Wednesday (21 September 2011) The Times ran an article about how Dipak Ghosh at Jadavpur University had detected abnormalities that could presage a major earthquake. The scientist runs a solid-state nuclear track detector that he has embedded 70 cm underground besides the Faculty Club. As he monitored the devise 9 days before the earthquake, he noticed abnormal fluctuations in radon gas emissions from below. Should he have reported this to warn authorities of the impending danger? This would have been risky, as earthquake prediction is far from an exact science. In 2009 when a 6.3 magnitude quake destroyed the medieval city of l’Aquila in the Abruzzo region of Italy, a local scientist Giampaolo Giuliani had recorded similar forewarnings from his four radometers in the area. He however was under injunction barring him from reporting the monitoring data, as officials claimed that such predictions would spread unwarranted panic. In that quake, 308 people including 20 children died, 1,500 were injured and perhaps 80,000 left homeless.

Ghosh, Director of the Biren Roy Research Laboratory for Radioactivity and Earthquake Studies at Jadavpur University, was well aware of the criticism that Giuliani had had to face around his earthquake predictions. “It is not so easy. I am into this research monitoring soil radon since 2006,” he told The Times. “What I gathered from the data is that there is a direct correlation between the soil radon anomaly within 1,000 kilometres from the measuring site, and for intensity above 4 in the Richter scale. They occur 7-15 days before an earthquake with few exceptions,” said Ghosh, comparing earthquake prediction based on radon with a doctor performing an ECG on patient, which would indicate that the person is at risk of a heart attack but would not be able to predict its timing. Earthquake forecasting using radon monitoring remains controversial amongst the scientific community.

On Thursday, when many people had slowly started returning home—or whatever was left of it—for shelter from the continued rain, an aftershock of 3.9 shook Gangtok at 22:30 sending people scurrying out into the open. During the same evening, a 4.8 magnitude quake, with its epicentre in Myanmar, was felt in parts of Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura and Mizoram in northeast India, but there were no reports of casualties according to Mail Today (23 September 2011).

As always, it is the regular people, poor folks eking out a living in the harsh environment where flat agricultural land is hard to come by and where it has been constructed on elaborate terraces for generations, that are most affected by disasters such as this. These are the people who lost family members amongst the dead.

As I left Delhi on Saturday night, it was reported that fresh landslides in Langchun in the rain-soaked northern Sikkim were again stopping rescuers from reaching remote villages. The landslides and the aftershocks would continue for the days and weeks to come. Casualty figures from Sikkim’s neighbours confirmed 6 dead in Nepal and 7 in Tibet; 2,322 and 2,960 buildings, respectively, were completely destroyed in these states. On 28 September 2011, authorities downgraded the casualty estimates in Sikkim from 77 to 60 following verification of double counting and locating people who had been listed as missing in the confusion of the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. This at least was good news.

Cape Town R&R

The extraordinary beauty of the city and how it sits on the oceanic front and sprawls into the valleys between the mountains was evident seen from the air as we descended in the rapidly darkening dusk. I had specifically asked for a window seat and not over a wing so as to have the chance to behold what I anticipated would be a gorgeous landing. But this was even more beautiful, as the changing colouring of the landscape conspired to make the scene mystical. First, the sun shone bright, almost dark red seemingly at the level of the plane. Soon it disappeared behind the western horizon sinking into the Atlantic Ocean leaving an orange glow in the sky. There were narrow vertical layers of high clouds that were gilded by the sun’s last rays, while the lower level clouds hanging languidly over the valleys were turning dark. Below, the city lights were already on as the night had fallen on the ground. City suburbs and the vineyards of Stellenbosch and Kirstenbosch were connected by the pearly strings of roads on which car headlights were moving. The Table Mountain stood black surrounded by twinkling city lights. In the harbour off the coast a few large container ships were moored with all their lights glittering against the water.

It was indeed fully dark when we deboarded at the Cape Town international airport and walked across the tarmac to the terminal building. The Kulula flight from Johannesburg had taken two hours. I collected my bag and chose one of the several car rental companies almost at random based on name recognition and a vague recollection that they might contribute miles to one of my frequent flyer programs. The choice was good, as the efficient, friendly and very attractive lady of vaguely South Asian origin quickly dispatched me on my way with a very reasonably priced Chevy Spark equipped with a GPS navigation system. The latter was essential as I immediately had to navigate the airport exits and then the highways in this unfamiliar city, again getting used to driving on the left side of the road in a new car with a stick shift. I managed to get off the freeway at the right junction and entered the suburbs at Claremont and found my way to Newlands close to the Kirstenbosch vineyards on the northern side of the Table Mountain. The classic Vineyard Hotel & Spa had been recommended to me by my friend, Cape Town native David Simon, who now teaches development geography in London. I thoroughly looked forward to three days of R&R in between the conference that had just finished in Johannesburg and my next work engagement that would take me across the Indian Ocean over the coming weekend. Over dinner in New York a few weeks ago, David had virtually planned my visit highlighting all the necessary things I would have to do and see. I would have to find the right balance between doing that and just relaxing.



Cape Town is very different from Johannesburg in Gauteng, the business and government heart of South Africa. This town—often compared in its beauty to Rio de Janeiro—located in the southwestern tip of the African continent is much more relaxed and blessed with an extraordinary natural setting. When I woke up the following morning in my comfortable room with panoramic windows over the luxurious gardens of the hotel, it was drizzling and the Table Mountain was entirely covered in low hanging clouds. I knew then that today was the day to explore the city itself. The drive to the centre some 10 km away passed through clean and beautiful neighbourhoods with manicured lawns that gave way to the bustle of the city. Cape Town has a turbulent history since the first encounters between Europeans and native Africans here more than half a millennium ago. In the more recent past, the city has seen strife as a result of the unjust apartheid system that had legislated inequality between the races. The city also has slums, or townships, that are run down and lack infrastructure, but not on the scale of Gauteng where places like Soweto became symbols of the violent struggle against apartheid.

I started my visit at the Castle of Good Hope, built by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the late-17th century. It is an historical landmark that still houses the South African military, as well as the Military Museum. Its collections around the history of the Cape were to me very enlightening, starting as they were with the first encounters between European explorers and the African tribes living in the area. The very first European contact with the Khoi (or Khoikhoi) was in 1488 when the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape. A more intense period of European intrusions started with the rounding of the stormy waters of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama in 1497, in a quest to find a sea route to India around Africa. Dias and da Gama’s countryman Francisco d’Almeida sailed to the Cape in 1510, but his fate was less fortunate than that of his predecessors. Lured to the shore, he and more than 50 of his crew were slaughtered by the Khoi who surrounded the men. This setback was such that it took decades before the Europeans again landed in the area.



The Dutch were the first to permanently settle into the Cape area, which was administered by VOC from 1656 to 1795. During this period, large numbers of European immigrants of mostly Dutch, but also of German, French and other origins—who would become the Boers—arrived in the Cape and spread deeper into the country. Their hunger for agricultural land inevitably led to clashes with the pastoralist tribes like the Khoi (who were dubbed ’Hottentots’ by the settlers) who were used to following their cattle roaming around according to seasons. A series of Khoi-Dutch wars ensued between 1659 and 1677.

Since those times, the Cape became a frontier in the struggle for control by successive European nations—Portugal, Holland, England, France—who all invariably fought the various native tribes, at times enlisting them to fight against the European rival of the day. One of the military brigades whose intriguing name caught my attention in the museum was the ‘Bastaart Hottentotten,’ which in 1781 consisted of Khoi soldiers recruited to serve under Dutch command.

The wars between the Europeans and Africans, however, were far from over. There would be nine Frontier Wars between 1779 and 1878 caused by the expansion of European settlements into the African lands. These wars were first fought mainly by the Dutch, but following the annexation of the Cape by Britain in 1806, they got drawn into the conflicts to protect the settlers.



But it was really the competition between the Boers and the English that defined much of the 19th century history of South Africa. The Boer farmers started their Great Trek away from the British controlled areas moving inland in large numbers in the 1830s and 1840s. They also founded a number of republics, notably Transvaal and Orange Free State, under their own rule. The discovery of rich gold and diamond deposits some decades later resulted in gold rushes that again pitted the Boer settlers against the British who followed inland after the valuable minerals. Finally, in 1910 the Union of South Africa was formed following the British victory in the bloody Boer War of 1897-1903. The former Boer republics were merged into the union.

The castle also contains the William Fehr Collection consisting of artworks and furniture styles from the VOC days until the mid-19th century (Fehr was a South African businessman and art collector). I was entirely taken by the numerous paintings by artists such as Thomas Whitcombe (1760-1825), William John Huggins (1781-1845), William Syme (1824-1866) and John Thomas Baines (1820-1875) whose works depict powerful scenes in which the waters of the Cape are always turbulent. I stared for a long time at a Baines painting of a boat carrying newly arrived European immigrants—men, women and children—from a mother ship to the shore with waves churning around the hull. Irrespective of what one thinks about the consequent subordination of the native populations, one can only admire the courage and determination of the people moving to a new and strange continent under such conditions.

Race-based oppression was part of black South Africans’ life much before apartheid, which institutionalized the separation of the races (whites, blacks, Asians and coloureds) following the electoral victory of the Boer National Party in 1948. The superb District Six Museum tells the story of one particular residential area in Cape Town. Established in 1867, the Sixth Municipal District used to be a mixed neighbourhood, originally of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, labourers and immigrants that became a target of successive white city administrations. Already in 1901, the Africans were forcibly resettled from the district that was located close to the city centre and port. As the wealthier parts of the population started moving out, District Six became increasingly marginalized. Despite the intentional neglect by the city authorities that ran down the place, it had a rich communal and cultural life with plenty of music and other forms of culture. A particular type of music that developed there was Langaarm played by dance bands inspired by early jazz. Using the degradation of the District Six as an excuse—and it was true that the area lacked sanitation and most of the houses were decrepit—the city government declared District Six as unsuitable for human habitation. In 1966, based on the Group Areas Act of 1950, District Six was declared a White Group Area and the forcible removal of its 60,000 inhabitants was completed by 1982 when all the buildings were bulldozed to make way for new construction for whites. The museum’s historical collections, including photographs and audiovisual recordings, show in grim detail the timeline of this brutal process.



Following this quick immersion in South African history, I needed a walk to absorb all the information swirling in my brain and to sort out the often confusing timeline of events. The spring weather was fresh and I walked pass the College of Cape Town on the walking street where groups of students—black, white and mixed race—sat smoking under the trees, and continued to the City Hall square where I had parked. Reaching my car, I saw two young African men approaching me from opposite directions. Both turned out to be unofficial parking attendants who looked after the safety of the vehicles left on the square. I recognized one of them, a tall fellow with a bright smile under his woollen cap, as the one who had been there when I arrived. Consequently, I passed the 10 rand note to him. This resulted in an argument between the two and I saw the boys scuffle as I drove away towards my next stop.



Long Street is to Cape Town what the Village (or today Brooklyn’s Williamsburg) is to New York, a mixed and hip neighbourhood with alternative types of shops, ethnic restaurants and bars. I spent the following hours browsing in excellent second hand bookstores (including the classic Clarke’s Bookshop, which has been around since 1956) and music shops, before settling down on the second floor terrace of the ‘Neighbourhood’ bar with a badly needed pint of Castle. In this late-afternoon hour the place was starting to fill up. Opposite from my still empty table on a tall stool sat a beautiful young black woman who was soon joined by two white chaps who had the air of being designers or perhaps theatre people. In this joint, young white waiters happily served a clientele whose skin colours reflected a wide scale of hues. As the crowd increased, I shared my table with a group of cheerful young Africans, two boys and three girls. It was happy hour and the kids were getting two-for-one cocktails. I clinked my glass with theirs and let them have the whole table after I downed my second pint.




The following morning the sky was clear and iconic shape of Table Mountain stood free of clouds outside of my window. I programmed the GPS navigator, which was a blessing as the route to the seemingly nearby mountain turned out to be complicated, involving a rather long drive on the freeway, then heading up steep city streets before reaching a winding road that leads halfway up the mountain to the ropeway (or aerial cableway, as it is officially called). Although it was a Friday, the place was crowded and I had to leave the car several hundreds of metres from the entrance. Luckily I had bought the cableway ticket online so I did not have to wait in the queue. The wait for the ride up was quick as there are two gondolas that move up and down the cables in opposite directions. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves as I stepped into the gondola. I must confess that riding in a small cabin suspended from a cable tens of metres above a steep mountainside makes me nervous. It didn’t help that this particular cabin was designed to rotate throughout its five-minute (it felt much longer) ride to the top at 1,067 metres. En route I could see a group of climbers heading to the top the hard way, clinging to the vertical rock face aided with little equipment.



From the top the view was magnificent far over the city and its harbour. Robben Island, that houses the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 27 years alongside other leaders of the African National Congress opposing the apartheid government, sat in the bay like a southern Alcatraz. To the south, beyond the mountains, one could see the place where the Atlantic and Indian Ocean meet. The mountain itself is a natural wonder: a 3-km long plateau of sandstone with an elevation variation of only 19 metres. Its nearly treeless and rocky expanse hides a rich biodiversity. In particular its flora is unique, consisting of endemic ’fynbos’ (’delicate bush’ in Afrikaans) vegetation. Fynbos, threatened by erosion, fires and human impact, consists of four primary plant groups: proteas (large broad-leafed shrubs), ericas (low-growing shrubs), restios (thin reed-like plants) and geophytes (bulbs). Due to its uniqueness and the rich variety of almost 1,500 plant species found there, the Cape Floristic Region has been declared a biodiversity hotspot and Table Mountain is recognized as a World Heritage Site. Although the fauna on this rough windswept plateau is less abundant, there are still several species of rodents, snakes, lizards, frogs and other animals who call Table Mountain home. Numerous birds ranging from smaller thrushes, bulbuls and doves to buzzards and eagles are found on the mountain. As we descended, I observed a pair of black eagles soaring majestically across the sky lifted by the air currents flowing up the hillside.




I drove south on the road that lines Western Cape. The ocean to my right glimmered brightly. After a while I entered the Chapman’s Peak Drive, a 9-km toll road that winds in between the hillside and the shining sea through some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, it was virtually impossible to stop and take photos without endangering the traffic. I accepted this fact with some regret and continued the drive until I reached the extension of the Table Mountain National Park at the southern tip of the peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and False Bay to the east. The land has a barren beauty accentuated by the rocky beaches that disappear into the sea. I reached the legendary Cape of Good Hope, the southwestern-most point on the continent of Africa. It was obvious why it had posed a challenge for early navigators and had become the site of many a shipwreck over the centuries. Even on this beautiful and relatively calm spring day, the sea was churning and waves struck the rocks with mighty force splashing water high into the air. Bartolomeu Dias originally named this the Cape of Storms (Cabo das Tormentas) but the Portuguese king changed this to Cape of Good Hope (Cabo da Boa Esperança). Never having actually faced the force of the sea at the Cape, the king only saw the hope of his fleet reaching the riches of the east through this route.



As I was relating these thoughts to the historical facts I had learned the day before, the place was suddenly invaded by several large tourist buses. Out poured tens of young Africans screaming with delight at the gorgeous sight that awaited them. They quickly spread around the beach and lined up to take each other’s photos at the wooden sign that declared the longitude and latitude of our location. Many of the girls were dressed in short skirts and light blouses that seemed to provide inadequate cover against the strong wind gusting from the open ocean, but this didn’t seem to quell their enthusiasm.


I decided it was time to continue my journey and head to Cape Point occupying the eastern fork of the peninsula. On the shore three ostriches were grazing, their silhouettes against the blue of the sea—an unlikely sight. There were signs posted warning about the pesky baboons, but I was not bothered by any. Cape Point was equally or more crowded than the commercially undeveloped Cape of Good Hope. Here there was a large parking lot lined with shops where the walkway up towards the lighthouse on the hilltop began. The elevation was much higher here and the views over the two oceans very beautiful.







My return route went north on the coast of False Bay. I had spent so much time admiring the spot where the waters of the two mighty oceans merge that I was now very conscious of the time. I definitely wanted to get to Boulders Beach while it was still light. Here on the east coast of the peninsula the road was already darkened by the shadows of the hills to my left, although the sun was still relatively high above the horizon. I stepped on the gas to the extent I could safely do on this unfamiliar winding road. Passing Simon’s Town, I arrived at Boulders Beach just after 5 pm. Here, the daylight would still linger for a good hour or more, although its warm yellow glow already reflected the sun’s position low on the western sky. I started walking on the small road parallel to the beach, which then turned into a wooden walk bridge across coastal bushes. That’s where I detected the first penguins. They were small, standing or lying down among the bushes; not a habitat that one immediately associates with these birds. The Boulders Beach – Simon’s Town area is host to the northern-most colony of penguins in the world.






A bit further on, the bushes gave way to bare rocks that descended into the bay. This was more like it, I thought. I found penguins basking in the sun on these rocks, their white and black appearance dignified in all its bowling pin –like roundness. There were lone males standing still and proud against the wind and there were small groups lying on the rocks. Many were in couples, with the female standing beside her male, sometimes grooming him. Occasionally they would peck each other tenderly. A lovely scene against the most beautiful natural setting. A lone white lighthouse stood in the middle of the bay. There was a group of kayakers paddling among the boulders that must have given the name to the community. There were also seabirds other than the flightless penguins: gulls were coasting in the wind; a goose family with fluffy chicks was determinedly heading somewhere; a handsome white heron stood on a rock just off the shoreline. Just behind on the gently sloping hillside stood the idyllic small town of Boulders Beach with its white houses and romantic little restaurants. What a lovely place to live one’s life, I thought. Signs warned motorists to look under their vehicles for penguins before starting their engines.







I had seen many such beautiful settlements along the coastal road today. In Cape Town itself, there were fabulous neighbourhoods facing the blue Atlantic that were as clean and white as their inhabitants (or at least the absolute majority of them). Seventeen years after the arrival of democracy in South Africa, political equality hadn’t translated into economic equality. In fact, the income differences had actually risen. Despite the emergence of a black elite and a growing middle class, most Africans were still poor and worked in manual labour or lower service positions, if they were lucky enough to have a job at all. Driving to the airport the following day, I saw a large township next to the highway. It was an entirely unplanned settlement some ten kilometres outside of the city where presumably most of its inhabitants sought employment. The small houses were built with corrugated iron and were immensely densely packed leaving just narrow unpaved lanes in between. At the airport, I talked with a shoeshine man while waiting for the departure of my flight back to Johannesburg. Having discovered a sympathetic ear, he opened up about the hardships of life. He was lucky, in relative terms, to have a job at the airport relatively close to the townships. But the job paid a pittance and it was virtually impossible to survive on the income. And there was little hope for anything better. A bitterness came through in his voice.

South Africa’s development after the democratic transition has been positive and first of all peaceful, thanks largely to the wisdom of Nelson Mandela and his associates, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who understood that South Africa had to continue on its multiracial path and put the painful inequalities and injustices behind. But one had to wonder at the patience of the people who had seen so little improvement in their lives despite the promise of majority rule, while they saw a minority—no longer determined solely on the colour of one’s skin—thrive and grow rich. Something must be done about the growing gap in standards of living lest the multitude left behind lose its patience and take matters into its own hands. In that case, everyone would lose and the regional superpower could no longer be a model for its neighbours.