Adam's Blog!

New Blog!

2006-05-27T15:32:00.000Z

Ok...so I've created a much more organised blog with categories and everything that can be reached by going to www.adamsloan.co.uk . It's still being worked on and everything due to my incredible lack of technical knowledge!

Cheers!
Adam

Another day another dollar...

2006-05-21T16:24:00.000Z

I thought I would share with you something amusing that happened to me today at work, if for no other reason than something rarely does!

Anyway, I was standing at the back of my shop (it's a camping and outdoors store called Blacks for those of you who don't know!) and despite my meandering hopes a customer happened to come in, rather old, little bit on the overweight side. "Can I help you with anything at all?", I say, putting on my best fake smile and overenthusiasm. "Oh no thats ok, we're from the United States, touring the whole of the UK"...thanks, I wasn't actually offering you transportation or a place to stay, just help if you needed a new jacket/tent or anything! "You see that Cornish Pasty shop down the road, son?" This is the Cornish Pasty shop that I regularly get my lunch from on a Sunday afternoon, "I have a factory in Michigan that makes those things, 20,000 a week we put out, doing very well thank you." I didn't actually ask him how well his factory was doing, and unless he read my mind and realised I hadn't had any breakfast, I'm pretty sure I didn't mention Cornish Pasty's too him either!

"So, do you sell guns?" this I try and laugh off, until I realise he is actually serious. The thought that is going round in my head is the image off that Michael Moore movie where he goes out and talks to the "Michigan Militia." I inform him that no we don't sell guns, and he is unlikely to find anywhere around York city centre that does, "oh...too bad that, anyway nice talking too you" unfortunately I didn't share the sentiment.

Rape of the Congo - the war against women and children

2006-05-19T18:11:00.000Z

Last week I made a trip down to London to interview the author, playwrite and columnist for the Independent, Johann Hari, about his time out in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Johann wrote a feature on the war for the Indy a few weeks ago and, with this being an issue I have cared about for some time, and with Johann being one of my favourite columnists, I thought it would be a great opportunity to go down to London and talk to him about his experiences.

I have to say this is probably the most difficult piece I have ever written. Hopefully it will become clear why when you read it.

So, here you are (excuse the lack of photos)...

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Rape of the Congo - the war against women and children

It is the most deadly war since Adolf Hitler’s army marched across Europe. Encompassing nine nations, dozens of militias and killing over four million people, yet weeks will go by and it gets barely even a mention. For many years now the whole Eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo has effectively been outside central government control. The Congo is a country the size of Western Europe, and since 1994, hundreds of thousands of children have been orphaned. Every day, women are kidnapped by militias, and rape has become a weapon of war.

Last month, Independent columnist Johann Hari went to travel out in the Congo, to investigate why the war continues to proliferate, and listen to the stories of the women and children who are most badly affected by the continuing violence; “I went to a rape clinic, it is the only rape clinic in Eastern Congo, called the Panzi hospital, where there were dozens of women who had been gang raped and shot in the vagina.” This is an increasingly common occurrence now in the Congo. Rather than fighting each other, the militias are trying to destroy the other side’s moral by fighting their women; “Sexual violence is absolutely endemic as a tool of war in the Congo.”

During his time in the Congo, Johann visited a hospital run by a man called Denis Mukwege, whom he described as “the Oskar Schindler” of the Congolese mass rapes. For years Dr. Mukwege was not allowed to treat the women, so he ran his hospital in secret; “he had a three year old girl brought in where, as he put it, ‘everything had been shot away’, and the father almost immediately committed suicide because he couldn’t cope with it. He had a very old woman brought in who had been gang raped in front of her sons in law.” The relationship between a mother and her son-in-law is a very holy one in the Congo; “she just said ‘don’t feed me, I want to die, I can never go back.” The women that make it to Dr. Mukwege’s hospital are, of course, the luck one’s. Most women are just left to die.

While the death toll in itself is horrifying enough. Only by looking at the individual tragedies can we begin to understand the horrors of this war; “The UN vehicle I was travelling in had a flat tyre and we had to stop. By the side of the road there was this woman called Mary Djembe, carrying this huge load.” In Congo, because no one really has cars and there are very few horses, women are basically used as packhorses. They are made to carry these absolutely huge loads for as little as 30 cents a day. “The load she was carrying weighed 200lb, I tried to carry it on my back and I couldn’t have walked to the other side of the road. I asked her how far she was going, and she said ’30 miles.”

During the journey, Mary recounted her story to Johann; “She was forced out when the Intrahamwe, one of the militias, started picking off women from her village. A very good friend of hers was taken. She came back a year later, she had been kept by the militia and repeatedly gang raped. When she came back her family wouldn’t look at her, and the woman just went completely mad and started tearing out her hair, before running back out into the forest. Mary and her husband moved to one of the towns which are slightly safer.”

So why have things ended up like this? Why does this war that ‘officially’ ended in 2003 continue to destroy so many lives? The answer is probably sitting right in front of you, in your computer, in your iPod and in your mobile phone. All of these electronic devices contain a metal called coltan, 80% of known supplies of which lie under the Congo.

The official story of how the war started centres around the tiny mountain state of Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, the Hutu Power people who perpetrated it fled across the border into the Congo. What it is said then happened is the Rwandan forces went across the border to capture them. Other countries then invaded as a countervailing force and you had Africa’s first world war.

The UN panel of experts set up to look into the causes of the war discovered a more sinister story though. What was found was that Rwanda did not invade to go after the perpetrators of the genocide, but to seize the mineral resources of Congo and sell them on to us in the West. Due to the increasing popularity of mobile phones and playstations, the price of coltan boomed during the 1990’s. This made it much more attractive for Rwanda and the other international armies and militias to go in there and take it; “As Oona King puts it, kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living room.”

Johann went with Oona King, University of York graduate and former Labour party MP, to visit an orphanage just outside the Congolese capital of Kinshasa; “we were told this was one of the best orphanages in the Congo. When we arrived, the first room we went into, the children were just covered in shit, and flies and vomit. One child was lying on the floor just shaking. They said this was where the Aids babies go.

“There was one boy just rocking back and forward, and we asked ‘what is wrong with this kid?’ They said ‘he’s been like that since he arrived here.’ We asked what his name was and they said ‘he doesn’t have a name.”

It is not only Congo’s physical landscape that is in ruins, it is it’s psychological one too; “There has always been an idea of witchcraft in the Congo but it has always generally applied to older people, it is very new and is a product of the war to accuse children of being witches.

“In the orphanage we saw a child who they called ‘Fidel’, they didn’t know his name because he hadn’t spoken, who had his penis cut off by his parents because they thought he was a witch. I went to one of the evangelical churches promoting this idea of witchcraft in a place called Bukavu. I met a 14-year-old girl who was accused of being a witch. She said that her grandmother had came to her in her sleep, and forced her to eat an evil doughnut, and this evil doughnut had meant she had killed her baby sister. This girl had been made to believe she had really done these things, and that she had turned into a dog and a cat and gone out and killed people in the night.” Johann pauses for a while; “If Britain had 4 million people murdered, and the rest of us displaced from our homes, living in terror and gang raped, we would start to believe some pretty crazy things too.”

The UN has a force of 17,000 international peacekeepers in the Congo. If you consider the immense size of the country however, this really doesn’t work out as many. When you consider as well, that every country that has ever had UN peacekeepers deployed in it could fit inside Congo, and there would still be room for France; “This is by far the biggest peace keeping mission that the UN has ever tried. They do some good, but they simply don’t have the resources. They are not even able to bind the wound, never mind treat it.”

Buck 65 Interview

2006-05-14T21:07:00.000Z

Last night I luckily had the opportunity to interview Buck65 after a gig he played in York. Here is the result! I have never written a music feature so would more than welcome any comments anyone has.
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Buck 65

Presenting an eclectic mix of hip-hop, blues and folk music, Buck 65 has moved on echelons since the start of his career. First introduced to hip-hop during his University life in the 1980’s, he started his own work with a series of mix-tapes, back in the early 90’s. Super articulate and somewhat elusive, when reading about him you tend to be left we the impression that there is more to his story than just what you are being let on to. He is a self-confessed ‘hermit’ however, preferring to write, produce and record alone, only fairly recently coming out of his shell.

Richard ‘Buck 65’ Teffry is spending a lot of time on the road at the moment promoting his new album, ‘Secret House Against the World’. In fact, since signing a major record deal in 2002, he has had very little time to take a break and relax, but just keeps the music coming and keeps the touring going; “I do enjoy the life on the road. When I do get a bit of a break for a while, and the time starts to get close when I have to leave again, there is a part of me that says ‘ahh, I don’t want to go!’ but then as soon as I get started I just love it so much…when I do finally go back home, I try to relax and I just miss being out there touring.”

Buck has spent most of his life in the small Nova Scotia town of Mount Euniacke. Much of his current work is emblazoned with references to his life in his home town; “Sometimes when you are really up close to something you kind of have to back away to really see it. I have heard an expression, the mouse and the elephant, the mouse is so small that it doesn’t even know it is standing in front of the elephant until it backs up. I was standing in front of an elephant.”

Buck continues to talk about his home town with both a sense of nostalgia and a thankful relief that he has somehow managed to escape; “I’m kind of one of the first people to have really come out of that town. I think I am actually one of the first to have ever left! Most small town people just tend to stay there!” Reflecting for a minute though, he then says; “When I was there, the town was just normality. When I moved away though and had other things to compare it to, I ended up getting really home sick. So what has ended up, is this small town where I came from became more of an influence after I left then when I actually lived there. It is very deep inside of me and it just has almost everything to do with who I am.”

More recently, the municipal government of Mount Euniacke has started to recognise his achievements as a musician; “They have set up, like, a scholarship in my name! For a local community college, a trade school, where kids will go to learn practical skills, and I just thought ‘that’s great!’ I don’t know what all this means but they are giving me the keys to the town and putting my name on the sign! Of all the great and rewarding experiences that have happened to me in my life, I have to say, that is probably the one that makes me the most proud.”

Much of Buck’s early career was based around the underground hip-hop scene. His first collection to be released to critical acclaim was the Man Over Board album, on the Anticon label. Before that he had released many collaborative hip-hop tapes, however he doesn’t look back too fondly now on much of his early work. In a 2004 interview with Kerrang! Magazine he said he had “grown to hate” hip-hop music and that “people behind hip hop music don’t know anything about music theory.” Buck was then slammed by former Anticon label mates and later retracted his comments.

The last two albums especially however have shown exactly how much he has moved on from his early work; “I think of myself as more of a music fan than a musician in my own right. I am obsessed with it. I buy music every single day. I have the biggest record collection I have ever seen, and due to the fact that I am really hungry when I listen, I learn from the new music I am hearing and am continually inspired.”

Progression in his music also reflects on how he has grown up since he first started recording; “When I wrote my first songs I was a teenager and now I have grey hair on my face! My music is all personal though, and that being the case it is a reflection of who I am, and how I am a changing person, for better or for worse.”

Where Buck really comes into his own however, is of course his live shows. He doesn’t just play his songs, he is a real entertainer; “I always try and keep it new and different. With people who have seen me before, I want to give them a reason to keep on coming again, and I don’t want anyone to walk away thinking ‘well, I could have just stayed at home and listened to the record,’ so I like to mix things up, put on a show and try to interact.”

What is really obvious is just how much Buck 65 just loves making music; “I’m trying to be super-prolific at the moment. Trying to write a new song every day, and I’m going to try and put a lot of new material out, use my website and my myspace page, just constantly throw new stuff out there. Not stuff I am going to sell, just like, here’s more music, more music! I just want to go on, learn more and more instruments, try and learn more and more theory. I have a close friend living near me who went to music school and I am always asking about ten questions a day! Recently, I have also re-kindled a relationship with my school music teacher from when I was a kid!”

While he is on stage, Buck 65 comes across as quite the extravert. However when he is not performing, he really just prefers to work alone, listen to music and, it appears, return to being elusive; “I hopefully want to go back one day to just being a complete hermit. I am really anti-social, and it tends to be the way I am most comfortable.” His more recent music has seen him collaborating with some big-name producers; “When I did the last record, with Tortoise and other people, I was terrified! I suppose it was good for me, to put myself in an uncomfortable position and work from it. Almost as an experiment, like 'lets see what happens if I work from an area of complete discomfort'”
“Doing collaborative things here and there is fun, but I work best alone I think.”

Visas!

2006-05-06T16:43:00.000Z

There is something strangely satisfying about receiving back your passport with a freshly stuck visa on one of the inside pages. Of the places I have been, Russia and Moldova, two of the countries I will be going to this summer, are the only one’s I have ever actually had to apply for a visa in advance for! I think the whole process encompasses a mixture of anxiety (will they accept me?), and anticipation. Having a visa sticker or stamp in your passport is about as “official” as you can get, so you know that wherever you will be going is that one step closer.

Thankfully my passport now contains both my Russian and Moldovan visa’s, meaning all there is for me to do now is show up on the border and get stamped in :-)

Living life in the slow lane...

2006-04-26T17:21:00.000Z

Just thought I would post a feature I have written for the latest edition of Nouse which, for those of you who don't know, is the University of York Student Newspaper! The feature is about the greatness of long-distance train travel...! (except for the first one, the photo's were all taken at York train station!)

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Living life in the slow lane
by Adam Sloan

What if I were to tell you that tomorrow you can step onto a train at York station, and without setting one foot off the ground, in two weeks you could be in Singapore, standing at the edge of continental Asia. Getting there would have been no easy feet of course; you will have passed through around ten different countries (this assuming you decided to take the easiest route) and eight time zones. You will have probably suffered delays, setbacks, breakdowns and, of course, the odd stomach upset or two. But you will have taken one of the greatest journeys on earth.

For there is practically no destination in Europe, Africa or Asia that cannot be reached by simply walking off the platform at Waterloo International station onto the carriage of one of the worlds great trains. The possibilities are endless and the destinations fantastic, but above all it is the journey that really puts this mode of travel above all others. Long distance train travel allows you to indulge yourself and relax, basquing in the romance of “this is how it is meant to be”, rather than cocooned 36,000 feet up in an environment that is about as sterile as the journey it presents you.

My first experience of long distance rail travel was the journey through Canada’s rocky mountains, on the “Rocky Mountaineer” from Edmonton, Alberta, to Vancouver. In Canada, these trains that go through the Rockies can be kilometres long, with more than 50 carriages, somewhere in the middle there will be a passenger car. The size and scale of the train reflects the grandeur of the setting it passes through, and you know at the end of the line you have the city of Vancouver to look forward to.

Of course, in this 21st century world of instant messaging, broadband Internet and trans-continental flights, who can blame people for expecting to be transported to their destination of choice anywhere in the world in the space of a day. But what needs to be thought of is what treasures are being missed when you get the brief glimpse of a glowing lake through the gap in the clouds, rather than slowly moving around it, taking it in from a proper perspective. Why get somewhere in the space of a stressful day when you can do it in a relaxed week?

Last year a train took me over a thousand miles across Australia, through some of the most barren and deserted landscape in the world for three days and two nights on the Indian-Pacific railway. The flight would have taken five hours, but why rush? There is a kind of hypnotic effect, looking out the window on that train, which passes over the longest stretch of straight railroad anywhere in the world. To look out the window sometimes it doesn't even look like you are moving, the desertness stretches on for that far, the image broken by the odd kangaroo or gum tree!

The train allows you to experience a time and place in a way that no other mode of travel can. One does not have to worry about falling out of the sky, or plunging over a ravine (depending on how exotic the trains you choose to take are of course), leaving you free to relax and enjoy the world passing you by while making casual conversation with fellow travellers and local commuters. The train is often slow, cyclists can sometimes be seen whizzing by, but so this reflects the pace of life that should be taken when on a relaxing trip away, allowing you to ponder, and finish that book that has been gathering dust for the last few months.

Above all, long-distance train travel encompasses the romance of all those great journeys that have been written and read about, you can still step onto the Orient Express as Herculie Poirot did in the classic Agatha Christie novel Murder on the Orient Express, or at least the same-named successor to the original ‘express d’Orient’ that first opened in 1883, between Paris and Vienna. Time can be turned back by stepping on one of India’s grand former imperial carriageways, generally regarded as the best place in the world for railway enthusiasts, such as myself, to travel.

For many of course, the granddaddy of all railway journeys has to be the Trans-Siberian railway between Moscow and Vladivostok, in far-eastern Russia. The classic Trans-Siberian route takes around seven days, passing through some of the most remote places in the world. If just Siberia were a country in itself, it would still be the biggest country in the world. Of course, you could always take the Trans-Mongolian route, stopping off in Ulan-Baatar (claim to fame: it is the coldest national capital in the world!), or the Trans-Manchurian route, which takes you around Mongolia and down to Beijing.

This summer I will be jumping for a night on the historic ‘Red Arrow’, which travels between St. Petersburg and Moscow. It was this railway that transported the first Soviet government from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The track opened in 1851 and is one of the straightest stretches of railroad in the world. It is said that it was meant to be dead straight, however when Tsar Nicholas I was drawing the route on the map, he ran out of ruler and accidentally drew a small curve around his hand, before moving the ruler down and carrying on the line down to Moscow. The result is an apparently random curve in the otherwise dead straight track between the two cities.

For a solitary traveller, such as myself, a train allows you the choice to either relax in conversation with those around you (provided you speak the same language of course), or slip away into silent anonymity and a good book. With careful eyes it can actually be said that a country’s trains can reflect a national psyche. Look at the Bullet Trains in Japan, or the Swiss railways, they are fast, efficient and practical. In contrast, the slow-moving, open air carriageways going across Zambia reflect a more relaxed and enjoyable, reflecting a more laid back way of life. The train may reach its destination in a day, it may not, but what does a few extra hours really matter?

What does time matter when there is not just a destination to be reached but travel to be experienced and a journey to enjoy.

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For more information on inter-continental rail travel, visit the man in seat 61 at http://www.seat61.com

'The Old Patagonian Express'

2006-04-13T18:18:00.000Z

Today I finally finished reading “The Old Patagonian Express” by Paul Theroux. It has been one of those reads that has been on and off for about the past few months actually, read a few chapters, a book in between, a few chapters, a book in between. A couple of weeks ago though I ended up picking it up again to read the last half and pretty much have not been able to put it down. I don’t think I liked it as much as The Great Railway Bazaar (Theroux’s first travel book for those not in the know), although that book does sit among my al time favourites so maybe a comparison is somewhat unfair, however it has now instilled in me even more a desire to visit Latin America (a desire first realised after reading Peter Moore’s The Full Montezuma I should point out).

In the book Paul Theroux jumps on the everyday commuter train in Boston, Massachusetts, with one destination in mind, that being Patagonia, the Southern tip of Argentina. What I love about Paul Theroux’s books is that they are not so much about the places he visits during his three-month trip through the America’s, but about his journey getting there. Travelling by train he gets to meet some of the most interesting and, one sometimes thinks, some of the most insane, people spanning two continents. He really takes the reader along with him on his journey, meeting the people he meets (to use the old cliché!) and getting on the old railway lines all the way from Boston to Patagonia.

I think the fact that Theroux made his career as a novelist before he was a travel writer really comes across in his writing as you really get the sense he is telling a story. Even the way he presents his characters and his journey it reads like an adventure rather than just one man’s travels through the America’s.
Definitely recommended reading, but pick up The Great Railway Bazaar first, otherwise concepts such as getting “Duffilled” wont make much sense (to be Duffilled is to miss your train with all your bags still in the compartment, so named after Duffill, who was a guy Theroux met while travelling by train through Italy on his way to Turkey and the Far East).

'Can you make that coffee to stay please...'

2006-04-12T11:23:00.000Z

London

Pro’s – Vibrant, cosmopolitan, loads going on, diverse, historic, the capital, cultural.
Con’s – Expensive, anonymous, lonely, EXPENSIVE, crowded, overwhelming.

There were two experiences I feel that really summed up my week down in London, one I liked a lot and one that made me think I didn’t like it all so much. The experience I liked: I went out for a few drinks with a work collegue and his friends. Sitting at the table were four of us, making up four different nationalities. Later in the week we went for a night out and there were seven of us, making up five different nationalities. This made me realise that London really is a place where so many different people of all different cultures come together, and that I really liked. Just travelling to work on the tube in the day, or getting around on the bus, I heard people talking in Spanish, French, Chinese, Urdu, Arabic and a whole host of other languages, almost as much as a heard people speaking English! This I really liked.

The experience that sticks in my mind as one I didn’t like so much in London was this: on my way to work in the morning, I had a bit of spare time so I stopped in Starbucks for a coffee and to read the paper. After ordering my drink I went to collect it, and without even asking it was automatically given in a ‘to go’ cup. This made me think…is it that absurd a notion that in London in the morning somebody might actually want to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee before going somewhere? It sounds like only a small thing but this experience actually really disturbed me! I looked around and realised that I was pretty much the only one that was actually sitting down and having a coffee. People would come in wearing their suits, go to the counter, get their coffee to go and walk out of the door, almost in one swift motion. This is a place where people know where they want to go, stick their head down and do things as fast as possible (“time is money! Time is money!”) and that is a mentality I don’t know if I could live with on a daily basis!

Anyway, back to the reason I was spending a week in London in the first place! Some of you may or may not know, for many years I have known that I want to pursue a career in newspaper journalism. Having spoken to numerous people, the best way to get ahead in such a competitive industry is really to spend as much time as possible working for free until one day where you may luckily find yourself in a job from where you can start climbing the ladder. Some how (as a result of persistance and applying over six months in advance!) I managed to get myself a work experience placement down at The Independent, and thus acted as a precurser to spending a week down in the capital.

My place of residence was the ‘International Student House’, which has a great location at the top of Great Portland Street, right in the West End. Not exactly the most lively place to stay for people looking for wild nights out, nor the cheapest either (£18 p/n for a four person dorm), but when booking a place to stay I was very concious of the fact I was going to London to work and therefore would like decent nights sleep! It is worth noting that the hostel doesn’t have a kitchen either which means breakfast, lunch and dinner must be purchased. All in all though, it was a very clean, cosy and friendly place to stay. It was pretty quiet, the first few nights I shared my dorm with only one other person, who’s name escapes me, that didn’t speak English.
I don’t think I’ll bore you with the day-to-day goings on of my work placement at the Independent, but it was a great experience and well worthwile (Simon Kelner, the editor, drinks tea out of a china cup and tea pot in the morning!). Obviously with me only being a first year undergraduate student I didn’t do a lot in terms of work for the paper, mostly researching things, however just being there and seeing how a national daily newspaper works on a day-to-day basis made the whole thing worthwile. It was great meeting all the people there as well, and seeing how they got to where they are. I spent most of my time hanging out with other people on work experience as well, mostly MA Journalism students from City University.

Just to point out…I got the bus down to London on the National Express shuttle from Birmingham. No stops the whole way and the trip took just under 3 hours. The return ticket cost just £4 :-) !

London is a fantastic place. I hadn’t spent any time down there for absolutely ages, and this was the first time I really got to experience spending any period of time longer than a day or two there for a very long time. There always seems to be so much going on, everywhere you look, and this makes it a really exciting place to be, even if you just wander round like I did and take it in. Although most of my time was spent around Canary Wharf and the Docklands, which is probably one of the areas I like least around London, all it took was a quick hop on the tube and I was in Angel, or Covent Garden, or Parliament Square.

I think I am going to have to start making more regular trips down to London. For £4 return and hostels from about £12 a night it really is the place to be, where things happen, and I think this is why I have decided I like it so much.

Welcome to my blog!

2006-04-12T11:06:00.000Z

Having spent much time meandering along the peripheries, I have decided to enter the world of Blogging. Expect to read mostly my wandering thoughts and experiences on the events and issues that I have come accross over the course of a day/week etc. Hopefully I will occasionally provide an interesting read but if not at least I can see what this whole blogging thing is all about!

Cheers,
Adam