I wouldn’t spit on ye if ye were on fire!

There are expressions that are so colloquial even a person living in the region may not recognise them. It reminds me of my son who had been taken to a small mountain village on the island of Rhodes in Greece and was disturbed to find no one seemed to speak Greek. By now fluent in this language he found it disturbing that he could neither understand anyone nor make them understand him.  A dear friend of mine had taken him with her family to visit this remote village and was unaware of how disturbing Daniel had found each and every interaction. It turned out that particular village had a very heavy accent that even native Greeks would have found hard to follow.  This happens almost everywhere to some degree. Here in Northern Ireland, we have many expressions that are very confusing for outsiders. For example, instead of saying yes, we say aye (pronounced "I").  I remember visiting an elderly uncle, in Craigavon hospital, and having to translate for him for the local nurses who just could not follow his strong border accent.  There are many obscure expressions we use in Northern Ireland that when abroad I must remember not to use to avoid confusion.

Saying                                                         Meaning

What's the craic?                     What is going on?

Houl yer whisht                     Shut up and listen!

Boys a dear                     expression of surprise

My grandfather would greet us with this expression ("Boys a dear"), repeated two or three times when we walked into his home, and the delight in his voice as he said it was the most welcoming sound I can remember as a child.

Jammy sod                             Meaning a person is really lucky

                                                                    (usually resentfully said)

Scundered                                                    feeling disgusted and upset

Will you stop faffin about                     Would you stop messing about!

He seems dead on                     He seems a good person

We'll have a yarn                     We will have a good chat

I wouldn’t spit on ye if ye were on fire     If you were burning I would not waste my spit

                                                                     on you to put it out

I can remember an older guy in the school bus trying to chat up a schoolgirl and she responded with the devastating response “I wouldn’t spit on ye if ye were on fire” 

Would you look at that eejit     Would you look at that fool

It's pure baltic out there              It’s very cold weather out there

I'm foundered out here              I’m freezing out here

my nerves are up to high doh      I am highly stressed

Were you born in a field             Are you an animal that you don’t close doors

I fell in the shuck              I fell into a muddy ditch

I can recall visiting an aunt of mine who continued to herd cattle in the fields into her nineties and would rear grandchildren on her lap sitting beside a black range in the kitchen.  She used a massive coke bottle filled with milk with a huge teat to feed these babies and every year yet another baby seemed to replace the one that had grown.  She did have seven sons and one daughter and lived into her hundredth year.  I once remember her greeting us along the lane with a tiny muddy toddler in her hand saying she had just pulled him from the shuck!

I am absolutely boggin I am completely covered in mud/dirt

Catch yourself on! You cannot be serious!

Fancy a dander? Would you like a walk?

My father always told the story of a lad in his village who took his loved one for a daily dander.  They were engaged after 14 years of such formal walking out and to all accounts had a successful and happy marriage.  Courtship in those days was sometimes slow and steady.

Will ye quit your gurning! Stop complaining or moaning!

You better wind your neck in! I’m warning you to stop speaking like that!

 I'm dying for a poke I’d really like an ice-cream cone

When we visit a seaside town my mother, now in her 89th year, will often announce gleefully, “Shall we have a poke?”

Then, there are the particular expressions that were unique to my family.  My grandfather used these and I thought they were normal expressions everyone knew,

He’s a shit house rat The piggery had huge rats as big as cats and

                                                                were very aggressive so unscrupulous dishonest

                                                                characters that you should not trust were called this

Do you wanna grow a pig’s foot? If you don’t eat this food you will end up

                                                                growing a pig’s foot

As a child, if you were reluctant to clean your plate of food this expression would be whispered in your ear in an ominous tone by my grandfather.  I never understood the connection between not eating and the possibility of this deformity but the threat had its effect and no crumb would be left.  Rather than a long description of how healthy the particular food was this ominous prediction quickly insured no food was ever wasted.

The strange thing is that such different dialects are not only hard to follow but can lead to isolation or misunderstanding.  However, the words we use are just one aspect of trying to communicate. Almost every home has its own subtle peculiar language both in terms of vocabulary used, tone, volume and atmosphere.  Things that appear confusing to others just do not translate.  It is no wonder then that many of us struggle at times to get our message across.  Despite having the same basic language, we sometimes do not recognise the particular dialect being used.  Even when we know the dialect we occasionally don’t understand that family’s conversational norms.  Their sensitivities, their education level, the unseen conflict zones and their history of family communication. There can be no-go areas that can make a minefield into which you can stumble unaware.  This business of relating to others is a journey that real life is made of.  

There will be mistakes and misunderstandings but there is just so much to learn from this game and so much more to be gained than lost.  Everyone we meet is an opportunity that is infinitely precious if we are humble enough to see it that way.  Making communication work with others strengthens both their and our own abilities in many ways.  Having the empathy, sympathy, and insight to realise that it may not always run smoothly ensures we don’t give up at the first obstacle.  Just because we fall at a few fences does not mean we should quit the race.  It just means we may need more practice with a wider range of people over a longer time period.  Sometimes what we cannot understand with our mind, we can grasp with our heart and what we cannot feel with our heart we can sense in our soul.

“The soul has been given its own ears to hear things that the mind does not understand.” 

Rumi

war fuels disease and messes with our minds

It started by accident.  I got lost in Senglea in Malta.  

That triggered a hunt for news in the archives of the British papers on Senglea.  So great to have this resource with newspapers available from 200 years ago.  The two earliest mentions of Senglea in the British newspapers were interesting.  One, from the Manchester Courier June 26th 1847, concerned a lady from Senglea who was bitten by a cat and subsequently caught rabies and died of the condition.  

The second was an article entitled The Sickness at Malta, from The Dublin Evening Mail on Monday 30th October 1848.

This recounted a strange sickness affecting the British troops stationed in Malta.  This article talks of a prevailing disease amongst the military, but chiefly in the barracks at Fort St. Elmo.  The 1st battalion of the 44th, the 1st battalion of the 69th and the head-quarters of the Royal Artillery were stationed in this area.  The Lieutenant-General Ellice, in charge of these forces, ordered a change of quarters.  He unwisely moved the 69th from Senglea to St Elmo and sent another battalion to Floriana and other random movements of the troops in response to the outbreak.  This backfired in that the Senglea battalion, who had been previously free of disease suddenly started dying of the same complaint.  Those battalions moved to various other places continued to suffer from the disease in the same numbers as before.  The only result of this movement had been to spread the disease among a wider population. Dr Potelli, the chief surgeon of the civil hospital, was convinced that the disease was Asiatic Cholera but Dr Barry, the principal military medical officer, persisted in his claim, supported by other military doctors that it was no such thing.  

In one day on 11th October they had seven deaths and still the disease progressed in the midst of conflicting opinions.  There is a strange mention of a native, meaning a Maltese, being brought in, suffering from what appeared to be the same complaint.  His illness was dismissed as being brought on by unwholesome food or possible neglected disorders of the bowels!!  A curious twisting of facts making it the patient's own fault.  To allay the fears of the general population the presence of stagnant water within the Fort St Elmo was blamed for the outbreak of disease.  The fact that mostly military personnel were affected (they claimed) pointed to this being the case.

By 1850 despite their conviction to the contrary, Cholera was indeed found to be the culprit and yet the practice of responding to outbreaks had not improved.  When a company of the 44th Regiment, stationed at San Francesco de Paolo Barracks, lost a third of its men to the disease the military reacted by sending the entire company to Gozo.  Within ten days of their arrival no less that 26 men fell ill with 16 deaths.  Unsurprisingly, cholera then appeared in the village of Ghajnsielem, beside the Fort and spread throughout Gozo resulting in 105 attacks and 78 deaths among the civilian population.

All of this makes one think about how disease and war could be linked in more ways than we could possibly imagine.  Apart from the movement of troops which provide a perfect vector for the spread of disease throughout a population, war itself is a perfect breeding ground for disease.  

Take for example Syria.  The war there has resulted in millions of Syrians being displaced.  High percentages of its ambulances and hospitals have been damaged or destroyed.  Only 10% of its pharmaceutical need are now being met.  Vaccination coverage was 91% in 2010, now a mere 50% of children born since the war broke out have been vaccinated.  To put that in perspective, there were no cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis before 2008.  

cutaneous leishmaniasis

By 2012 there were 52,982 confirmed cases.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Poliomyelitis, measles, meningitis and scabes  are all spreading among the vulnerable population.  Could those parents who peddle anti-vaccine rhetoric please take note!  Leave emotions and gut instinct aside and look at the facts, so many lives depend the presence of effective vaccines.  Those living in refugee camps and in poverty do not have the luxury of your options.  Poor diet, lack of sanitation, stress, contagions from close quarters are not choices people make.  They are a result of external forces beyond their control and for those who have an excess of money, food and good healthcare to be so short-sighted is frankly inexplicable.

War and disease have a history together.  During the Napoleonic wars , eight times the number of British army soldiers died from disease than from battle wounds.  In the American Civil war two thirds of the 660 000 deaths of soldiers were caused by pneumonia, typhoid, dysentery and malaria.

The result of the so-called Spanish flu, following World war 1 in 1918, was a worldwide death toll of between 50 and 100 million worldwide. Recent investigative work by a British team led by virologist John Oxford of St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London Hospital has suggested that the major troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples, France, has almost certainly being the centre of the 1918 flu pandemic. A significant precursor virus, harboured in birds, mutated to pigs that were kept near the front is proposed as the source. 

The Second World war had its own contributions.  One of which was that dengue increased in South-East Asia during the war and the immediate post-war period, due to the spread of mosquitos and different virus strains throughout the region.  This disease produces a spiking fever, searing muscle and joint pain, blood seeping through skin, shock and possibly death.  Today this disease threatens 2.4 million people worldwide.  With such tasks facing humanity it begs the question should we be wasting valuable resources on wars?

In order to really understand why war is so conducive to disease we need to understand the various changes that contribute to the spread of disease.

1. mass movement of populations
2. lack of access to clean water
3. poor sanitation
4. lack of shelter
5. poor nutritional status
6. collapse of public health infrastructure
7. lack of health services

More than 25 countries in Sub Saharan Africa are affected by conflict and 70% of all deaths in these countries are caused by infectious diseases.

When you have a displaced population they will have a 60 times higher mortality rate.  Today there are 40 million refugees and displaced people.  The figures are heart-breaking, almost too huge to take on board.

The Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan

The loss of life can be quick and huge.  When there was an outbreak of cholera and dysentery in Goma (formerly Zaire) in 1994, twelve thousand Rwandan refugees were killed in just 3 weeks.

In Afghanistan malaria was very well controlled before conflict began in 1979.  In the past twenty years there have been 2/3 million cases every year.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1930 there were more than 33 000 cases of trypanosomiasis (sleeping disease).  With health care initiatives by 1959 this figure had dropped to less than a thousand cases.  The conflict that erupted in the 1960s meant that by 2001 the number of cases was estimated at 40 000.  It is hard not to hold your head in despair.

In focussing on physical complaints alone, of course we do not have the whole picture.  It is estimated that 10% of the World's population lives with mental illness.  In 2008, five years after Liberia's civil war had ended 40% of Liberians had symptoms of major depression.  Conflict leaves scars that we have yet to understand fully. For example, in Northern Ireland there has been a doubling of the suicide rate since the peace agreement in 1998.  Conflict, it seems leaves effects that linger and eat into the mental wellbeing of a population long after peace has been established.

What strikes one is that we cannot afford to have war.  We must learn the lessons of the past.  War is far too expensive in terms of human suffering, creation of disease and far too distracting from the vital tasks that lie ahead in this world of ours.

refugees in Europe   Photographs that speak to the heart

Growing a Tail

Outside The Point in Malta, here on Malta,  there is a small unusual building. Almost in the shadow of this modern shopping mall. It has an unusual atmosphere. I have passed it many times and feel strangely drawn. I'm not sure as to its age, purpose or history. I keep meaning to investigate further. But life comes along and 100 other things get in the way.

If I achieve nothing in this life, it will be because of the ‘other things’. Mind you, I like, others am endlessly distracted. We are all hard on youth these days. Accusing them of being online instead of living. Well, this online existence is very addictive. You can feed any interest, follow any news story, play any game, chat/machine message anyone, watch entertainment from all countries, old films, new films, award winning documentaries. 

Be honest, if it had been available to us at their age we would not have  played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians and endless chase games. We climbed trees, walked the tops of gates (like tight rope walkers), played marbles and had endless football games on our street. The latter was so intense that it had its own cup. A small golden coloured statue which doubled as a pencil sharpener was competed over with an enthusiasm that never abated. They were also endless fights with kids on the street but that was accepted as the norm. The next day your opponent would be on your football team. Loyalties were fluid and your nemesis could morph into a colleague you danced in victory with after scoring a hard one goal. You got to learn a lot about yourself and others in these interactions. For good and bad. You examined your peers and saw what behaviour was worth emulating or warranted aversion. Each day was an opportunity to be a different person. In the fluidity of who you mixed with, the multitude of unexpected conversations, a dynamic environment triggered change and chances. 

Nowadays, I watch as young people plug-in and somehow go off-line. They are there but not. In the virtual world which competes for their attention and life there is less room for the interactions we remember. Apathetic resentment seems fuelled by all that energy having nowhere to go. All these expectations of choice, entertainment wins out over family claims. Even within families, time is stolen away and fundamental unity eroded. It is an unseen war and we are losing it. What is worse we are losing a generation who know longer see their families/neighbourhoods/communities as places to implement change or influence.

Instead, we are breeding a captive mentality that accepts the state of things. Just embraces the hopelessness of change. Life becomes a game already lost because they opt not to actually live but become spectators of this world’s disintegration. We despair of them and they of us. We despair because we remember a different world, they despair because they know too much about this real world. Communication channels become fraught with our inability to coax them out of this virtual world they have become immersed in. We languish in the shallows of this world sensing its attraction but longing for real meaningful conversations. I clicked on my history (in Chrome) and was floored by what I have watched online the hours spent, the time wasted and realised I was no longer in the shallows but actually already out of my depth. 

Joining in a virtual world separated from those I love and my friends. My attempts to swim ashore are laughable. I write letters and post them. Not emails, letters with envelopes and stamps. I walk to the postbox and push them through as if participating in an archaic custom. Try to make it two a week. Reaching out hand over hand to draw ashore against the waves. I go on long walks disengaged from the Internet and find my thoughts have time to settle. I'm reflecting more on past events and the future. It's still hard to trigger conversations! I start to talk about some world event and I'm told that they have already seen the news online. Trying to speak about the things I've done or thought, I sense their desire to get back to the world of perpetual entertainment. How can any of us compete with all of that? 

At times I think I’ve neared the shore and safety. We share a walk and really talk heart to heart. Play a board game and laugh at our childish desire to win. But, these are just threads pulled from the weave that has us all caught fast. Is there a reason we all fear silence? Perhaps, because in that freedom from sound/talk/music we begin to measure ourselves. Not these people over here, or yesterday's news, today's happenings but us. Without all the distraction flowing in torrents over us we could be confronted with who we really are. What we have actually become? With this avalanche of addictive output to focus on, there is no need to look inward and take our own pulse. But if we no longer know ourselves have we not already lost our way? I'm back stumbling in the shallows determined to emerge on dry land and seem to have have developed a tail. How on earth did that happen and are you too becoming equally deformed?

Sliema to Valetta by boat and foot - getting lost and finding good stuff

Went for a walk in Valetta today.  First I walked up the hill in Sliema.

The colours of the flowers are amazing and catch the eye.  The houses are equally unusual and even when dilapidated have a presence.

In Malta there are churches at almost every turn, all covered in statues and with often two clocks.  One is set at the wrong time to fool the devil – they say!

The blooms beside a doorway seem too pretty to miss so I do a close up.

Over the hill and I reach the ferries, this is where I catch a boat to Valetta from Sliema.

And as the ferry gets closer the view gets better and better.  I reckon Valetta should always be approached by sea.  The walls are so impressive from water level.

Arriving at Valetta.

Hugging the walls I make my way along the ramparts.

Looking back at Sliema I can see the ferry and where I have come from.

Nature is found even on the bare dry walls.

Now time to climb some stairs and the height of the houses surprises.

Every square meter seems used and the density of living quarters is apparent.The streets become narrow and yet full of life.  This is no museum, but a living city.

Some grand buildings, like the front of this one.

Haven’t a clue where I am going but have time to admire the greenery.

Who cares if they are lost when everywhere interesting streets entice.

Am tempted down one and find myself in the second oldest theatre in Europe.

Even better is the tea room and I take the opportunity to grab a pot of tea and have a well earned break.  I have never experienced this tea room and it is filled with light and has a lovely atmosphere. 

This has to be the loveliest place to chill.  I heartily recommend it!  Sometimes getting lost leads you to the nicest surprises.  Time to head home.