Lorne Mallin

Abayudaya orphan: Help send Zilpah to a better school

2012-01-16T00:31:00.000-08:00

Click to donate for Zilpah through PayPal or credit card

I'm looking for an angel or a group of angels to help Zilpah Mudondo, a very bright Jewish orphan in the Abayudaya community in Eastern Uganda where I lived. She's been going to the Abayudaya-administered high school but wants to become a doctor and the school doesn't have the science facilities she would need to get into pre-med.

Zilpah would like to go to Hamdan Girls High School, a boarding school in Mbale, the district capital, which has the resources and level of academic competition she needs. Tuition, boarding and expenses are about $230 per term in a three-term school year. The Ugandan school year begins in January. For her first term, which begins Jan. 17, as a new student she would need an extra $100 for the materials each student must supply: for example, uniforms, school supplies, mattress, bedding, soap, even toilet tissue. So that would be $790 for this year, and about $690, barring any fee increases, for each of two more years until she finishes her A levels (the equivalent of Grade 13).

Please contact me by email or phone (604-222-3379) if you would like to participate in helping Zilpah. Canadian tax receipts can be supplied by a Jewish-run registered charity in Ottawa. If a tax receipt is not an issue, please help by clicking on this donation link: Click to donate for Zilpah through PayPal or credit card

Zilpah is 17 years old and about to enter Senior 4, the equivalent of Grade 11. Her parents died in 1996 and the four children were raised by an aunt. FYI: In the photo above she is holding AFRIpad kits, which are washable, reusable sanitary pads that I'm fortunate to supply to all the menstruating girls in the Abayudaya schools thanks to many generous donors. Most Ugandan girls can't afford commercial products and often miss school.

Abayudaya women create beautiful paperbead jewelry at Nabugoye Hill

2011-12-08T23:54:00.001-08:00

Click to order Abayudaya paperbead jewelry
$25 including shipping. Please include the necklace number
and your mailing address.

Naume Sabano with necklaces at Nabugoye Hill, Uganda.

Click on any necklace to see a larger version

Income-generating project helps alleviate poverty

Last night I sent more than 1 million Ugandan shillings to Naume Sabano, chair of the Abayudaya Women's Association, for paperbead jewelry made by her members. The jewelry was sold in Portland, OR, where I visited the P'nai Or Jewish Renewal community last weekend to lead an Abayudaya Shabbaton. The money is only $430 but it means a lot to subsistence farmers who rarely have any cash income.

This morning I woke up to this text message from Naume: "Dear Lorne, what exciting news . I wish you could see my smile but all I could say is thank you so much. May God reward your efforts."

Click to order Abayudaya paperbead jewelry
$25 including shipping. Please include the necklace number
and your mailing address.

P'nai Or of Portland partners with Abayudaya for Tikkun Olam projects

2011-09-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

Click to donate to the Abayudaya through PayPal or credit card

Jewish girls at the high school with their AFRIpads.

Helping support Jewish, Muslim, Christian children in Uganda

The Abayudaya ("People of Judah" in the Luganda language) first embraced Judaism around 1919. Today this remarkable Jewish community numbers about 1,000 people, basically subsistence farmers, in villages in Eastern Uganda.

P’nai Or has voted to support the Abayudaya Jewish children of Uganda and their Muslim and Christian classmates in the following three ways:

Supply schoolgirls with washable, reusable AFRIpad sanitary pad kits;
Provide bicycles to girls at the elementary school to make education more accessible;
Sponsor orphan students at their elementary school.

I'm a member of the Jewish Renewal shul Or Shalom in Vancouver, BC, lived in Uganda in 2009-2010 and worked in the two Abayudaya-administered schools. P'nai Or will be directly linked with the community through me. I'm a classmate of Linda Zahavi in the Kol Zimra chant leaders training with Shefa Gold, and a friend of Yehudah Winter and Joanie Levine.

Ugandan schoolgirls routinely miss four to five days a month of school because they can't afford commercial sanitary products and are uncomfortable going to school when they use bits of old clothes or newspaper. AFRIpads manufactures low-cost, cloth sanitary pad kits in Uganda to reduce menstrual-related absenteeism and provide schoolgirls with protection for up to a year.

I launched a pilot project at Semei Kakungulu High School earlier this year to give AFRIpads to the 21 Jewish students in the dorm. I'm able to get the kits for $4 and have raised funds to supply another 58 high school students. That leaves 148 girls – 108 at the high school and 40 at the elementary school – who would benefit from the kits provided by P’nai Or fundraising. The current need equals $592.

Bikes make education more accessible for girls.

Many girls live too far from the school to walk every day. So they stay in the dorm, separating them from their families, and putting financial pressure on the school to house and feed them. If they have bicycles, they could ride from home and stay with their families. 20 bikes at a cost of about $60 each would be a great help. Total: $1,200.

Joel, Nathan and Shalon are orphan siblings.

I have partnered with Aaron Kintu Moses, director of Hadassah Primary School (unrelated to the Hadassah organization), and Vancouver donors to sponsor the education of eight orphans at the school. Another five orphans are waiting for sponsorship. The cost is $240 a year each, for a total of $1,200. Except for minor fees to wire the funds, all the money goes to the kids to help pay for uniforms, books, school supplies, dorm fees and other expenses that are usually beyond their reach.

As part of this project, P’nai Or children and teens can develop pen pals with the Ugandan children as they are taught their lessons in English. They do not have computers.

The total sought for the Abayudaya is $2,992: $592 for AFRIpads, $1,200 for bicycles, and $1,200 for sponsorship.

Help empower Abayudaya girls with AFRIpads

2011-07-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

Click to donate to my work in Uganda through PayPal or credit card

Top: Jewish students at Semei Kakungulu High School

in Uganda with AFRIpad kits. Bottom: The cotton/nylon
kit includes cover, three pads with wings and two without.

A monthly challenge, a sustainable solution
Millions of girls living in developing countries like Uganda miss up to 20% of the school year simply because they cannot afford to buy commercial sanitary products when they menstruate. The Abayudaya Jewish girls and their Moslem and Christian classmates face this same challenge. They use newspaper or rags and miss four-five days of school each month for lack of sanitary products. This absenteeism has enormous consequences on girls' education and academic potential.
The AFRIpads menstrual kitsAFRIpads manufactures low-cost, reusable, washable cloth sanitary pads in Uganda in order to curtail the high rates of menstrual-related absenteeism among primary and secondary school girls. They are made by local Ugandan women giving them the opportunity to generate an income and send their kids to school. The menstrual kit provides school girls with affordable, environmentally-friendly, washable menstrual protection for up to 1 year at about 20% of the total cost of a year's supply of commercial sanitary napkins. AFRIpads is a sustainable solution for girls and women greatly enhancing their health. It also gives them the opportunity to continue work and school during their period, thereby improving their future progress and development.

How to buy AFRIpad Kits for Ugandan girls
Help a Ugandan school girl fulfill her academic potential and help AFRIpads stimulate rural industry and employment. It costs only $4 for one kit, $8 for two, $12 for three, and so on. Here's how: Click to donate to my work in Uganda through PayPal or credit card

Out of Africa: Moving Back to Canada

2010-06-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

Click to donate to my work in Uganda through PayPal or credit card

On the first and third Shabbat of the month, I've been hosting Abayudaya students and others at my Kampala home for Kabbalat Shabbat, dinner, a sleepover, breakfast, morning services, and lunch.

In Ottawa last November with Ted Jacobsen, whose support helped kickstart the orphans' lunch program at the Abayudaya-administered high school.

Sarah Nabirye, right, leads student dancers at an Abayudaya festival at Nabugoye.

My cute RAV4 parked outside the Abayudaya Guest House.

Peace Mutonyi, right, my top speller last year, with her family in Kampala. Dick and Marcia Zuker of Ottawa are helping Peace with her education costs.

With my boss Ariful Islam at the BRAC Uganda country office in Kampala.

Vancouver Is Calling Me Home

I'm coming home to live in Vancouver after 14 months in Uganda. The beauty and lifestyle of Vancouver call to me, I miss my spiritual communities and I want to be more helpful to my sister, who has faced a health crisis. My job as publications manager for BRAC Uganda has reminded me that I retired from full-time work at the end of 2006. I've given a month's notice. Uganda is beautiful but its charms are fading for me. I've caused two minor traffic accidents here in Kampala in the last two months. No one has been injured but I'm afraid of hurting myself or others. I'm accident-free in Canada but here there's a gap in my attention. I had thought of returning in mid-November when my daughter Lisa receives her Masters in International Affairs from Carleton in Ottawa. But that would mean arriving on the cusp of winter, rather than summer. My favourite event of the year, the Vancouver Folkfest in July, is beckoning.

So, I fly out of Kampala's Entebbe Airport on Sunday, June 27, arriving that evening, by virtue of the time difference, in Ottawa. I'll be there a few days, and look forward to meeting Ottawa family and friends who have been so supportive of my volunteer projects with the Abayudaya and others. On Wednesday, June 30, I arrive in Vancouver.

I'll be looking for temporary accommodation during July while I search for a long-term rental from Aug. 1. In July I would be grateful for just about any arrangement in the city of Vancouver - housesit, vacation rental, or sharing a home, including helping with rent, expenses, cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc. For the long-term rental, I'm thinking of paying up to $1,200 for a nice one-bedroom, if that's realistic these days. I'll also be looking for a three- or four-year-old car, perhaps a Prius again. Any leads for these would be appreciated. My Skype address is lmallin.

I leave feeling that I've been able to do some good work with help from many of you. The orphans' lunch project was a major initiative that has meant so much to vulnerable students at the Abayudaya-administered Semei Kakungulu High School at Nabugoye Hill. Kulanu, the New York-based non-profit I represented at Nabugoye for six months last year, has attracted enough funding this year to expand its nutrition program to the point that it began feeding all the students a daily hot lunch last month. Kulanu expects to keep it going for some time. More than $1,000 of the donations I received remains and I am in discussions with Kulanu and the high school about how to use it. For example, deputy headmaster Jaffer Satte has suggested supplying drinking water to the students to go along with the lunches. The area at and around the school is not suitable for drilling a well so water needs to be hauled from more distant wells in jerrycans. The monthly cost would be about $90. Right now the students find water wherever they can. Clean water is essential and we could provide it for at least a year.

For the five students and one toddler I've found support for, I've begun communicating with them and their sponsors (I support a sixth student myself) about how to switch from funnelling the money through me to probably sending it directly via Western Union, a reliable way to transfer funds. If I haven't discussed this with you yet, I will.

Some of the other ways your donations have been spent since December:

Eight double bunks for the girls' dorm at the high school
Two months of feed for starving chicks at Hadassah Primary School's poultry project (after the contractor squandered the budget)
Support for Hebrew education in the Ghana Jewish community, whose spiritual leader Alex Armah studies in the yeshiva at Nabugoye
Supplying beading and Judaica materials to members of the Abayudaya Women's Association who've sent necklaces to Ottawa for sale

Since moving to Kampala in December, I've visited Nabugoye to be with and pray with friends from time to time, as well as other Abayudaya villages. But my main way of staying connected to the Ugandan Jewish community has been hosting Abayudaya students going to university here, as well as others, on the first and third Shabbat of the month. We've been developing a Kampala branch of Marom Olami, an organization for 18- to 35-year-olds that is part of Masorti Olami, the Conservative movement in Israel. On the Thursday evenings I do a lot of cooking ahead. After work Fridays I pick up students at Kampala International University about 15 km away. Then we celebrate Kabbalat Shabbat, share dinner, songs and conversation, followed by a sleepover for as many as seven guests. After breakfast, we have a Shabbat morning service, lunch and I drive them back. Marom Olami is reimbursing me for my expenses. I'll be transferring the mattresses, bedding, prayer books and ritual objects to the students. With Marom's help, they will likely rent a space near the university to keep things going. At least I hope so.

One project that is stuck is the Abayudaya Jewish Cookbook. Last year I worked with Jewish women in several villages to create about 30 recipes, and took hundreds of photos of food preparation and display. But I discovered there is nothing uniquely Jewish about the food. It's everyday Ugandan food, which is dominated by bland, starchy dishes. I tried testing some of the recipes in my western-style kitchen but lost enthusiasm. I don't much like Ugandan food and have found sources for the ingredients for the Japanese-Chinese-Korean dishes I love to cook.

About my job: BRAC is an extraordinary organization helping to raise the poorest of the poor out of poverty through microfinance and an integrated program of livelihood enhancement services. At first, I was sent into the field in Eastern Uganda, Tanzania and Southern Sudan to interview and photograph the people whose lives have been changed through BRAC. Then I wrote the annual reports for the East African countries. More recently, editing dry research reports has been less exciting.

I've led some chants in services here as well as before some Sunday morning yoga classes. But I'm really looking forward to the wonderful chanting world in Vancouver. I want to begin again hosting Evenings of Jewish Chant in Vancouver once I'm settled

See many of you soon!

With the Abayudaya - Ending and Beginning

2009-11-15T13:42:00.000-08:00

Click to donate to my work in Uganda through PayPal or credit card

Rabbi Gershom Sizomu reads the last few verses of Torah on Simchat Torah.

Then Gershom's son Igaal reads the first verses of Genesis.

Endings and beginnings. The Jewish world in October celebrated Simchat Torah, when we mark the end of the yearly cycle of Torah reading by chanting the last few verses of the scroll and then beginning anew with the first few verses of Genesis. I joined the Abayudaya community Saturday night and Sunday morning in drumming, dancing and singing our hearts out.

My time at Nabugoye Hill is coming to an end. There are many threads to weave together in the next few days from my volunteer work over the past six months. On Shabbat I’m sponsoring a Kiddush lunch of rice, beans, goat and eggplant (including a token contribution from what survived in my garden). On Sunday, I’m going to Entebbe airport with JJ Keki, who is flying to Amsterdam with me before we separate – JJ to New York to begin his Kulanu-Abayudaya speaking tour (www.kulanu.org), and me back to Canada, first to Montreal, then based in Ottawa, with a week in Vancouver Nov 16-23. I’ll be Ottawa when JJ’s there Nov. 11 and in Vancouver when he speaks Nov. 19. I will be talking about my experiences Nov. 17 at Or Shalom in Vancouver.

And then a new beginning. God willing, I’ll return to Uganda around Dec. 1 to get settled in my new home in Kampala and begin working Dec. 15 as manager of publications and material development for the Uganda office of BRAC, world’s largest antipoverty group (www.brac.net). A great fringe benefit of the job is that with BRAC being Bangladesh-based, the lunch room serves yummy curries.

In Kampala, I’ve rented a brand-new three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment for $383 Canadian a month (Ugandans think that’s very, very expensive). It’s a 10-minute walk from my new office, which is about five kilometres south of downtown Kampala. In the ritzier sections of the city it would easily cost three times as much. There are cattle, chickens and small vegetable farms along the dirt road to my place. Unfurnished here means no fridge or stove so I’ll have some significant costs setting the place up. With no legislated tenant protection, landlords have free rein – six months’ rent in advance plus a month’s security deposit.

The High Holy Days were very high here with almost 300 people, many dressed in white, jamming the Moses Synagogue. Services were a combination of Abayadaya practices developed over the 90 years since their community began, and more familiar Conservative songs and prayers from Rabbi Gershom Sizomu’s training in that movement. I walked late into mincha (afternoon) services on Rosh Hashanah to hear something for the first time – Shirat Hayam, the Song of Moses, composed in Luganda by the founder of the Abayudaya, Semei Kakungulu. The rhythm was steady, almost plodding and the melody simple and repetitive, evoking the songs of Canadian First Nations peoples. For many years, this was the centrepiece of Abayudaya worship and everyone memorized it.

Another first was offering the Birkat Hacohanim (Priestly Blessing) by myself. I’m usually one of a number of descendents of the priestly tribe in the congregation. One Israeli visitor on Rosh Hashanah happened to be a Levi and helped me with the ritual handwashing. I also enjoyed being the Baal Tekiah, blowing the shofar that punctuates the services, and reading Torah on Yom Kippur. Friends and I felt very elevated in our full-length, white kanzu robes. The Yom Kippur fast went quite easily, except for when the sun beating down on the metal roof turned the synagogue into a steambath. We all broke the fast with cups of steaming porridge from a large vat.

After returning to Uganda, I’m planning to visit the Abayudaya one Shabbat a month. There’s no synagogue in Kampala. Almost all the 200 or so Israelis there are secular. There are some non-Israeli Jewish expatriates and a handful of Abayudaya students going to university. I love Shabbat and hope to create some kind of prayer/chant/communal opportunity.

When I come to visit Nabugoye Hill, I’ll be able to check on the orphans’ lunch program at Semei Kakungulu High School, which many of you generously helped launch and are sustaining for a few more months. I am always grateful for more help: Click to donate to my work in Uganda through PayPal or credit card. Back in Canada, I will look at the donations and how they’ve been spent and give you an accounting. I just used $55 of the donated funds for a makeshift shelter of branches, plastic and papyrus mats so the students have some protection in the heavy rains. They can’t really take their plates into classrooms where other students with little or no food are escaping the storms. Kulanu’s nutrition program continues to provide a daily cup of breakfast porridge and a chapatti three days a week for all students.

I leave here with a sense of some accomplishments and some loose ends. Great news: A $5,000 US grant for cervical cancer screening for the Abayudaya women and their neighbours has been approved with the very real prospect of saving lives. The poultry project is back on track with the chicken coop virtually complete and day-old chicks ordered. Aaron Kintu Moses, headmaster of Hadassah Primary School and my best friend here, took back the project from the contractor, who had only worked two days in six weeks. I'm invited every Shabbat morning to lead my teacher Rabbi Shefa Gold's chant for Nishmat Kol Chai with the English part translated into Luganda. I think it will be part of the service. In Apac district I arranged to record songs of the new Jewish community there. In Namutumba, the synagogue has a sturdy bima table, thanks to your donations.

The Mbale Spelling Challenge was a success even though MTN, the telecom giant, failed at the last minute to provide major sponsorship. But they did give us T-shirts that the students love. In the end, Mbale Secondary School won with 17 points, Hamdan Girls’ High School (a Muslim boarding school) earned 13 and our team racked up six. Still, our students came home in high spirits. They had enjoyed a special day with lunch at the guest house, transportation in a minivan taxi, the thrill of competition, plus the shirts and Certificates of Participation as rewards. Now, the schools know how to conduct a spelling contest and everyone wants them to continue. MTN is talking about a 15-school competition next year but I don’t know whether that’s more than talk.

The Abayudaya Jewish Cookbook project now has a good body of recipes and photographs from several villages. It has been a wonderful and often tasty experience to work with the women and get a glimpse into their lives. In the coming months, I intend to test the recipes in my own kitchen and turn the research into a book proposal to attract an agent who will interest a publisher. All profits will go to the Abayudaya Women’s Association. Let me know if you’ll also test a recipe or two after I’ve adjusted them from cooking by firewood or charcoal to a regular stove.

In my last e-newsletter, I was critical of the broken promises I’ve experienced here. Over the High Holy Days I reflected on my own failures to deliver what I said I would, from the websites for Rabbi Gershom and the guest house, to your e-mails I haven’t yet returned.

I am deeply grateful for your support over these six months. Just knowing that you’re reading my newsletters has helped me feel connected and not so alone in a strange land. I'm excited to see many of you over the next weeks.

Abayudaya deliver relief to famine-hit Ugandans

2009-08-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

Abayudaya members, from left, Eria Muyamba, Esau Wanani and Igaal Sizomu deliver food relief to famine-stricken villagers in the remote Ugandan village Acegerekinei on July 29, 2009. (Lorne Mallin)

By Lorne Mallin · Jewish Telegraphic Agency · August 2, 2009

ACEGEREKINEI VILLAGE, Uganda (JTA) -- After four hours of driving on ever tinier roads this morning, our food truck becomes stuck in the sand and we have to push it out. We are following the packed pickup in Rabbi Gershom Sizomu's SUV -- four members of his Abayudaya Jewish congregation, two Ugandan TV reporters and me, a semi-retired Canadian journalist volunteering with the Abayudaya.

Just then we see thatch-roofed mud huts in the distance under a bright blue sky dotted with puffy clouds. We see people gathered under a large tree. The high-pitched trill of ululation greets our arrival at last in Acegerekinei, a remote village in northeastern Uganda.

We begin unloading the 2,420 pounds of food relief we have donated to hungry families among the estimated 3 million Ugandans facing starvation in a worsening famine. I was happy to have contributed 220 pounds of corn flour.

The Ugandan government says there are food shortages in 52 districts in the north and east brought on by drought and other factors. Nearly 40 people have died of hunger-related complications in the East African nation of about 32 million.

Rabbi Sizomu says he wants to act before the numbers grow worse, before a high death count is needed to trigger a response. He received ordination in the Conservative movement last summer after a year studying in Israel and four years at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He became the first ordained black rabbi in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Central to our Jewish values is saving lives," he tells the 65 families sitting on the ground in the shade of the tree. "We wish you well and we pray that God brings this to an end."

Rabbi Sizomu is responding to a village elder who thanked the Abayudaya for coming "and for rescuing us." Acegerekinei is in Katakwi, one of the 17 hardest-hit districts that the government says are experiencing famine.

The villagers all clutch cards from the Ugandan Red Cross, which is helping coordinate relief, entitling them to a share of the corn flour and beans that the Abayudaya trucked north from their home in the Mbale district near the Kenyan border. The Abayudaya first embraced Judaism in the 1920s and now include about 1,000 members in several Ugandan villages.

The Red Cross chose the most vulnerable in Acegerekinei to receive relief -- the elderly, the disabled and those suffering from HIV/AIDS. They line up as best they can; some are in wheelchairs fashioned out of plastic lawn chairs.

Each receives about 33 pounds of corn flour to make corn porridge and the staple dish called posho, plus about 3.3 pounds of beans. Each pound of corn flour is about enough for a meal for three people.

“Our community responded overwhelmingly to the call to donate,” Rabbi Sizomu says. “Everybody wanted to help.”

The response is considerable from a community that mostly lives on subsistence farming. Though the Mbale district has less rain than normal, crops are still growing.

“I believe that life takes precedence over everything,” the rabbi says. “God is not going to stretch out His hand physically, so we are extensions of God's arm.”

I notice that we are here just hours before the Jewish holiday Tisha B'Av, when practicing Jews fast for a day. We have the luxury of turning on and turning off our food consumption.

The rabbi's son Igaal, 15, helps distribute the food we brought.

“It felt good to donate,” he says. “If we get hungry, maybe there would be others who would help us.”

More relief is coming; more food was collected than the truck could hold. And on this morning, students visiting the Abayudaya from the California Institute of the Arts of Los Angeles donated $190.

To contribute to the food relief, donate at http://www.kulanu.org on the Web site of Kulanu Inc., a U.S. nonprofit that supports development in the Abayudaya community; write "Uganda Emergency Fund" in the comments field.

(Lorne Mallin is a semi-retired Canadian journalist volunteering with the Abayudaya.)

Being of service: A Vancouverite goes to Africa

2009-07-10T02:02:00.000-07:00

CITIZEN BYTES

Published Tuesday, July 7, 2009 | 02:28 PM ET

Submitted by Lorne Mallin

About/Bio: A lifelong journalist, I took early retirement at the end of 2006 from The Province newspaper in Vancouver where I was an editor. I then spent about two years doing newspaper travel writing on five continents. I'm 62, divorced, with one daughter, Lisa, 26, a masters student at Carleton in Ottawa.

My take: Volunteering for a year and a half in Africa is my answer to the recession. I based most of my retirement income on stocks and bonds in an investment management account. When the market nosedived, I decided to stop drawing income from the account and pursue a dream to volunteer in the developing world. It's a chance to let my investments recoup, I'm hoping, and do some good at the same time.

But to do what?

For years I've been intrigued by the Abayudaya of eastern Uganda, an African community of about 1,000 that first embraced Judaism in the 1920s. I'm a Jewish chant leader and they make beautiful music with Jewish prayers and African melodies. Last December I googled volunteer and Jewish and up popped the Abayudaya and Kulanu, a U.S. non-profit that supports their development. I applied to be a Kulanu volunteer for six months and studied teaching English at Greystone College in Vancouver for three months to prepare.

Since arriving April 21 I've been living in the new guest house at Nabugoye Hill, a village outside the town of Mbale. I focus on improving the written English of Grade 7s and 11s in the community's schools. My other initiatives include forming a spelling team, working with the Women's Association on an Abayudaya Jewish cookbook, helping Rabbi Gershom Sizomu develop his web site, reviving the Abayudaya Girls' Magazine, helping secure a grant to launch an egg farm, and coaching a community member, Athalia Nalongo, for a Kulanu-Abayudaya North American speaking tour. I pay all my expenses and live on about $1,000 a month.

I'm a city boy but I love the village life with its dirt paths and mango trees. Time is elastic. Chickens, goats and cattle forage for food everywhere. Lizards dart across the inner walls of the synagogue where I go to services Friday nights and Saturdays. The Abayudaya mainly survive on subsistence farming and cook outside over firewood or charcoal. I feel loved in their midst and have made good friends who I greet in the morning in Luganda: Wasuze otyanno? (How did you spend the night?). Children play, laugh and cry, and suffer malaria with frightening regularity.

I leave Oct. 18 and will spend some time with my daughter in Ottawa before heading to South Africa for all of 2010 at a black township high school outside of Cape Town, sponsored by Vancouver-based Education Without Borders.

Here are some of my photos:

Traditional singers, dancers and drummers perform in Mbale,
eastern Uganda. May 17, 2009.

Young musicians of the Abayudaya community practise their
songs at Nabugoye Hill, Mbale, Uganda. They have videos
posted on YouTube. April 30, 2009.

The main synagogue of the Abayudaya Congregation is
at Nabugoye Hill, Mbale, Uganda. April 23, 2009.

Athalia Nalongo and two of her daughters behind their
home in Namanyonyi, Mbale, Uganda. May 15, 2009.

2009-02-01T00:57:00.000-08:00

Swinging a hammer helps rebuild swinging New Orleans

Father-daughter team Lisa and Lorne Mallin volunteer at a Habitat for Humanity house in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. Aleis Tusa photo

Volunteers Jessica Hopkins and, top, Mike Valdez work with New Orleans musician Jesse Moore building a Habitat for Humany house. Lisa Mallin photo

Volunteers work on putting up siding on a Habitat for Humanity house in New Orleans' flood-hit Ninth Ward. Lorne Mallin photo

Some of the homes built by Habitat for Humanity in the Musicians' Village in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. Lisa Mallin photo

Volunteer serves Christmas dinner to seniors at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in suburban Harahan. Lisa Mallin photo

Chef Chiqui Collier introduces her half-day New Orleans Cooking Experience – a four-course gourmet meal that guests help prepare. Lisa Mallin photo

St. Louis Cathedral towers over the palm trees on a warm winter day in Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Lisa Mallin photo

The beautiful Houmas House Plantation and Gardens on the Mississippi River is less than an hour's drive from Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. Lisa Mallin photo

The steamboat Natchez takes visitors on New Orleans-area cruises along the Mississippi River. Lorne Mallin photo

Trumpeter William Smith leads the 726 Jazz Band at the famed Preservation Hall in New Orleans' French Quarter. Lorne Mallin photo.

The historic French Quarter in New Orleans is famous for its nightlife, music and food. Lisa Mallin photo

Parade celebrating the Sugar Bowl brings more music and colour to the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans. Lorne Mallin photo

Strolling the streets of New Orleans' French Quarter with its Spanish-influenced buildings. Lisa Mallin photo

One of the energy-efficient homes built well off the ground by Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Lorne Mallin photo

Published April 4, 2009, in the

By Lorne Mallin

Voluntourism. Noun. Combines vacation travel with volunteering at the destination visited.

NEW ORLEANS, La. – Our building crew arrived as strangers from different directions in Canada and the U.S. but we were all spending part of our vacations helping this wonderful city recover from the still-visible scars of Hurricane Katrina.

"We wanted to come to New Orleans just because we've never been here and wanted to help out somehow," said Jessica Hopkins, 29, who flew here from Glendale, Calif., with her partner, Mike Valdez, 33.

That roughly parallels the motivation for my daughter, Lisa, 25, and me, plus the opportunity to see relatives we'd never met before – cousins whose shared ancestors' paths included Winnipeg.

We found a unique and welcoming metropolis, hurting to be sure but bouncing back and eager to show visitors the kind of good time the Big Easy (more easygoing than the Big Apple) has been famous for almost since it was founded by Montreal-born Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in 1718.

We were marking my birthday at a Habitat for Humanity construction site in New Orleans' Ninth Ward, which was hard hit when 80 per cent of the city was flooded after Katrina swept in from the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 29, 2005. When levees failed, at least 71 percent of the city's homes were damaged, many completely swept away, others ruined by water several metres high that stewed for weeks before it was pumped out.

More than a million voluntourists (volunteer tourists) have responded and more are needed. I signed up for the Habitat opportunity online (see If You Go) and at 7:15 a.m. we took a $10 taxi ride from the tourist-magnet French Quarter, passing hundreds of derelict and abandoned homes and an alarming number of weedy, vacant lots where families once lived. There were encouraging signs of new and restored homes and businesses bringing life back to the area.

We gathered with a few dozen other volunteers at a corner of the Musicians' Village, a visionary project of 72 homes conceived by Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis after many of the city's beloved musicians were forced to flee by Katrina.

A Habitat supervisor assigned us to a crew of seven putting up siding at 2113 Louisa St., a typical single-level Habitat home of about 1,100 square feet on a 35-foot lot with three bedrooms and one bathroom.

Some of us were experienced but Lisa and I were pretty much novices. While measuring was challenging at first, the fiber cement siding was easy to cut and hammer and we got into the swing of it.

Everybody brought their own lunch and sat around on building materials in the warm 16C sun in the backyard getting to know each other, including musician and budding homeowner Jesse Moore, who was putting in part of his 350-hour sweat equity by working with us.

The homeowners' sweat equity constitutes their down payment and then they pay off the $75,000, 30-year, no-interest mortgage at about $600 a month.

Moore, a 61-year-old singer-songwriter, had been living in Austin, Texas, when he returned to New Orleans and was approved for the last available house in the village.

"I was very excited about that," he said. We were excited to hear Moore's music and most of the crew turned up the next night when he performed at a French Quarter pub.

Music is central to the New Orleans experience and helped make another opportunity to volunteer great fun. A local couple, Keith Crawford and Deborah Frydman, hosted a Christmas dinner for seniors and posted on the New Orleans craigslist site for 30 people to help serve. We signed up.

They hired caterers and a three-piece band that set a warm and lively tone for the 300 seniors who were bused into a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in suburban Harahan. We enjoyed chatting with the guests and serving the lunchtime meal.

That night we volunteered at a New Orleans Hornets NBA game after finding the chance online. We were given official Hornets shirts with "Volunteer" on the back to wear and keep, and assignments. I put temporary Hornets tattoos on young and old while Lisa coloured fans' hair with purple and gold hairspray.

By halftime we were sprung loose to watch the rest of the game, a 100-87 losing cause against the L.A. Lakers, but it was a thrill to see Kobe Bryant play.

Our tastiest "volunteering" was the New Orleans Cooking Experience, a half-day extravaganza with chef Chiqui Collier at the House on Bayou Road, a circa-1790s Creole plantation house. Guests pay $150 each for the privilege of helping prepare elements of a fabulous four-course meal, sipping on wine and then sitting down to enjoy the fruits of their and the chef's labours.

That's a great splurge. But eating here is a passion that doesn't need to break the bank. The brand-new Zagat guide credits New Orleans with the lowest average meal costs in the U.S. – $28.52 compared to the national average of $34.31.

We ate at the tony, venerable Galatoire's restaurant but also budget meals like splitting a heaping roast beef Po'Boy (like a sub) for $9.95 at Messina's. Another day we popped into Frank's Restaurant for takeout and carved the $13.75 Muffaletta, a massive sandwich with a round, flat bun of near-Frisbee proportions, into quarters for two meals.

On Christmas Day, we feasted on a Louisiana specialty, a deep-fried turkey dinner, for $9.50 at 13 Monaghan's in the Faubourg Marigny district, and later on I sipped a frozen Irish coffee for $4.50 at Molly's at the Market in the French Quarter. (Full disclosure: both places are run by my newfound family.)

As much as the food, people are drawn to New Orleans for the music, and more specifically the jazz. We sat on the floor of the famed Preservation Hall a few feet from hot trumpeter William Smith and the 726 Jazz Band. A few times we caught sizzling musicians at the Spotted Cat on Faubourg Marigny's Frenchman Street, which has better music than Bourbon Street.

A special treat was the gospel-oriented Christmas Eve midnight mass at St. Jude's Cathedral. Gospel in a Catholic church? That's because of New Orleans' history of slavery and French and Spanish rule. There's a Canadian element too here in the Cajuns (local pronunciation of Acadians) who were expelled from Nova Scotia in the 18th century.

New Orleanians love to celebrate. Mardi Gras, which falls this year on Feb. 24, is New Orleans' signature street party. I kept hearing that the city's Jazz Fest, April 24-26 and April 30-May 3, is unbeatable for music lovers.

Most celebrations emanate from the French Quarter with its narrow streets and Spanish-flavoured architecture. "Like Havana with newer cars," said my daughter Lisa. The Quarter is on higher ground and was not flooded.

We enjoyed browsing the antique-store treasures on St. Louis Street, café au lait with doughnut-like beignets dusted with icing sugar, pecan pralines at Aunt Sally's, touring grand old homes and cruising by the house that Brad Pitt and Angelina bought. Pitt's Make It Right Foundation is building homes in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Beyond the Quarter, we recommend a Cajun Encounters tour to get oriented to the city, the excellent National World War II Museum, the funky boutiques on Magazine Street, the powerful IMAX film "Hurricane on the Bayou", riding the vintage street cars down St. Charles Avenue for $1.25 and the state ferry across the Mississippi River for free.

And if you want to help New Orleans, the city wants you. "We have come a long way but we've still got a lot of work to do," Mayor Ray Nagin told me in an interview. "Come down, do some good and enjoy the city of New Orleans."

You'll feel good. "It almost felt like we were being ambassadors for Canada," said Lisa. "We were making a difference in people's lives."

IF YOU GO
• Getting there: Flights from Winnipeg connect through Chicago, Minneapolis and Denver
• Accommodation and food: Fodor's 2009 New Orleans guide is hot off the press, and you can get a free visitors' guide from www.neworleanscvb.com
• To volunteer: www.handsonneworleans.org and www.habitat-nola.org
• Thing globally, act locally: Habitat Winnipeg www.habitat.mb.ca
• What's happening: www.neworleansonline.com (also click through to "voluntourism")
• Get a feel for New Orleans in Brad Pitt's hit movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

Sacred Mayan Journey to the goddess

2008-06-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

Mayan leaders head up the procession of villagers attending the opening rituals of the Sacred Mayan Journey at Xcaret Park.

The Sacred Mayan Journey was more than 36 hours of rituals, ceremonies, dance, music and paddling.

After a tropical storm cancelled their crossing plans to Cozumel, paddlers circle their canoes in Xcaret Park's tranquil lagoon.

Sunset from my balcony at the Coral Princess Hotel and Resort in Cozumel.

At Chankanaab National Park on Cozumel, the goddess Ixchel with maidens representing her various faces, and an oracle priest above.

Wearing a headdress of a coiled serpent, the goddess Ixchel gives her message to pilgrims on the Sacred Mayan Journey at Chankanaab National Park.

At Chankanaab National Park, women representing the phases of the moon are paddled past men representing spirits of the four ways of the cosmos.

A team of women paddlers sets out across the channel to the Riviera Mayan mainland.

Three canoes begin paddling the 18 kilometres to the Riviera Maya mainland on the Sacred Mayan Journey.

When Sofia Arenas, Betty Sandoval and her sister Gina Sandoval-Juarez paddled from Cozumel, one of their oars snapped in two.

The first canoe arrives on a shortened nine-kilometre paddle from Xcaret Park at Mamitas Beach for the end of the Sacred Mayan Journey.

Friends rush to help a capsizing canoe as it arrives from Xcaret Park at Mamitas Beach for the end of the Sacred Mayan Journey.

The canoe's paddlers and friends bring the boat into the beach.

The paddlers are greeted with hugs and kisses from their friends.

Mayan villagers await the return of the canoes.

On the beach, women representing different phases of the moon.

One of the four spirits representing the four ways of the cosmos.

The second canoe makes its way to Mamitas Beach.

One of the paddlers is Pilar de los Rios, of the Yaxche restaurant, who we met our first night in the Riviera Maya.

Pregnant women at Mamitas Beach await the arrival of canoes at the end of the Sacred Mayan Journey.

Who can resist a cute kid picture?

Mayan women elders at Mamitas Beach.

Published September 13, 2008

Stormy times when Ixchel meets Chac and Arthur

By Lorne Mallin

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico – At first it was just a speck on the horizon of the turquoise Caribbean Sea. Then we could see the first of the native dugout canoes with four men in loincloths and one woman in a Mayan dress paddling steadily in the choppy ocean.

Slowly they carved a path through the waves toward the golden sands of Mamitas Beach at this resort city an hour south of Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula's Riviera Maya.

Metres from the beach the canoe tipped over and other paddlers rushed into the surf to help. When the exhausted paddlers finally made it to shore they were embraced by family and friends while hundreds of onlookers cheered and applauded.

Two more boats arrived for the closing ceremonies of a remarkable cultural, spiritual and theatrical experience called the Sacred Mayan Journey, the recreation of an ancient annual pilgrimage by canoe to the island of Cozumel that was lost for more than 500 years after the Spanish colonized the area. Women had been required to be pilgrims there at least once in their lives to ask for fertility.

Local officials plan to continue the event every year, helping this area make its mark as more than a sun and sand destination. For tourists, it's a window to the customs and practices of a people who built an elaborate, complex civilization here many centuries ago.

The focus of the journey was to honour Ixchel (EeshCHEL), the Mayan goddess of the moon, with prayers and offerings for four reasons -- fertility of the soil, good weather, health and the continuity of life -- and to bring back her message.

Our press-tour group of invited journalists witnessed colourful ceremonies, dances, music, and purification rites that began near midnight May 30 at the eco-archeological Xcaret (shcarET) Park and ended more than 36 hours later. At the start, hundreds of Mayan villagers arrived singing in processions.

To purify ourselves, we joined in by removing our shoes and walking barefoot on a jungle path carpeted with palm leaves. We were also encouraged to participate by writing down offerings to Ixchel on slips of paper that were ceremonially burned to reach the goddess. I'm not sure I was in the right spirit. I offered my "tsuris," Yiddish for troubles.

Some of the journalists stayed all night. I slipped away with two others to the adjacent Occidental Grand Xcaret Resort for a few hours sleep and to marvel at the wonders of a gorgeous all-inclusive where even the mini-bar is included.

Throughout the rituals, we were serenaded by a melodic chant to the goddess: "Ixchel, Ixchel, la misión y el trabajo esperan ya; Ixchel, Ixchel, nadie puede ocultarnos tu verdad." Which means "Ixchel, Ixchel, the mission and work are waiting for us; Ixchel, Ixchel, nobody can hide your truth from us."

Teams of paddlers in Playa Del Carmen and on Cozumel trained for months to make the challenging crossing, 150 of them in 30 eight-metre canoes going over and another 150 coming back.

At least, that was the plan. The weekend was all about Ixchel but a couple powerful guys, the Mayan rain god Chac and Tropical Storm Arthur, stole her thunder. Torrential rains and fierce winds swept through the coastline.

The 18-kilometre canoe crossing to Cozumel was cancelled, a huge disappointment for the participants. In the morning in a tranquil Xcaret Park lagoon fringed with Mayan huts we witnessed paddlers circling their canoes without taking on the wild waters.

It turned out to be a wise decision. When the journalists headed over to Cozumel in a catamaran, we had to turn back half-way when high waves constantly washed over the deck. Some were sick and some were scared. Totally soaked, I chanted for deliverance.

But the show must go on. We crossed in a large ferry, rested and freshened up at Cozumel's waterfront Coral Princess Hotel and Resort, and bussed to Chankanaab National Park to see the evening dances and rituals. Here we found another serene lagoon with a recreated Mayan village and temple platform.

The dramatic presentation with fire, bathing maidens and fantastic costumes led to the focus of the evening -- the message from the goddess, in her turban-like headdress of an entwined serpent, through the medium of oracle priests. Essentially, her very eco-conscious message was: Mankind has destroyed the environment, and for that reason we're the ones responsible for our destiny. Ixchel said the only way this world is going to change is if we don't wait for some miracle to happen but make the change ourselves.

Early the next morning, the seas had calmed considerably and three canoes that were transported over from the mainland for readied for the crossing while a fourth held five women in red dresses, their faces painted in vertical turquoise stripes.

Representing phases of the moon, they were paddled around the lagoon under the gaze of four men painted head to foot in brilliant colours portraying spirits of the four ways of the cosmos.

A chilam or priest blessed the three canoes and they paddled away. Two of them made it to the other side in just over three hours while the third capsized and the paddlers were rescued. Mexican Navy vessels were on hand to help.

Meanwhile, 12 canoes left Xcaret Park for the nine-km journey up the coast to Mamitas Beach. Nine had to turn back in the worsening waves, including one that capsized four times and waited a half-hour for rescue.

The three from Xcaret that made it delivered Ixchel's message to the local Mayan leader amid dances and celebrations.

Betty Sandoval, 31, who paddled from Cozumel, said on the beach that the crossing "touched our hearts." She said the ancient pilgrims didn't have the benefit of weather forecasting technology. "They spiritually offered themselves to their god. I really admire that."

As many as 800 people took part in the many facets of the sacred journey. Fidencio Tzel, a dancer from a long line of Mayans, played a priest. "I was proud to be able to rescue part of the culture of my ancestors," he said.

The event was initiated by Xcaret Park, the launching point of the ancient pilgrimages, and organized with local municipalities. Two years of research involved the National Institute of Anthropology and History, the Maya Centre of the National Council for Culture and the Arts and the Research Institute of Philology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. A choreographer, a composer, and makeup and costume artists helped make it a crowd-pleaser.

While it will be another year before the next journey, there are many other ways to connect with the Maya. Xcaret's spectacular evening show spotlights Mayan history and the park includes other cultural and spiritual experiences. The Life and Death Festival at Xcaret Oct. 30-Nov. 2 is another creative production.

The Riviera Maya features Mayan ruins and villages well worth seeing. I visited Tulum, a magical Mayan city from the 13th to 15th centuries an hour's drive south of Playa Del Carmen. The Palace of the Frescoes contains a mural of Ixchel and the main pyramid rises above a high cliff over the beach.

Life is not all history. The Riviera Maya attracts with modern-day cultural events, including two film festivals in the fall and the annual jazz festival Nov. 29-Dec. 1.

For some distilled culture, take in the Expo Tequila Aug. 16-19 on the main shopping street of Playa Del Carmen. There'll be food delights, mariachi bands, and tequila tasting. No historical study needed. Just raise a glass and say "salud!".

If you go

• Go to aircanadavacations.com for deals on Riviera Maya trips, including the Occidental Grand Xcaret Resort from $1,232 per person (air, land, taxes from Winnipeg) all-inclusive for a week in a double. More about the 4.5-star resort at www.occidentalhotels.com/grand/Xcaret.asp.
• Travel info at www.rivieramaya.com.
• Sacred Mayam Journey info at www.travesiasagradamaya.com.mx/index_eng.htm
• For Cozumel accommodation, contact the Coral Princess Hotel and Resort at www.coralprincess.com.
• Cozumel info at www.islacozumel.com.mx/
• I felt well-prepared with Lonely Planet's Yucatan guide.

Kenya: On the road

2008-06-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

We never knew what we would find on the road in Kenya, both on safari and in more urban areas.

When elephants want to cross the road in front of you, they definitely get the right of way.

On the road, we encountered zebras and ostriches . . .

. . . and Thompson's gazelles . . .

. . . and an iridescent bird I've yet to learn the name of.

Also on the road, all manner of vendors. Here a man on the road from Nairobi airport sells passport covers.

Here, at the entrance to a safari area, vendors were delighted to see some rare visitors.

Kiosks waited for trade on the roadside.

Others waited for work. Unemployment is around 45 percent.

We drove through a poor Kenyan town on the border with Tanzania.

And in the town of Voi on the highway east to Mombasa sits a roadside mosque.

Kenya: Inside a Masai village

2008-06-06T22:13:00.001-07:00

On our press trip, the Kenya Tourist Board arranged for us to visit a Masai village in the south of the country. Even though the KTB paid for us to take photos, it still felt awkward and intrusive to be pointing our cameras in the villagers' faces.

Still, it was irresistible to photograph the Masai in their very different world.

Elijah, who went to a mission school, is 26 and unmarried and so still has his hair.

It's a different story for this shaved-head family.

The "big poppa" of them all in this village of 72 people has nine wives.

The villagers showed us how they make fire.

Yes, it's safe to go to Kenya

2008-04-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

On safari in southern Kenya, we were fascinated by the king of beasts.

Clearly, they were not so fascinated by us.

The hornbill was the model for the character Zazu in The Lion King.

Also in The Lion King, the wise shaman Rafiki is a baboon.

Dancers and singers in traditional Masai dress greet visitors to Amboseli Sopa Lodge in southern Kenya.

Yellow-billed oxpecker perches on the back of an oryx. Click on the photo to see more detail.

Young boy by the open doorway to a typical home in his Masai village in southern Kenya.

Curious vervet monkey at the window of my room at the Serena Beach Hotel and Spa on the Indian Ocean coast.

Riding a camel for the first time on the sands of the Indian Ocean coast.

Sound and light show at Fort Jesus, a Portuguese bastion and slave fort built in 1593 in Mombasa, Kenya.

Mt. Kilimanjaro pokes through the clouds in aerial photo taken on flight from Mombasa to Nairobi.

Hippos loll in Mzima Springs in Tsavo West National Park in southern Kenya.

Giraffe stops to stare at photographers in Tsavo West National Park in southern Kenya.

Brilliant plummage of vulturine guineafowl in Tsavo West National Park in southern Kenya.

Injured lioness and her two cubs at Taita Hills Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Kenya.

In a leafy Nairobi suburb, the Karen Blixen Museum, a colonial farmhouse where the author of Out of Africa lived for many years.

Young Kenyan woman at the Karen Blixen Museum, a colonial farmhouse where the author of Out of Africa lived.

Used by all 42 ethnic groups in Kenya, gourds are on exhibit at the newly renovated and expanded Nairobi National Museum.

Masai staff at the Amboseli Sopa Lodge greet visitors with a traditional dance.

Baby elephant is protected by adults at Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya.

Published June 7, 2008

'Jambo' and 'karibu' from Kenya

By Lorne Mallin

TAITA HILLS WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, Kenya — From the safety of the popped top of our safari van, we pointed our cameras at the tawny head of a lioness sitting a dozen metres away in the tall grasses of the southern Kenyan savanna.

Then the heads of her two young cubs also peeked through the leaves. Many more shutter clicks. As the mother lion roused herself to move, we could see that she was lame. Our driver and guide James Mungai Njungo pointed out that she was very scrawny.

Later, Willie Mwadilo, manager of the nearby Sarova Salt Lick Game Lodge, told me the lion had been kicked when she attacked a powerful Cape buffalo. A veterinarian had treated her and her leg was expected to heal. And (psst, don't tell anyone) she and her cubs were getting food to keep them alive.

Mwadilo hopes the Kenyan tourism industry will also heal and thrive again. Tourism, the East African country's biggest foreign-currency earner, was deeply wounded by ethnic violence that erupted after disputed elections at the end of the year.

He said his occupancy rates had plummeted from an expected 80 or more percent to less than 12 per cent. I heard similar figures from other operators. The economic effects have been far-reaching, ruining for example the farmers who supply vegetables to the lodges and the souvenir shopkeepers who rely on a steady stream of visitors. Kenya is just a little smaller than Manitoba and almost 60 percent of its 38 million people live on less than $2 a day. Thousands have lost jobs.

It's a shame because Kenya is a magnificent destination. Like many Canadians, I grew up hoping someday I'd go to Africa and see the wild animals.

We saw so much on a week-long press tour spent embedded with Kenya's charm offensive — several lions, herds of elephants with adorably cute babies, giraffes, zebras, hippos, baboons, hyenas, oryx, antelope, gazelles and stunning birds. The Kenya Tourist Board and the tourist industry spent about $1.6 million to bring more than 200 foreign travel journalists here, including nine from Canada.

My mission was to get a sense of whether it's safe to travel again in Kenya, where two million visitors spent about $1 billion last year. Peace is a relative term in Kenya. Not a single tourist was harmed during all of the unrest in January and February when more than 1,000 Kenyans were killed and hundreds of thousands fled their homes. While we were there a power-sharing cabinet was announced. But the day we left several people died in gang-related violence in non-tourist areas.

So, on balance I'd say it's very safe. Just stay on the well-worn tourist track. That's what we did and I had a fantastic time with our van of four journalists from Montreal, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and me, a native of Winnipeg from Vancouver.

First we flew into the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, an unremarkable-looking city of about three million people with some remarkable attractions. There are fascinating museums and galleries, great shopping, interesting people watching, a rich variety of food and at Nairobi National Park more than a hint of Kenya's fabulous wildlife.

If you've read Out of Africa or seen the 1985 Oscar-winning movie starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, the Karen Blixen Museum is a must. Blixen, who wrote the novel, lived in the colonial farmhouse between 1914 and 1931 and it is full of memorabilia from that time as well as props from the movie. Ironic detail: Blixen was a heavy smoker but a sign advises as you enter the house "Lungs at work. No smoking please."

After visiting the house, linger in the area for a delightful outdoor lunch at the Karen Blixen Coffee Garden and Cottages.

We were among the first visitors to the newly refurbished and expanded Nairobi National Museum. It includes Turkana Boy, which is considered the most complete early human fossil dating back 1.5 million years. I was captivated by an exhibit of dozens of gourds, which are used by all of the 42 ethnic groups in Kenya for everyday tasks.

We rested a night at the Nairobi Hilton and then our driver Mungai pointed his van south to national parks for two days of game drives in Amboseli and Tsavo West national parks as well as the private Taita Hills sanctuary. Once we left the paved highway we experienced what Mungai called the "Kenyan massage" on rutted dirt roads. It felt like my kidneys were put through a cement mixer.

But it was worth it. The diversity and amount of wildlife is beyond belief. When a herd of elephants wanted to cross the road in front of our van, they definitely got the right of way. And we got the thrill of taking their pictures.

It's a photographer's dream, no matter if you have a basic point-and-shoot or the fanciest gear. Many animals are close to the road and they're not spooked by the vehicles.

Staying at the luxury Amboseli Sopa Lodge and Salt Lick Lodge made our safari experience even more fun. Both have their own creative interpretations of the local hut styles.

From Tsavo West National Park we drove to exotic, hot and humid Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast, where few Canadians have vacationed.

On the way we stopped at a village of the Masai tribe, where we were shown their dances and their homes built from mud, cow dung and sticks. Even though the Kenya Tourist Board paid for us to take any photos we wanted, and the money was going directly to the villagers, it still felt inappropriate to be sticking our cameras in their faces.

North and south of Mombasa, gorgeous resorts grace the palm-fringed coastline. I stayed at a jewel called the Serena Beach Hotel and Spa, whose spacious rooms feature beautiful details. One unexpected attraction was a vervet monkey staring in a window when I awoke. I was forewarned not to open the window. They'll come in and make off with anything that attracts their fancy.

Throughout Kenya, we enjoyed roast meat, seafood and Indian cuisine. I especially liked a simple dish at breakfast at the Serena Beach: mbaazi in coconut milk, usually made with pigeon peas but in this case cowpeas.

I teamed up with a Seattle writer, Jennifer Haupt, to go snorkelling. Our schedule restricted us to a less than ideal time of day for viewing fish. But we saw quite a few from a Buccaneer Diving boat and it was simply wonderful to be floating in the warm Indian Ocean. Back on the beach we went for camel rides.

At night, the journalists boarded a traditional dhow boat for a 45-minute cruise to Mombasa's Old Town. We walked the ancient streets that lead to Fort Jesus, a fabled Portuguese bastion with metre-thick coral walls built in 1593. Much of the fort's history was detailed in a sound and light show with actors in period costumes. The fort's key role in the slave trade was not mentioned.

On the flight back to Nairobi, we were treated to a spectacular view of Mt. Kilimanjaro poking through the clouds.

Despite coming during the rainy season, I got caught in only one downpour. There's better weather and most amazing wildlife experience in late summer — winter for Kenyans on the other side of the equator — when millions of wildebeests migrate north through the Masai Mara Game Reserve.

Everywhere in Kenya, people were very happy to see us, greeting us with "Jambo" (hello, in Swahili) and "Karibu" (welcome). They'll be happy to see you, too.

Kenya is safe, for tourists, says U of M prof

NAIROBI, Kenya — On the faculty of both the University of Manitoba and the University of Nairobi, Larry Gelmon is uniquely positioned to advise Manitobans about travelling to Kenya.

"Canadians who freely travel to Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia or Brazil (or, for that matter, Detroit or Dallas) should not fear a trip to Kenya," Dr. Gelmon told me by e-mail.

He's the senior UofM representative on the AIDS research collaboration between the two universities and has been here 18 years.

Dr. Gelmon said the collaboration's annual meeting in Nairobi in January was postponed because of the unrest in the country but it was held in mid-April with almost 20 researchers and administrators coming from Winnipeg.

"They attended the conference, and many of them took off on the weekend to visit some of the splendid sites to see in Kenya, all without incident," he said.

"We have been welcoming visitors from Canada for many years, practically all of whom are staggered by the variety of things to see here and the beauty of the country."

If you go

• Kenya Airways flies direct to Nairobi from London.
• Check with travel agents for bargains as Kenya woos back visitors.
• Our driver-guide Mungai works for a great company called Paws Africa Safaris: www.pawsafrica.com.
• The official Kenya destination website is www.magickenya.com.
• The Lonely Planet's Kenya guide is a solid resource.
• You're not required to get a Yellow Fever vaccination but I got one anyway, as well as hepatitis shots and anti-malarials. Consult www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/tmp-pmv/pub-eng.php.
• Once again the homeopathic remedy No Jet Lag saved me from that dreaded malady.

Embedded With the Kenya Charm Offensive

2008-04-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

Listen to my dispatch with an introduction by host Rick MacInnes-Rae

Drummers and dancers perform at gala in Nairobi for 200 foreign journalists and 800 well-connected Kenyans enjoying free-flowing booze, roast goat and chocolate fountains.

Peru: On the huaca trail to treasure

2008-03-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

One of the treasures in Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipan.

The imposing pyramid architecture of Lambayeque's Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipan.

Huaca del Sol as seen from the southeast, with the Moche River delta beyond and city ruins in the foreground.

Geometric designs and seabirds on walls of the vast city of Chan Chan, the capital of the Chimu culture, near Trujillo, Peru.

Mural at Huaca de la Luna of the Decapitator, the Moche god to whom human victims were sacrificed.

Trujillo tour guide Laura Duran Perez cuddles a Peruvian hairless dog.

Basket of peppers at La Rosa Nautica restaurant on Lima's waterfront.

Catching a wave off one of Lima's popular surfing beaches.

Peruvian fisherman launches his reed boat off the beach at Huanchaco on the country's north coast.

Peruvian students learn about their national heritage at the Hauca el Brujo archeological complex 60 km north of Trujillo.

Published March 8, 2008

Northern Peru refreshingly friendly, and so different

By Lorne Mallin

TRUJILLO, Peru — For Manitobans who love to winter in the desert, here's something new. Expand your horizons far beyond Arizona across the equator to the north coast of Peru with its endless sands flanked by Pacific surf and the majestic Andes mountains.

The long Peruvian coastal desert, which varies from about 65 to 160 kilometres wide, is a treasure trove of temple and pyramid ruins called huacas, the legacy of cultures much more ancient than the Incas going back as much as 5,000 years.

There are ecological wonders in such nature reserves as the "dry tropical forest'' with its abundance of exotic birds and carob trees. Plus marvellous beaches to relax on and waves that attract surfers from all over the world.

While it certainly costs more to fly to South America than, say, Phoenix, the hotel and restaurant expenses here can be a fraction of what vacationers pay closer to home.

And Peru is so different as well as refreshingly friendly. So few Canadians have touched down here that you feel like an explorer. The bonus being that on the other side of the equator it's solidly into summertime now. The best of the heat in the arid desert continues through March.

The country is about twice as big as Manitoba, with a population of more than 28 million, of whom more than half are reported to live on less than $2 a day. It's bordered on the north by Colombia and Ecuador, on the east by Bolivia and Brazil, with Chile in the south and the Pacific Ocean in the west.

You can see everywhere that compared to Canada, Peru has retained much of its aboriginal heritage. Their first nations people are 45 percent of the population, plus another 37 percent of mixed heritage. Only 15 percent are of European descent.

After six days on a tour of the north coast, my senses were whirling from the richness and complexity of the country's history. Most everyone has heard of the Incas and their most-famous wonder of the world -- Machu Picchu. It's reached by turning south from Lima and embarking, if you're hardy, on the Inca Trail, from Cuzco in the Andes, or take the train like I did.

Instead, I headed north on what I call the "huaca trail.'' Many other civilizations predated the 16th-century Spanish conquerors with lost cities that will excite even the most jaded traveller. All from huacas, which look like large dirt hills made out of mud bricks but are so much more.

Thanks to an explosion of archeological discoveries in the last 20 years, fantastic pyramids, temples and amazingly intricate artifacts -- many in gleaming gold and precious jewels -- are emerging from hundreds of huacas.

Peru's charms are not all about digging in the dirt. The food is wonderful. We launched our adventure on Lima's seashore at the excellent La Rosa Nautica restaurant, perched over the ocean. At a table with a view of surfers riding the waves, we were introduced to the two main themes, at least for me, of our dining delights -- ceviche and pisco sours.

Our ceviche was chunks of raw sea bass marinated in lime juice and garnished with onion slices and seaweed. Very tender and flavourful and much more like cooked fish than sashimi. Pisco sours are a deceptively mild cocktail of a regional grape brandy called pisco, lemon juice (Peruvian lemons taste more like limes), egg white and sugar syrup, then shaken or blended, and topped with a dash or two of bitters.

Also in Lima, we got a taste of the sophistication of early Peruvian cultures at Larco Herrera Museum, which houses a unique collection of erotic ceramics from the Moche era (about 200-800 AD). They're very artistic, humorous and highly explicit with grandiose depictions of phallic dimensions.

That night we flew less than an hour north to Trujillo, a coastal regional capital of about 760,000 in the Rio Moche Valley, where our exploration of the huaca trail began. It's well worth spending time seeing the streets, churches and mansions of the colonial city, founded by the conqueror Francisco Pizarro in 1534, a year before establishing Lima.

We headed about 10 kms southeast of the city to the massive Moche-era pyramids called Huacas del Sol y de la Luna (Temples of the Sun and the Moon). The largest pre-Columbian structure in the Americas, the Huaca del Sol was built from an estimated 140 million adobe bricks and was finished about 600 AD. It was damaged by the Spaniards and more modern-day looters, and about a third has been washed away by rains, the heaviest and most damaging from the weather phenomenon known as El Nino.

Welling up usually once or twice a decade, El Nino at its worst devastated crops and villages, driving temple priests to step up their human sacrifices. The smaller, more-detailed Huaca de la Luna contains colourful murals, many with the striking figure of the Decapitator, the Moche god to whom victims were sacrificed. El Nino is still a potent force in the region, causing months of catastrophic rains in 1998.

Another tremendous site in the Trujillo area is Chan Chan, at 28-square-kilometres the largest city in the Americas before the Spaniards. It dates from 1300 AD and was built by the Chimu culture (about 850-1470 AD) as their capital. Geometric designs and images of fish and seabirds have been restored on the walls of a vast plaza and other complexes. Standing in the plaza, I could imagine being transported back to a time of massed ancient rituals.

Off the beaten path about 60 klilometres north of Trujillo off the Panamerican Highway, we visited the Huaca el Brujo (Wizard or Sorcerer) with its magnificent murals. The resident archeologists took us behind the scenes in their labs to reveal in a large cardboard box the mummified remains of the tattooed Lady of Cao, who graced the June 2006 cover of National Geographic magazine.

Further north we explored Tucume, a huge site with at least 26 pyramids. Closer to the large city of Chiclayo, population 600,000, we were amazed by the jaw-dropping beauty of the intricate gold artifacts at the Royal Tombs of Sican Museum. The museum itself is a marvel of architecture, shaped like the ancient treasure-filled pyramid that archeologists explored in 1987.

Further east, the Bosque de Pomac Historic Sanctuary encompasses dozens of huacas from the Sican or Lambayeque culture (around 800-1300 AD) in its almost 6,000 hectares of dry tropical forest. The sanctuary includes 27 bird species, such as the vermillion flycatcher and Peruvian pygmy owl, and thousands of carob trees. We were extremely lucky to view an active dig in the sanctuary and be guided by Dr. Carlos Elera Arevalo, a Peruvian who earned his doctorate at the University of Calgary and is director of the Sican National Museum in Ferrenafe.

By the way, if you can't make it to Peru, you can see 120 gold and ceramic objects excavated from a Sican tomb at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, across the river from Ottawa. The exhibit, Secret Riches: Ancient Peru Unearthed, is on display until April 27.

IF YOU GO

Getting there: You can fly to Lima on Air Canada or LAN Peru, which also has connecting flights to Trujillo.

Where to stay: In Lima, the Posada Olivar; in Trujillo, the Gran Marques Trujillo; in Tucume, Los Horcones; in Chiclayo, the Gran Hotel Chiclayo; and a great new boon to travellers, the new Ramada is a few metres from baggage claim at Lima Airport.

Getting around: There are many ways to save money in Peru but a good guide for the huaca trail is essential. You can take specialized archeological tours with companies like InkaNatural Travel - www.inkanatura.com. Our tour guide, Laura Duran Perez of Trujillo, was invaluable. E-mail lauraduran@yahoo.com. I didn't hire a guide on my own for Machu Picchu and ended up feeling I missed worthwhile insights.

Information: The Peruvian government's travel website is great -- www.peru.info/perueng.asp. Lonely Planet's Peru book is a solid guide.

Machu Picchu: Wondrous Wonder of the World

2007-11-30T17:51:00.001-08:00

On Nov. 5 on a bright spring day – this is south of the equator – I was chanting at Machu Picchu. I travelled to the Andes after a week-long press tour of the Peruvian north coast. Machu Picchu is truly stunning and majestic. The place is crawling with tourists and hard to find solitude. But I discovered a small cave on the mountainside and sat just outside in the shade. Before me were glorious green-clad mountain tops amid the clouds. I meditated for a while and then began chanting "Esa eynai el he-harim" (I lift my eyes up to the mountains), composed from Psalm 121 by my teacher, Rabbi Shefa Gold.

On a short hike from the ruins to the Inca drawbridge through jungle foliage and butterflies, I wanted to chant something that reflects the area but I know no Quechua, the native language. So I used a phrase of Spanish, the language of the Incans' conquerors, "Vaya con Dios" (Go With God), with a melody that owes a lot to "The More We Get Together". It was my intention to plant seeds for Shefa's pilgrimage there in March.

Northern Peru: Whacked out on huacas

2007-11-03T05:11:00.000-07:00

After six days on a press tour of the north coast of Peru, my mind is reeling with the richness and complexity of the country's ancient cultures. Everyone's heard of the Incas and their most famous wonder of the world -- Machu Picchu. It's reached by turning south from Lima. But head north and there are many other civilizations that predate the Spanish conquerors with lost cities and buried treasure that will excite even the most jaded traveller. All from huacas, which look like large dirt hills but are so much more. Thanks to an explosion of archeological discoveries in the last 20 years, fantastic pyramids, temples and amazingly intricate artifacts -- many in gleaming gold and precious jewels -- are emerging from dozens of huacas.

Coming up for air after Yom Kippur

2007-09-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

It's the day after Yom Kippur, a purposefully undemanding day after the intensity of the past few weeks. Intense because of preparations for the High Holy Days. I led some of the services at Ahavat Olam -- and new this year I was a baal tekiah, a shofar blower. What a thrill. It feels very elemental and grounded in the earth, almost shamanic.

For the third year at Or Shalom, I led "Chanting at the Gates," a chant workshop that comes at the break in the afternoon before the Minha service. The spiritual goal was to call out to God to keep open the Gates of Righteousness, which our tradition tells us close for another year at the end of Yom Kippur. The intention of the workshop was that the gates are always open for an open heart. And the opportunities for "returning" to our essential selves after missing the mark are always there.

The year ahead brings a focus on Jewish learning. I've begun a year-long course in Biblical Hebrew, and am contemplating enrolling in the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School to fill in some of the many holes in my basic Jewish knowledge. Anyone else have experience with that program?

I've begun assembling a team to organize the third-annual Vancouver InterSpiritual Chant Festival. We're looking at possible dates in February or March at the Centre for Peace.

Let Bob Dylan send your message

2007-09-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

My friend Al Pasternak turned me on to this great way to send a message. It allows you to customize the cue-card scene from the 1967 movie "Don't Look Back" with Bob Dylan singing "Subterranean Homesick Blues." (Check out Allen Ginsberg in the background on the left.) It's part of a promotion for a Dylan album due out Oct. 1 but that's a pretty subtle part of it. I used it to send a message to my fellow graduates of Rabbi Shefa Gold's Kol Zimra chant leadership program. You can send your own message, too.

Press tour to China and Japan: Fuji from the air

2007-08-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

As we flew from Shanghai to Tokyo on the way home, we passed Mt. Fuji. It looked very blue, as shown in the bottom photo. But when I ran the top photo through Photoshop, it took on an other-worldly quality.

Press tour to China and Japan: From Mao to Yao

2007-08-26T08:59:00.001-07:00

Portraits of Chairman Mao have been common in China for decades. Now there's a newly ubiquitous presence: Yao Ming. The Houston Rockets NBA star's image is everywhere endorsing the Olympics and China Unicom, the state-owned telecommunications utility. It was big news when he got married this summer in Shanghai.

Press tour to China and Japan: Lijiang images

2007-08-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

Press tour to China and Japan: Beijing images

2007-08-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Press tour to China and Japan: The travel story

2007-08-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

August 26, 2007

Travel

China racing to rid its capital of gridlock and grime before Games

If you go for the Olympics, stay for the sights

By Lorne Mallin, Special to The Province

BEIJING – With the 2008 Summer Games less than a year away, China is running a marathon race to get ready for a tourist onslaught of Olympic proportions. A million visitors will descend from inside the world's most populous country with 500,000 more expected to land here from Canada and around the globe.

Will the capital city of 17 million be prepared? The Chinese sound certain as authorities spend billions of dollars to beautify and clean it up.

"I am confident that our government has the power to make sure it all happens," said the man in the next seat, a 30-year-old Shanghai banker, on a flight inside China last week.

The real answer seems to be up in the air -- literally. Beijing's air quality is atrocious. A World Health Organization expert has warned that Olympic spectators with asthma or heart problems could be harmed.

Three million cars and trucks clog Beijing's roads and an extra thousand more vehicles wedge into traffic every day. Just this past week, Beijing launched a four-day experiment aiming to take as many as 1.3 million vehicles off the streets each day and increase public transportation. While the penalty for ignoring the restrictions was only $14, traffic did flow somewhat more smoothly. And state media reported the test improved air quality, saying conditions were "fairly good" despite the grey haze.

Without some controls, Beijing's gridlock is extremely frustrating. I visited China and Japan this month on a press junket of Canadian reporters courtesy of those countries' national tourism offices to promote Asia travel during the Olympics. Some of the writers took a tour to the Great Wall. Generally 90 minutes away, the drive took about twice as long.

The part of the wall the reporters visited was far from where foreign activists, including two from Vancouver, earlier this month unfurled a banner calling for "Free Tibet 2008." I mention this to raise the ethical dilemma of having my cake and eating it, too: accepting a free trip to China while advising you might want to think twice about going to the Olympics in light of China's human-rights record.

China didn't make it easy to be enthusiastic. For a press trip designed to highlight tourism during the Games, we were given a briefing that revealed little about the preparations. We could see lovely scale models of the venues but none of the real ones from the inside. Only after persistent requests were we given any chance to photograph the two most striking structures -- Beijing National Stadium, known as the bird's nest, and the Water Cube aquatics centre -- from several hundred metres away.

On the other hand, Beijing itself is endlessly fascinating. We saw some of the standard sights, including massive Tiananmen Square, where students were massacred just months before I stood there in 1989 and where hawkers now sell $5 watches with Chairman Mao waving on the face. The adjacent Forbidden City is an extraordinary historical complex to explore. It now features some of the public toilets that officials have upgraded and awarded four-star status to respond to tourist complaints of foul facilities.

I also discovered that China has made great advances in its dentistry. I needed an emergency root canal in Beijing and got immediate and excellent service from Arrail Dental, with follow-up care in Shanghai.

In Beijing, we rode in pedicabs through one of the hutong, or alleyway, districts that are quickly disappearing as the city modernizes. Some of the hutong courtyards offer surprisingly cheap bed-and-breakfast alternatives ($17 a night at one place) to the expensive hotels popping up all over the city.

The most surprising sight in Beijing was the 798 Art Zone. An echo of Vancouver's Granville Island, it's a 23-hectare industrial area with more than 120 galleries. About 80 artists work in studios there, creating an oasis of freedom that you can feel in the air.

The air is radically different in Lijiang in southern Yunnan province, at the foot of the Himalayas 500 kilometres from the Tibet border. After sweating in Beijing, we relished the coolness. And the diversity. Twenty-five of China's 56 ethnic minorities have a presence in the area of about a million people.

That makes Lijiang culturally rich and a magnet for tourists. The focus is the 800-year-old ancient city, a 1.8-sq.-km. area of souvenir shops, cobbled streets and small inns that was largely destroyed in a 1996 earthquake and then rebuilt in the old style, with new ATMs for your shopping convenience. You can sample yak meat (a lot like beef). Or pose for pictures on one of the small but sure-footed horses that are used on the local snow-capped mountains.

The feel of the mountains is recreated in a spectacular outdoor show on the outskirts of Lijiang featuring 500 performers singing and dancing in ethnic dress. Impression Lijiang was created by a team including Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed Chinese filmmaker (Raise the Red Lantern) who is also co-directing the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Games.

If the Olympics bring you to Asia, consider stopping in Japan on the way. With my daughter Lisa, who works in Chiba City outside of Tokyo, I took in a Japanese professional baseball game that featured what was described as "kegs on legs" -- young women with 10-to-13-kg mini-kegs strapped to their backs who run up and down the stands dispensing $4 cups of beer. With the press-tour group, I experienced a morning in a sumo stable where we watched the large but supple wrestlers go through their stretches and practice bouts. Afterwards, we were served chanko nabe, the rich stew that sumo wrestlers consume in great quantities to purposefully put on weight.

A couple hours north on the Shinkansen bullet train brought us to the picturesque Sendai area and the jewel of the trip for me. The nearby Akiu hot springs is home to Hotel Sakan, an exquisite spa that has been in the same family for 34 generations over 1,000 years. I could easily have stayed a week, soaking in the baths and absorbing the serenity. But then I would have missed China.

IF YOU GO

• The Games are Aug. 8-24, 2008. The China National Tourism Office website, www.cnto.org, is an excellent resource, with links to the Olympics. Their Toronto office is toll-free 1-866-599-6636 or e-mail toronto@cnta.gov.cn. Canadians need a visa.

• Explore Lijiang through its tourism bureau website: english.ljta.gov.cn/.

• China's domestic airlines offer the most convenient way of seeing the country. They have greatly improved their safety record but be prepared for inconveniences. One of our flights was delayed almost six hours and another was cancelled.

• The Japan National Tourism Organization's Canadian website is www.jnto.go.jp/canada/. Their Toronto office is 416-366-7140 and e-mail info@jntoyyz.com. Canadians do not need a visa.

• Get a taste of Hotel Sakan at www.sakan-net.co.jp/english_001/index.html.

• For more words and pictures on China and Japan, go to my blog at www.lornemallin.blogspot.com.

Sendai: Just a Shinkansen ride away

2007-08-12T19:47:00.000-07:00

Canadian journalists Wes Lafortune and Carolyne Parent shoot the Shinkansen bullet train arriving in Tokyo Station to take our press tour north to Sendai.

Taiko group plays for the Natsu Matsuri (summer festival) at Akiu Onsen (hot springs) near Sendai.

Villagers and visitors join in on the Akiu Ondo folk dance.

My spacious and beautiful rooms at Hotel Sakan in Akiu Onsen.

The tokonoma (display area) in my rooms at Hotel Sakan.

Tsukiji: Gone fishin'

2007-08-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

How about a little tuna sashimi at 6:30 a.m.?

Tokyo is the home of the largest fish market in the world.

There are many ways to slice into a frozen tuna. An axe and . . .

. . . and a band saw.

Shrimp, shrimp and more shrimp.

Wasabi in the raw. The bigger the more expensive.

Eggplant comes in all sizes in Japan.

Weird -- stuffed polar bear at a taxidermist's stall.

Sumo in the summer

2007-08-10T06:07:00.001-07:00

Sumo wrestlers practise at the Arashio Stable in Tokyo.

Impressive leg lifts during morning practice.
These lifts are part of the ritual before each match at tournaments.

The flexibility of these big guys is astounding. This is called mata-wari (rip the groin).
If they can't do it, some 350 lb. guy will sit on their back
or push down on their head until they can.

Junior wrestlers prepare chankonabe for us. It's a protein-rich stew that helps sustain the wrestlers. Washed down with beer and followed by a nap, this diet helps them put on weight — a major goal.

Hanging out with the boys after practice.

For more information: Arashio Stable's website.

Gazing on the Ginza

2007-08-09T01:12:00.000-07:00

I am amazed to find myself in Tokyo, courtesy of a press junket sponsored by the Chinese and Japanese national tourism offices. It just fell into my lap, thanks to Joe Kula, travel editor of The Province newspaper in Vancouver. I took early retirement from the paper at the end of the year to see what might open up for me as I turned 60. And here I am, wrapped in a yukata (light cotton summer kimono) and gazing out of my 25th-floor Imperial Hotel room on the Ginza shopping and entertainment district.

I arrived last Friday in time to celebrate Shabbat with my daughter Lisa, who is living and working in Chiba outside of Tokyo. She supplied the candles, and I brought a little bottle of red wine from the plane along with two mini challah from Sabra in Vancouver. I had feared it might be a year or more before I saw Lisa again after we said goodbye in Kiev in May at the end of our adventure on the Klezmer Heritage Cruise. (See my stories from that trip below and our pictures here.)

In the time we've had together this past week, we've marvelled at Chiba's annual fireworks display, enjoyed a symphony of eggplant dishes with Lisa's colleagues and families at a potluck, cheered at a Chiba Lotte Marines baseball game with its unique "kegs on legs" beer sellers, dined with Lisa's mother and old friends, sampled many treats from sashimi to okonomiyaki, and escaped the heat and humidity at an air-conditioned screening of Transformers, where we seemed to be the only ones getting many of the jokes.

Restoring a Jewish Presence in Ukraine

2007-08-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

Published July 13, 2007

Streams of Judaism are competing for survival in Ukraine

This is the last in a three-part series on Jewish Ukraine.

By Lorne Mallin

Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny beamed from the bimah of the revived synagogue in the seaside Crimean town of Evpatoria as he looked out at pews full of local Jews and a boatload of foreigners from our Klezmer Heritage Cruise.

"Now we know that Jewish life is rebuilt here, and your trip here is another reassurance that synagogue buildings will never be closed again," said Dukhovny, who is Ukraine's chief rabbi of Progressive Judaism, a fledgling egalitarian movement in a country where Chabad-Lubavitch is by far the major player. Reform Jews in North America are part of the global Progressive Jewish movement.

The 97-year-old brick building is a symbol of the revival of Jewish life in Ukraine after the end of Soviet rule in 1991. Like hundreds of other synagogues, Ehiya Kapai Synagogue was closed decades ago by the Communist party. It functioned as a sunflower seed oil plant and was returned to the Jewish community in 1999. Local and foreign sponsors paid for the rebuilding and it was rededicated in 2005.

About 160 of us from the cruise ship Dnieper Princess, which was docked in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, came there for the dedication of an aron kodesh (the holy ark where the Torah is kept) that was financed by the Beth El Reform congregation in Virginia.

Arriving in four big buses, we caused quite a stir. Every police officer in Evpatoria was assigned to security for the biggest tour group ever to hit town. Even an ambulance was on standby outside the synagogue gates.

In an emotional ceremony, the head of the congregation, Raisa Shepavalova, carried a Torah scroll under a chuppah through the sanctuary as people reached out to touch it as she passed. After speeches, the community's lay leader, Evgeny Tzvi Perevozchykov, placed the Torah in the wooden ark.

"To see this tiny Jewish community ... continuing to fight to keep their identity, despite everything they must have gone through, was really an eye-opener," New York clarinetist David Krakauer later told me.

To celebrate, Krakauer and the rest of the professional musicians on the cruise played a concert, boogieing on the bimah in the synagogue and then leading everyone out into the courtyard, where we all danced.

Krakauer said it was the most moving concert of the cruise for him, and Dukhovny told the crowd it was a homecoming. "The music which your ancestors took from Ukraine to Canada or to the United States, this klezmer music, you are bringing back," the rabbi said.

Music plays a central role in Dukhovny's own congregation, Hatikvah, in Kiev. One Friday night service I attended was largely led by a lay cantor, Mike Urisman, 27, who played guitar and guided the 25 or so people there in prayers with tunes composed by such Jewish songwriters as Debbie Friedman and some of his own. It was a thrill for me to lead a chant during the service.

The Ukrainian capital is Dukhovny's home turf. He was born there 57 years ago. His mother was the daughter of a Chassidic rabbi and she taught Dukhovny and his brother to keep Shabbat. At 44, Dukhovny switched from a career in the sciences to attend Leo Baeck College in London, the Progressive rabbinical school.

His offices and synagogue are in a rented space a few steps below ground level. Dukhovny said that, with the formerly Jewish buildings in Kiev all claimed by Chabad and other Chassidic groups, it's difficult to attract wealthy patrons to his synagogue and help it prosper. "Rich Jews don't want to pray in a semi-basement," he said.

"Saying to business people in Kiev that the Reform movement in North America is the strongest and widespread and that Chabad-Lubavitch is a small sect - they do not believe me, seeing the gold, silver and marble of the Chabad synagogues.

"The constant challenge for the movement is that many of our programs are under-budgeted," Dukhovny said. The movement can financially support only 16 of its 47 communities.

Still, Dukhovny emphasizes the positive. "The main success of the Progressive movement in Ukraine is that the movement was able to build a strong presence," he said. "[It] presents another way how to be Jewish, opposite to the ultra-Orthodox view that there is the only one way how to be Jewish."

He explained that the constitutions of the congregations, which are part of the Religious Union for Progressive Jewish Congregations of Ukraine, open their membership to people who identify as Jews and can document they have Jewish heritage somewhere in the last three generations.

With an intermarriage rate of about 80 per cent, Ukrainian Jews are highly assimilated. Estimates of the Jewish population range from a low of 94,000 to as many as 500,000. Thousands emigrate every year to Israel and the West.

Dukhovny, one of only two Progressive rabbis in the country, said his movement, which serves about 15,000 people, has trained lay leaders and para-rabbis, built Netzer youth groups, opened eight pre-schools and six Sunday schools and owns six synagogue buildings.

Among the 240 registered Jewish organizations in Ukraine, there is a minor Conservative and Modern Orthodox presence, but Chabad is the largest, with more than 100 communities. Chabad moved quickly to revive Judaism in Ukraine and has opened thriving day schools.

There are Jewish community centres, welfare services, Holocaust memorials, museums and summer camps in Ukraine, plus a Jewish university in Kiev. When our cruise group visited the five-year-old Jewish museum in Odessa, it made an impression on Ronnie Tessler, who was the first executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and was instrumental in developing the new Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia.

"Visiting the museum was a very poignant experience," she said. "The sorry condition of the building the museum is housed in is disturbing. It is obvious from the size of the museum and the home-made appearance of the exhibits that their work is being accomplished on a very tight budget by a small staff."

Ukraine has a rich Jewish history, going back to the sixth century CE, when the Khazars ruled the region, with some evidence that predates the Christian era. The Polish-Lithuanian Empire governed from the 14th century until the expansion of the Russian Empire in the 17th century. To contain the Jews, Russia imposed a Pale of Settlement that included much of present-day Ukraine.

The rebirth of Jewish life has not been without tensions. There are rival Jewish umbrella organizations, even rival chief rabbis from Chabad, competition for Jewish facilities returned by the government, pressure from Messianic Jewish groups and rising levels of anti-Semitism, with increasing reports of violent attacks on Jews and damage to Jewish property.

Lorne Mallin is a Vancouver writer, editor, designer and Jewish chant leader. His website is lornemallin.com.

HOW TO HELP
• Odessa is one of Vancouver's sister cities and home to a struggling Progressive Jewish congregation, Emanu-El. Last year it received a Torah scroll from Chilean Jews, replacing a stolen scroll that had been donated by Temple Emanu-El of San Jose, Calif., with which it is twinned. There are almost 150 members and they need more help to secure a building and run programs. Contact spiritual leader Julia Grischenko at judith@mail.od.ua.

• Contact Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny at ravdukh@ukr.net.

• Learn about the Odessa Jewish Museum at english.migdal.ru.

The klezmer in the Klezmer Cruise

2007-08-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

Published July 6, 2007

Rocking and rolling down the Dnieper River

This is the second in a three-part series on Jewish Ukraine.

By Lorne Mallin

Some of the world's finest Jewish musicians sailed on the first Klezmer Heritage Cruise this spring. The lounges of the Dnieper Princess and the concert halls of Ukraine rang with the sounds of such renowns as David Krakauer, Michael Alpert, Guy Schalom, Alex Kontorovich, Bob Cohen, Vanya Zhuk, Eric Stein and Josh Dolgin, also known as DJ Socalled.

But they all paid homage to a short, dapper 86-year-old singer with a shock of white hair and twinkling eyes, who came aboard when the boat docked in Zaporozhye, about 700 kilometres downriver from Kiev.

Arkady Gendler was a hit from the moment he began entertaining us with his bottomless repertoire of Yiddish songs.

"He is a true treasure and I feel uniquely privileged to have had the opportunity to hang out and play with him during the cruise," said Stein, a bass and mandolin player who is also artistic director of Toronto's Ashkenaz Festival. Stein is bringing his great band Beyond the Pale to the Norman Rothstein Theatre for a concert on July 12.

The 10th child of his family, Gendler was born in 1921 in Soroca, then part of Romania, now part of Moldova on the border with Ukraine, in the area known as Bessarabia.

"As far as I can remember, my father, my mother, all my siblings, everyone sang Yiddish songs," he told us one afternoon. "So it seems I started singing before I started speaking."

Gendler fled to Russia to escape the Nazis, served with the Red Army, later became a plastics engineer, struggled to nurture Yiddish culture during the repressive Soviet era and now teaches Yiddish at the ORT School in Zaporozhye. He's never stopped singing and songwriting and has appeared at Jewish music festivals throughout Europe and in California. This summer, he's on faculty at the KlezKanada annual music camp Aug. 20 to 26 in the Quebec Laurentians.

On the cruise ship and on shore, Gendler brought his rich voice and engaging showmanship to such tunes as Mayn Ershter Vals (My First Waltz), Ele-Bele! (So There!), Kartoflyes (Potatoes) and his own take on Chiribim Chiribom.

All of us on the April 29 to May 11 cruise were spoiled with remarkable music. There were about 160 passengers, mainly from Canada, with many from the U.S. and a few from Israel and Europe.

Josh Dolgin, whose parents Marc and AC worked on the nuts and bolts of the trip, assembled the musicians from Canada, the U.S., England, Hungary and Russia. They played on the ship, in halls, synagogues, a Jewish community centre and a Jewish day school, where hundreds of kids danced with the passengers.

Dolgin plays accordion and piano, sings and mixes klezmer and hip hop. His new CD, Ghettoblaster, is just out. He was followed most everywhere by a film crew making a documentary on him for the National Film Board.

A lot of the music on board was just having fun. Eric Stein revelled in the "endless alcohol-fuelled jams and spontaneous partying. Memories that will last a lifetime."

Arrangements were made to connect with local musicians throughout the voyage, which began in Kiev and sailed down the Dnieper River to the Black Sea ports of Sevastopol and Odessa, where we were greeted by Konsonans Retro as the ship docked. The group brings together German clarinetist Christian Dawid and a Ukrainian brass band from the village of Kodyma. Drummer Guy Schalom from London has also played and recorded with them.

"Those guys kick ass," said Stein. "They are one of the freshest and funkiest things I've heard in a while." He's planning to bring them to Ashkenaz next year.

Alex Kontorovich, who plays superb clarinet and sax, said his most thrilling moment was with the same group after the final concert in Odessa.

"The brass band followed us to the ship for the post-party, which inevitably morphed into the kind of low-down, dirty, tune-trading jam only possible when a heap of trumpets, tubas, and clarinets find their way to inebriated mouths."

The two most well-known klezmer musicians on board were New Yorkers, the multi-linguist, multi-instrumentalist and singer Michael Alpert, and David Krakauer, an astounding clarinet player who took his instrument kicking and screaming into another dimension.

Krakauer, who teaches at the elite level, graciously took on coaching a group of amateur musicians, who included Vancouverites Elie Dolgin, Noam Dolgin, Avi Dolgin and Lisa Mallin.

"Being a clarinetist, I was pretty intimidated to have this virtuoso giving me pointers on simple things like fingering, but he was so lovely and patient and inspiring, and he really brought the fun back into the music," said Elie.

"Then sure enough our little ragtag group of musicians really started to come together. And, boy, what a joy it was to all be playing together, learning melodies, improvising a little bit and having a great time."

Josh Dolgin, directed a Yiddish choir of about 20 passengers, including Shanie Levin of Vancouver and me. He reinforced the sheet music by playing the parts on a melodion, a keyboard with a mouthpiece.

"I loved every minute of it, " Levin said. "I think that we formed a cohesive group very quickly and I felt closer to the choir members as a result of the work we did together than to others on the cruise. Everyone decided very quickly who they would sit beside and who would best help them to sing their part well."

As well as the spontaneous dancing that erupted just about everywhere music was played, there was a folk dancing group led by Hélène Domergue-Zilberberg.

Ruth Hess-Dolgin of Vancouver said she's not a musician but "dancing to the klezmer gave me a chance to enjoy the music and get some exercise at the same time. It was good for the body and the soul."

Lorne Mallin is a Vancouver writer, editor, graphic designer and Jewish chant leader. His website is lornemallin.com.

RESOURCES
• Two excellent blogs that include cruise music and video are nfb.ca/socalled and Bob Cohen's horinca.blogspot.com.
• Check out Arkady Gendler's album My Hometown Soroke at www.jewishmusicfestival.org/store/arkady-gendler-cd

Searching for family history in Ukraine

2007-08-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

Published June 30, 2007

Tracing the ancestral villages of Canadians in Ukraine

This is the first in a three-part series on Jewish Ukraine.

By Lorne Mallin

For many of us on the thrilling, emotional Klezmer Heritage Cruise down the Dnieper River in Ukraine this past spring, the most exciting and moving moments were away from the tour – in private visits to ancestral villages.

At our slide-music-video show June 20 at Or Shalom Synagogue in Vancouver, Avi Dolgin choked up as he described being on Khortitsia, an island in the Dnieper, where his late father, Joseph, was born and which he left in 1914 for Winnipeg with his parents, Isaak and Esther. In a field, while a local family and their goats looked on, Dolgin and 13 other members of his family on the cruise stood on a wall of the ruins of a building that might once have been a synagogue.

"We said Kaddish for the memory of Isaak and Esther Dolginover, probably the first time Kaddish had been said for them in years," Dolgin recalled in an interview in his Vancouver kitchen. "And then also a thank you for them for having gotten the hell out of there."

Dolgin was in Ukraine with his wife, Ruth Hess-Dolgin, and their two sons, Noam, 30, and Elie, 25. Dolgin's Ottawa-area brother Marc, sister-in-law AC and nephew Josh, a Montreal klezmer musician also known as rapper SoCalled, dreamed up the Jewish cruise when they visited Khortitsia during a Mennonite Heritage Cruise they tagged along on two years ago.

At that time, archivists in the nearby industrial city of Zaporozhye, about 700 kilometres southeast of Kiev, had discovered some Dolgin family records. They were asked to look for more. What the archivists found surprised the family when they returned en masse last month.

"I think probably the most exciting moment must have been in the archive," said Dolgin. Two archivists had spent two full days combing through 70 years of records for every mention of every variation on the Dolgin name and laid out the results for the family to examine.

"To see the documentation right there in front of me of the family which I knew – my father's birth and my uncle's birth – was exciting," he said. "And then to discover documentation of family I never knew existed."

Previous unknowns who came to light included his grandfather's brother, Pavel, and Pavel's son, Piotr, and the fact that the family had come to Khortitsia from Belorussia, another part of the Russian empire, now known as Belarus, north of present-day Ukraine, thereby adding another layer to the Dolgin history. The family felt "jaw-dropping amazement" and great appreciation for the work of the archivists, Dolgin said.

Later, when our ship, the Dnieper Princess, playfully called the Dnieper Shlepper by the 160 or so passengers, docked in Odessa on the Black Sea, Dolgin and his family explored the roots of his mother, Eva Blankstein, who was born in Winnipeg and died there last November, at 97.

On the same day the Dolgins gathered in Khortitsia, my daughter, Lisa, and I travelled to an ancestral village about 180 kilometres southeast of Zaporozhye with a driver and guide, who thankfully were nothing like the "blind" driver and English-challenged guide in the book and movie Everything is Illuminated.

It took more than two hours to reach Alexeyevka, where my zayde, my mother Molly's father, Abraham Shuer, was born in 1882. Zayde immigrated to Winnipeg and then settled in Ste. Rose du Lac, Man., where the family ran a general store. Post-Second World War, he lived in Vancouver and was head of Schara Tzedeck's Chevra Kadisha.

In Alexeyevka, dirt streets radiate from the paved road that runs through it. Ducks, goats and turkeys feed on the roadside grass. A single-storey house and fenced yard that a resident generously invited us to visit featured coal heat, a chicken coop, red tulips, a vegetable garden, an outhouse and a television satellite dish perched near the tin roof.

There are no Jews left in the village of about 150, but in the market of the neighboring village, Smirnove, we met a babushka, a scarfed 71-year-old woman who led us to the Jewish cemetery by the main road. There, we found three surviving headstones – one leaning over at a sharp angle and two flat in the grass. Two women in a nearby house said the cemetery had been damaged by road construction and grave robbers. And time.

We said Kaddish there, even though we didn't have a minyan of 10 Jews. And we did the same in Malin, a town of about 27,000 about 85 kilometres northwest of Kiev, which we visited just before the April 29-May 11 cruise got underway.

My father Hyman's father, Louis Mallin was a Malinsky – which means "from Malin" – when he and his new bride, Bessie, came in 1913 from England, bound for Winnipeg. We don't know for sure where Louis was born, so we can't be certain we came from Malin. But we've kind of adopted it as a heritage shtetl and felt more connection there than in Alexeyevka because of the people we met.

Our guide, Larissa Sviridova, had called ahead and arranged for us to meet a representative of the Malin Jewish community. We were warmly greeted by Eugenia Fetman, 61, whose maiden name we were surprised to learn was Malinskaya, the feminine form of Malinsky. And she invited over Lev Markovich, 81, whose wife's maiden name is also Malinskaya. They're from different Malinsky families and we have no idea whether we're related.

Together, Fetman and Markovich told us about Malin's Jewish history. It was about 70 per cent Jewish before the war and some, like Markovich, escaped the advancing German army in 1941 by walking to Russia. The Nazis murdered 1,300 Malin Jews at a ravine. Now, there are 25 to 30 Jews left, all aging. The young people have left for better opportunities.

Fetman and Markovich took us to two Jewish cemeteries. One, in sad shape, was closed 18 years ago. The inscriptions were fading, but we found one marker with a Malinsky name and left a small stone on it. We saw many more Malinsky graves in the newer, well-maintained cemetery, where the headstones are all Soviet style – written in the Cyrillic alphabet, with pictures of the deceased either etched or inset into the stone. We noticed that none of the Malinskys resembled our family.

We visited the town market, the former synagogue that is now a chick hatchery and made a stop to take pictures of the house at 21 Lenina St., where Vancouver realtor Joe Fayner had told me he used to spend summers visiting his grandmother, Yuditsky. And we ended up back at Fetman's tidy apartment, where she fed us a lunch of yummy salads and the best blinis (similar to blintzes) we'd ever had, washed down with homemade vodka. It was very hard to say goodbye. They might not have been family, but they felt like family.

"Visiting Malin was such a delight," said Lisa, 24, who works as co-ordinator of international relations in Chiba City, near Tokyo. "It helped me feel connected to my ancestors. It was simple: I'm Jewish, they were Jewish and the people we met in Malin were Jewish, too."

Lorne Mallin is a Vancouver writer, editor, designer and Jewish chant leader. His website is lornemallin.com.

RESOURCES
• View more of our photos at www.flickr.com/photos/malinsky/.
• See a map and more photos and information about the cruise at www.magma.ca/~klezmercruise
• Connect with the Jewish Genealogical Institute of B.C. at www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/4441, phone 604-321-9870.
• Visit the new Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C. at the JCC, 950 W. 41st Ave. Online at www.jewishmuseum.ca or call 604-257-5199.
• Explore your heritage at www.jewishgen.com.

Missed the boat? Crimea river

2007-08-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

June 24, 2007
Travel
MISSED THE BOAT? CRIMEA RIVER!
UKRAINE: Think of Fiddler on the Roof with tour-group cast

Stone lion guards Crimea’s Vorontsov Palace, where British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stayed during the 1945 Yalta Conference. —LISA MALLIN

By Lorne Mallin
Special to The Province

Sailing down the Dnieper River from the Ukrainian capital to the Black Sea was an extraordinary journey of discovery for passengers on the first Klezmer Heritage Cruise.

Klezmer is Eastern European Jewish music — think Fiddler on the Roof — and its melodies flowed through the 12-day voyage from the international band on board and the local musicians who played concerts with them at ports along the way.

On the cruise ship, we sang, danced, laughed and cried. On land, we explored ancient and modern Ukraine, whose 46.5 million people have yet to really experience mass tourism since it declared independence 16 years ago as the Soviet Union crumbled.

About the size of Alberta (home of almost 300,000 Ukrainian-Canadians), it’s vast in European terms, bordering on Belarus to the north, Russia to the north and east, with a host of countries on the west – Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova, and Black Sea to the south.

Almost all of the 160 passengers were Jewish, with most from Canada, plus Americans and a few from Europe and Israel. Throughout Ukraine, we visited synagogues, Jewish day schools and other sites that have been revived since the end of the Soviet era.

The trip was the brainchild of Marc and AC Dolgin, of the Ottawa area, and their Montreal musician son Josh. Two years ago, they joined a Mennonite heritage cruise on the Dnieper and visited the birthplace of Marc’s father Joseph in Zaporozhye, about 700 kilometres southeast of Kiev. Josh was inspired to propose a Jewish heritage cruise complete with klezmer music.

When the cruise was announced, my daughter Lisa, who works near Tokyo, and I were inspired to sign on, and also to book private excursions to explore our roots.

My grandfather Louis Mallin’s name was Malinsky — which means “from Malin” — before he arrived in Winnipeg in 1913 from England, but we’re not certain where he was born. In the town of Malin, about 85 km west of Kiev, we met and wonderfully connected with Jews from Malinsky families. On the other hand, 180 km southeast of Zaporozhye in the village of Alexeyevka, where we know my mother’s father, Abraham Shuer, was born, there are no more Jews and only three headstones survive in the vanishing Jewish cemetery.

Above is a typical house in Alexeyevka, a village in the southern Ukraine where the photographer's greatgrandfather, Abraham Shuer, was born. LISA MALLIN — FOR THE PROVINCE

But you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy discovering Ukraine. I arrived in Kiev five days before the cruise began and settled into the apartment I’d rented over the Internet, a much better deal at $59 US a night than hotel rooms. It was an excellent base to explore the 1,400-year-old capital of 2.6 million. The beautiful European city is modernizing but I had little interest in its new shopping malls and office towers, except to check into an Internet cafe. Instead, I focused on its gold-domed churches and cathedrals — many of which have been gloriously restored in the last 16 years — other historical sites and people-watching.

The spiritual centre of Ukraine’s Orthodox Christianity is Pechersk Lavra, which began as a cave monastery in 1051. Below ground are narrow tunnels housing the mummified remains of monks and saints, as well as several chapels. Above ground are magnificent churches and museums.

In the historic riverfront Podol district, the Chernobyl Museum movingly documents the human cost of the world’s worst nuclear disaster — the 1986 reactor explosion at Chernobyl, 100 km north of Kiev.

A Kiev busker plays his bandura, a traditional Ukrainian instrument.
LORNE MALLIN — FOR THE PROVINCE

Ottawa lawyer Leonard Shore looks out from the deck of the Dnieper Princess cruise ship at Kiev's historic Podol district. —LISA MALLIN

I visited Independence Square on Kiev’s main downtown street, Kreshchatyk, where 2004’s Orange Revolution led to President Victor Yushchenko’s election and many unfulfilled expectations. While I was here, it was continually occupied by flag-waving political groups. A little farther down Kreshchatyk, Lisa and I saw disturbing anti-Semitic graffiti outside a McDonald’s.

With the cruise group, we spent solemn moments at the memorial at Babi Yar, the ravine in Kiev where more than 33,000 Jews were machine-gunned to death in two days by the invading Nazis in 1941.

As we sailed down the 2,290-km Dnieper, we were treated to absorbing historical backgrounders by Prof. Eugene Orenstein of McGill University. Most every night, movies about Ukraine were screened. Amateur musicians jammed, singers formed a Yiddish choir and Jewish folk dancing was taught.

The four-deck Dnieper Princess was our home — 423 feet long with small but efficient twin cabins. We were well-fed in the dining rooms and enjoyed many music-filled nights in the lounges. Out on the decks, landscapes of cities, factories, villages and green fields passed before us.

Every morning, we were greeted on the PA system by Vancouver’s Elie Dolgin, a grad student at Edinburgh University, who peppered his announcements with puns such as “Ukraine, you saw, you conquered,” “Cossack it to me” and “Crimea river.”

Most every day in port, we climbed on tour buses. Some highlights:

■ In our first port of call, Dnepropetrovsk, the Museum of History’s chilling exhibit on the abuses of the Stalin regime in the 1930s and 1940s.
■ The Cossack show with great horsemanship and fine bull-whip skills on Khortitsa Island off Zaporozhye.
■ In the Crimea on the Black Sea, the Livadia Palace where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met for the 1945 Yalta Conference to decide the fate of post-War Europe.
■Diverse Evpatoria, which includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sufi dervishes and Karaites, an ethnic Turkic community whose religion is similar to Judaism.
■ The 18th-century palace of the last of the Tatar Khans, in Bakhchiserai. We also explored on our own.

My most telling moment was in Odessa, on May 9, Victory Day, marking Germany’s 1945 defeat ending the Great Patriotic War. I came upon a monument to the Soviets’ disastrous 1979- 1989 war in Afghanistan. People laid flowers at the feet of a statue of a soldier, his arms resting on his knees, his face sad and weary.

If you go
■ Canadians don’t need a visa.
■ Air Canada and partner Lufthansa fly through Toronto and Frankfurt to Kiev. Fares start around $1,500 return from Vancouver.
■ There are no plans for another Klezmer Heritage Cruise but there is an annual Mennonite Heritage Cruise (www.vision2000.ca) and many other cruises by the Dnieper Princess’s owners, Chervona Ruta (ruta-cruise.com/en/), from about $1,300.
■ Lonely Planet Ukraine and Ukraine: The Bradt Travel Guide are excellent resources.
■ Check the guide books for apartment rentals. I recommend Ukraine Apartments at www.uaapartments. com.
■ For Ukrainian food in Kiev, point at what you want at a branch of the inviting Puzata Khata cafeterias. I paid about $5 for a full-course meal.
■ Virtually all the signs in Ukraine are in the Cyrillic alphabet, which includes Latin, Greek and Hebrew-derived letters, and it’s not rocket science to learn.
■ The money is called hryvnias or UAH. About 4.75 UAH per $1 Cdn. You can use debit cards in ATMs.

Lorne Mallin

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By Lorne Mallin, Special to The Province

© The Vancouver Province 2007

Sendai: Just a Shinkansen ride away

Tsukiji: Gone fishin'

Sumo in the summer

Gazing on the Ginza

Restoring a Jewish Presence in Ukraine

The klezmer in the Klezmer Cruise

Searching for family history in Ukraine

Missed the boat? Crimea river