Modern slavery

Modern slavery is not imposed,
no weapons needed, nor nets or chains,
the enslavers operate like fishermen:
they drop a bait that the slave will bite:
it could be an iPhone, a BMW or a penthouse,
the slaves will wake up at 6am,
suffocate for hours in the morning traffic,
sacrifice their eyes for the sake of a report,
arrive home late more sleepy than hungry,
wake up at dawn more drowsy than horny,
watch TV programs that promote mental numbness,
scroll over fake posts that help them feel real.

Dancing traffic police - Bacolod, Philippines

I've never needed a reason to pack up my bags and start traveling. I've been "on the road" for years, many years, almost without interruption. There are moments though, moments when I get off a run down truck, at an unremarkable crossroads, surrounded by buildings made of stained concrete, smeared glass, rusty metal, and torn plastic canvas, whose old colors have been faded by the blows of the tropical sun. I get off the truck then, I turn around, I see something weird, amusing, surprising and I say damn carrying around backpacks, clothes, electronic devices and a guitar that I can't even play to end up in this world's asshole and enjoy the show that is unfolding in front of me was definitely worth it!
I'm standing at one of those crossroads right now, in downtown Bacolod, a city in the island of Negros, in the heart of the Philippines archipelago, and I'm watching open mouthed the performance of a policeman that is directing traffic with a mix of Michael Jackson's moonwalk, Tony Manero's hip moves and Nureyev elegant steps. Hilarious. A situation whose surreal angle I seem to be the only one to notice. 

I took a few videos, here they are:

Unexpected hostility against the pedestrians - Hong Kong

A fisherman at Hong Kong harbor and the hazy skyline in the background

It's Sunday night and Lan Kwai Fong is not very lively. To be honest I'm not very fond of the place. In the weekends it gets crowded with assholes all dressed up, driving their fathers' expensive cars and, stamped on their bulldog faces, an arrogant expression that seems to say: "I have all this because I deserve it. Because I am what I am and you are a heap of shit!" And the bouncers - poor bastards who get paid nothing and treated badly, maybe with their work permit hanging from that lousy job - who back them up, always watching whether your shoes are shining, your shirt is freshly ironed and starched, if you smell like misery or have a misfit look, a wanker one or, even worse, both of them. On workdays they can't afford to be too picky though; they invite you to go in, and if you're wearing flip flops and undershirt they will still try to humiliate you, but in a more pathetic way: "Hey, that's not good..." they'll say as they spitefully pinch your shirt with two fingertips "...next time you dress better, OK?" Yeah, sure, next time I'll spray a couple of drops of Eau de Manure on the redneck shirt I'll be wearing. Get out of my way...you asshole, minion and pitiful loser.

Alone against the wave - Saigon, Vietnam

We already talked about Saigon traffic, its rivers of motorcycles, the precautions to be taken when crossing the road here.

Today, however, when I was walking downtown, I noticed that there is an aspect of this traffic, some of its dynamics, a specific circumstance that deserves to be dealt with separately. It's that moment when the light turns green and the motorbikes speed up. 

Crossroads in Saigon are often supplied with traffic lights for vehicles only: the ones for pedestrians, normally installed at the ends of the zebra crossing, are missing. You are walking on the sidewalk and when you reach the junction you notice the usual legion of bikes drawn up behind the white line, you sense that they have a red light (even though you can't see it) and you hasten to cross the road.

...even if the light goes green they will wait for me to clear the road first...

This is a wild guess that might cost you very dearly. Re-read these last two lines three times before you proceed.

You're still in the middle of the first lane and the signals that you're picking up are not very encouraging. Engines rev up and down, some wheels advance a few centimeters and suddenly stop. You think of a group of race horses pawing the ground behind the starting line...but it's not the same feeling that you used to get when you were a kid, at the racetrack, sitting next to your dad, holding an ice cream and the bet tickets in your hands. You speed up but there is still a long way to go. Suddenly they all move: it's as if you were a ghost, a soul equipped with a translucent body, but you don't have that feeling of invulnerability you thought you would get when you wished you could have this power. It's like a wave. Nobody seems to have noticed you, yet you are there, conspicuous: the only pedestrian, Caucasian, frightened, in the middle of the road. What more do they need to see you?

Actually they don't do it on purpose, out of arrogance or sadism. They are heeding an automatism, they do this same thing dozens times a day, every day. A Vietnamese wouldn't behave like you: you are the inconceivable exception, they are not.

Obviously, at the very last moment they will do everything they can to avoid the impact: they will slow down, swerve, maybe they will even do the unthinkable - they'll stop. This fact, together with your gazelle-like dash, should help you to bring home your hide tonight. 

Don't count too much on it though: even if so far you've been lucky, next time, before crossing a road, glance sideways at the main traffic light. If you see a yellow light hold on, you still have a big portion of life to live.

Photo: traffic light in front of the Continental Hotel, by Fabio

Elections and scams - Bangkok, Thailand

July 2011. It's election time in Thailand. Continuous waves of people are converging toward the main arteries of Bangkok - Sukhumvit, Vipawadee, Pahonyothin - headed for their provinces of origin, in most cases located in Isan, in the North-east, close to Laos.

I'm walking W. to get a taxi that will take her to Mochit, a bus station that today is sunk in a grounding-time international airport kind of chaos. A tuk-tuk driver offers his service for 300 baht when normally, using a metered taxi, the ride should cost 100-150. We get rid of him quickly. The first taxi driver asks 300 baht as well. She lets him go and waves another down. Same story. The third cab too, as well as the fourth one.

This smells fishy. It's a stench that pricked my nostrils often in the past. I follow my instinct, as if it was one of those lines of smoke chased by the long and quivering noses of the cartoons. While she's walking toward the center of the road to give it another try I stay near the curb and look carefully around. As she's drawing near the window to speak with the driver, the tuk-tuk owner that wanted to cheat her is waving his arms about and signaling to his colleague to ask her 300 baht. The other follows his advice and W., obviously, dismisses him.

This time I got you, lousy swindler. I take W. by the arm and walk her a few meters away. She follows me - incredulous while I tell her what I've just seen - far enough from the scoundrel, where a taxi driver - honest like most of those who don't swarm around the tourists - agrees on using the meter.

"Thais should never behave like that...especially with other Thai people..." she keeps repeating until the door is closed.

"...with anybody..." I think while I wave her goodbye.

She won't be able to reach home and vote, as all the bus seats are sold out until the next morning, but at least she managed to hold on to her dignity. And a few banknotes as well.

Image by globalvoicesonline

Indiscriminate parking - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

There is a construction site in downtown Kuala Lumpur, just a few meters from the Petronas Towers: they are building another one of those high rise buildings. The site has taken up the old sidewalk and the supervisors decided to build a temporary one using some stakes, a thin rope and some refracting pads, occupying part of the traffic lane. The sidewalk is used by a high number of people who go to work and tourists on their way to the towers.

A few days ago an expert in creative parking took advantage of this space, safely screened from the traffic and conveniently located next to the construction site -  and incredibly empty! - to park his little truck. As a consequence the pedestrians were forced to walk in single file (often in two single files, one for each direction).

I couldn't help taking a few photos.

Indiscriminate parking

A lady is forced to crouch under the rope and walk close to the cars

Pedestrians walking in single file

Motorbikes and potatoes - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Photo by kibuyu (CC)

Finally out of the training center. I'm walking home with that vague feeling of exhilaration caused by fresh air after a day's plunge in an air-con sea when the typical metallic sound produced by an accident - its unmistakable motorcycle-against-a-4-wheel-vehicle variant - digs its nails into my eardrums.
I turn around and I see a motorbike of the Honda Dream type caroming between the queuing cars like a pinball ball among the springs of the game's rattling mushrooms. It has already hit a van when I start to watch the scene, then it proceeds between two lines of cars, alternatively bouncing against the coachwork of a vehicle on the right and one on the left, until it finds an empty space, threads its way into it like a blue fly into the chink of a window and keeps riding along the course that will lead it to a collision with the rear bumper of a Japanese sedan, it's a hopeless situation, you can read it on the face of the guy and on the movements that he's trying to convey to the handlebar: at this point he has already lost control of the bike and he won't be able to avoid it. Judging by the glittering of paint and chromium-plating this car interior still smells like new - it's a smell that one, not a bad one, but not a scent either: only gasoline and some fragrances of the Little Trees, in the world of automobiles, really smell good.
When the impact takes place the guy does what many people do in this kind of situation, even though it should be the first thing to avoid: he keeps speeding. The bike bends over and slowly falls to the ground. The man touches the asphalt with an awkward move, but he doesn't get hurt. His wife though, who sits in the back, falls like a sack of potatoes. She also looks like a sack of potatoes, by the way, but right now it's the dynamic of her movements that reminds me of this image. How she bends, hits the ground and keeps rolling when the bike has already come to a stop, while the engine revs up because the wrist of the guy got stuck on its initial position, I mean the one he had when he was shooting between two lines of cars - still along a straight path, not a zigzagging one - and that he hasn't changed ever since.
The man stands up, he can't be bothered to collect his potatoes, and starts to shout abuses at the driver of the van, the first pinball mushroom that he hit. Maybe this man was actually the one to blame, I'll never find out, because after replying to the biker with diversionary tactics, pointing and gesturing at a car that has already disappeared behind a curve, he engages the gears and after a few seconds he has also disappeared behind the curve.
The man is called for debriefing by the owners of the damaged cars, the sack of potatoes stands up just like a sack of potatoes that is being lifted by a farmer and oscillates for a moment around her point of stable equilibrium, somehow like a matrioshka, until she stops upright. In the meanwhile the potatoes that fill the sack where her bottom, torso and breast should be are rearranged according to the laws of three-dimensional geometry and gravity, occupying the vacant spaces of the new configuration. Then, dragging her feet (because even though she resembles a sack of potatoes we don't have to forget that she is still a human being and therefore is equipped with feet), she joins the lively group.

I leave them at that, after having followed the nth lesson of the Principles and elements of Oriental Societies course, a mix of couldn't-care-less attitude, male chauvinism, passing the buck, lightheartedness, fatalism, optimism and many other things that will occur to me later, while I keep walking under a leaden sky that looks like monsoon rain but could actually give us dog days sunshine. Thoughtless and indifferent: even if I still cannot act like that in a completely natural way I know that it's a perfectly suitable attitude. After all, they are the ones who transmitted it to me.

Accounts of more accidents (first hand experience) and more principles of Eastern sociology can be found here.

Enraged - Bangkok, Thailand

Photo by humblenick (CC)

"Sawat-dee-krap, pai Khao-San dai mai krap?"

The taxi driver nods and I sit on the back holding a chilled can of Leo. From Major Cineplex to Central Mall it's the usual, smooth Bangkok night ride, then a car sprints out of Lat-Phrao rd and cuts across our way. My driver utters a guttural sound and slams the brake pedal down. I'm surprisingly calm - it might be because of the sedative effect of the Saturday beers, my innate fatalism, or a bit of both - while the car slows down quickly, skidding a little, until our front bumper ends up kissing quite gently the pirate car's rear one.

We came out of it rather well - or at least I did - but I know that it's not over yet: I picture the worst case scenario and I hope that the other car stops soon. In vain: the guy is speeding away as if he didn't even realize what happened, and my driver, without an official opening ceremony, has already declared the beginning of chasing time.

Speeding makes me quite nervous, especially if I don't know the driver and he's enraged. He doesn't show it much but I know he is. Unlike a hypothetical Italian counterpart of his, who would have vented his frustration through a litany of a heretical-mystical nature, he's only emitting some mono-syllabic sounds, driving nervously, accelerating and steering intermittently. 

At a certain point he follows the runaway vehicle into a road that won't definitely lead us where I am supposed to go, and that's when I come out of my trance and start yelling "Stop, stop right now!" I say it in Thai, English, Italian, Chinese and Spanish. He finally stops the car near the curb and I suspect it was not because his ancestors came to the Kingdom of Siam from Toledo or Madrid. 

I quickly get out. He does the same, without minding me at all, and goes to check the damage. I don't care about him anymore, he has given me a bad five-minute-time, I spot the first available cab and flag it down. 

Now that I'm safe I think about what just happened. Often Bangkok taxi drivers don't own the cars they drive, they just rent them from a company, and in cases like this they will probably have the cost of the repairs deducted from their income. 

I take a sip of the beer that by now has got warm and I silently wish him good luck: hopefully the car got out of it unscathed, like we both did.

Homage to the pedestrian/2: the mutation - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Photo by Steve Webel (CC)

"Green light, let's go!" We used to say it when we had just got our driving licences and our underage brothers were in the car with us. In Kuala Lumpur, on the other hand, if you are dressing the part of a pedestrian you'll need to say that sentence at any age. Actually the slower your reflexes become the more you'll have to anticipate the traffic conditions. 
I'm waiting for the green light before I can cross Jalan Sultan Ismail Road, a wide city artery cutting the business district into halves. Here it is, with long strides I try to kick away a bad premonition. The green man has been blinking since it showed up and it really seems that there is no time to waste. As soon as I get past the center line curb what I was fearing actually happens: we get a red light. I reckon that it is one of the tricks of those cunning city officials, who want us to clear the junction as quickly as possible. I am still confident that they'll leave us a sufficiently long interval to reach safety before they release the vehicles that are screeching by the stop line. Hell no, they give them a green light! I'm forced to complete the crossing with three mighty chamois-like jumps. 
How did they calculate the timing? Did they hire Carl Lewis as a test-consultant?
Maybe they count on the fact that people will stop at the curb, making use of two green light turns to complete the crossing. But behind all this there might also be a sordid conspiracy with a ghastly ultimate aim: the total extermination of the pedestrians, a cumbersome and annoying species, not strictly necessary anyway. They lure the biggest possible number of specimens into a trap settled right in the middle of the road, like the one that I just fell into, just to release their motorized beasts, thirsty for pedestrian blood after having been forced for long seconds into a cage made of white lines that was nailing them down to the junction.
But they didn't take into account the interposition of Mr. Charles Darwin, outstanding man of science as well as friend of every pedestrian. Natural selection will turn us into sturdy groups of two-footed gazelles paradoxically crossbred with a slightly washed-out breed of cheetahs. Under the new guise we shall survive and proliferate: through leaps, rushes and crossed lanes the fight will continue for long.
Dear exterminators, you won't make it: the genocide you're dreaming of is not around the corner yet!

You can read part one here

Those nice guys - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Photo by slimmer_jimmer (CC)

There is an illegaly parked vehicle at Bukit Bintang Road. A police car approaches it from behind and when it stops just few centimeters from its bumper the officer at the wheel starts to honk. Actually, rather than a horn this sounds like a siren. A piercing howling that captures the attention of numerous people who are crowding the area, including the owner of the car, who quickly opens the door and gets on. For a few seconds he nervously fumbles with the key, under the amused gazes of the onlookers, while the officer keeps teasing him intermittently pressing the horn button. After a while he manages to ease his panic, he starts the engine and drives out of there. The police car also starts to move, finally silent. When it's passing in front of me I look at the four cops who are laughing their bellies off.
I still don't understand whether they are really bored or patrolling this area is lots of fun.

Homage to the pedestrian/1 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Photo by sinkdd (CC)

I join the crowd that is waiting for the green light at the pedestrian crossing. Bukit Bintang is a busy area. Cars, motorbikes and people of various nationalities are competing for those precious square meters. 

It's time for the vehicles coming from our right to cross the junction. When they finally stop, the ones in front of us start to move forward, turn right and drive past us (in Malaysia, a former British colony, they drive on the left hand side). Shortly it should be our turn, I look at the vaguely anxious expressions of the people who crowd around me. I turn to face the junction again. What happened? The cars coming from our right are advancing again! Maybe our turn started and ended while I was absentmindedly looking around. Weird, nobody else has crossed the road either.

During the next cycle I focus and carefully follow the sequence of the green light turns. The cars coming from our right stop now, alright, the ones coming from in front of us start to move forward, as expected, red light for them now, they stop, a little suspense and...they fooled us again! Damned cheaters, just because you think we're the weakest? We'll see...

Together with two young Arabs and a Caucasian man, I lead the counter-attack, a couple of girls scream but finally everybody is walking behind us. We advance along the zebra crossing with careful but resolute steps. The red man look at us from the top of his road perch, haughty and glittering. We defy his authority and disobey his order with the pride of someone who has had to endure injustices for years and finally rose up, has already set off and now can only keep going with inexorable madness. Lots of vehicles arrive very near us, but there's many of us, determined and irritated. They stop to let us cross, no one honks, nobody complains with grimaces or puffing. 

We made it, we got to the opposite sidewalk. The formation disperse, the braves exchange knowing looks. Today's battle is won, but this war is tough, dirty and still long. Many will have to interrupt their advance, forced to withdraw and take shelter in the trenches of their starting sidewalk. Others will fall, run over by cars or by the invectives of those who drive and don't recognize their right to cross. We shall remember them, we shall respect their fervor and courage, we shall honor their sacrifice by fighting to the end to reach the other shore, the longed-for-sidewalk. And we will fight again, always, everywhere.

Other battles lay in wait for us, but today we can enjoy the glory for our conquest: the well deserved landing to the other side of the road.
Our barricade. Our front.

You can read part two here

The beehive - Cairo, Egypt

Ramadan in Cairo is a curious time.
When the sun is set, because of the Iftar, on the streets and the squares there's not a soul around. The familiar uproar and the rock concert-like air vanish as if the city were the setting of a dream.
If you are crossing a road you can relax: that creepy feeling of being a scared cat that springs from lane to lane dodging speeding cars, at this time of the day is like a nightmare half-dreamt.

A few hours later though, let’s say at 1 a.m., when you go down for a snack and walk out of the hotel, a whirl of sensations just swallows you up. You freeze on the sidewalk and stares at the sight, stunned by the noise, the lights and the smells.
Deep into the night the shops are all open and huge crowds gather in front of the windows. They hunt for shoes, clothing and sweets, the same kind of stuff that you'd buy in the afternoon. You’re looking at people of any kind: not only adult men but old gentlemen too, and mothers with children who pull at their skirts.

Like a web of human threads it invades every space. Focused on the goods displayed in shops and stalls, people glide on the asphalt in multiple files. Hitting, blocking, crossing and twisting they look like water snakes into one of those basins that can be found in an Asian market.
Who is in a hurry and keeps kicking the heels of the innocent pedestrian who walks in front, decides to swerve and to share the road with the endless chains of battered cars.
At the main intersections the flows intersect and as in the screen of an old video-game they cross the road with intermittent starts.

When you're done with your shawarma you go back to your room and the activity of that beehive has yet to stop. Half an hour later you're awake in the dark, listening to the honks, the screams and the roar, that mixed with vapours of spices and grease, keep filtering in through the chinks in the window.

This is Cairo during Ramadan: that’s the way they sing lullabies here.