Family Photos - Cook Islands 2008

Imogene, Julia, Naomi and Thomas harvesting a coconut

Tom at the beach

Immy and Tom at the beach

Naomi and Immy

Back in Australia, Sue, Jay, Tom and Immy

Update - Melbourne May 18th, 2009

Indriaty sent me a whole lot more pictures, so here they are for your viewing pleasure.

Memories of a day on the Karpas peninsular.

Conference opening

Here I am presenting my paper.

Cate, Indriaty, Nurten, Halima and me

Cate and Sue

Falling in love with Istanbul again

OK, I admit it, I am something of a coward. Read between the lines of my last post and you’ll see it writ large. Yesterday returning to Istanbul was hard, I had become comfortable in and with North Cyprus and assumed that because the language and the money were the same I would just slot back into Istanbul. Not so, maybe it was culture shock, maybe I was tired after the trip here, but I was overwhelmed.

Today I faced the day with trepidation, but a visit to the Cistern entranced me and I was won over again. The cistern is an underground water storage area set up a thousand or so years ago to store water for the city, one of many but the only one that has been restored and opened as a museum. The water in the cistern is clear and full of carp. It is truly an awesome sight to wander around and look at the columns, the arched ceilings and the various carvings on the columns. But the best was yet to come.







The Medusa columns, one is based oon Medusa with he rhead upside down, the other sideways.

The teardrop column

A street in the heart of Istanbul

Another view of beautiful Istanbul

After the cistern I walked around behind the blue mosque and discovered the Arasta bazaar. This was set up to provide an income for the mosque, and is a kinder, gentler and smaller bazaar than the grand bazaar. I wandered among the shops enjoying the displays of goods on sale and thoroughly enjoyed the drama of it all. As I left the bazaar walking back towards the blue mosque I passed a store with some pretty things on sale, so I stopped to look. The salesman enquired about where I came from and we chatted for a while, then contrary to my usual avoidance of sales pitches I accepted his invitation to come into the store to look at the carpets. Half an hour later I had met the lady who made some of the rugs, heard an interesting dissertation on rugs of different types from different regions and had a complementary glass of apple tea. The sales pitch was low key and I enjoyed myself so much I bought myself a small silk killim.

The man who taught me all about Turkish and Analolian rugs and the lady (Hava) who makes some of the rugs

Today I rediscovered my love of Istanbul. It really is all about the people wherever you go.

This lady made me a delicious pancake filled with cheese, spinach, onion and potato for my lunch.

Back to Istanbul

It is true, you can never go back. After a perfect last day in Cyprus, which I hated when I arrived, Istanbul (which I loved last time) was something of a dissapointment. The city was cold and wet, but still beautiful; the hotel room which seemed so perfect last time seemed tiny and pokey, and the sreets intense. As you walk along you are constantly bombarded by men inviting you to come into their shop to 'just look' and then subjected to a major sales pitch. They are charming, welcoming, and won't take no for an answer. Lots of hand shaking, hand kissing, complements and insisting it it the Turkish way.

I trekked through the wet and crowded streets to the scenic area after I arrived, but it was rush hour (when is it not I hear you ask?), so I returned ot the refuge of the hotel until dinner time. Later, I ate well - the food is so far unfailingly good - and returned to the hotel for a good night's sleep.

Today, refreshed, I will again brave the streets and see if I can do some shopping.

Precious moments

The man outside the waterfront café in Girne greeted me warmly and insisted he had spoken to me last night. I averred. I was not in Girne last night. He then insisted that I had a twin sister in Girne, a woman also from Australia. I sat in the café and ordered tea. A few minutes later the man (Boston) waved to me and pointed to a woman walking along the quay. She was similar in build and colouring to me, and Boton insisted that we must meet as we were long lost twins. We laughed and I invited her to join me – or did she invite herself – it’s irrelevant. Her name is Ruth, she too is from Melbourne, but lives in Beirut and works at the Australian embassy. We spent a delightful hour together in the café, swapping travel stories, talking about Istanbul, Beirut, my conference, books, culture and Cyprus. The we paid the bill and walked a little way along the quay together before we parted company. As I write this, I am sitting in a delightful sunny courtyard Italian restaurant listening to the Muslim call to prayer from the ancient mosque next door.


Italian restaurant in Girne.

More random thoughts on Cyprus

In many ways this is a strange place. Filled with history, ancient ruins and friendly people, it is also being destroyed by rampant development. Not all the ruins are ancient, many building sites lay abandoned, rusting concrete shells are sprinkled between the modern holiday villas. Many advertisements for the villas are in English and prices are quoted in pounds sterling, so my guess is that they are aimed at the English. I don’t think it is the current economic downturn that is behind the rotting shells, many of them look much older, although many are more recent that 30 years.

When we drove to the Karpas peninsula we noticed some really strange ruins. One that looked like embattlements made of concrete high on a hill above the ocean that had collapsed. Another huge concrete construction in the water, surrounded by abandoned rusting cranes. The sea for quite a distance before and after the construction was white, presumably with degraded concrete. That area was fenced off and looked to be from the 1970s partition, my guess it was being built by the Greeks and abandoned.

There is a massive area in Famagusta along the beach of abandoned high rise buildings and hotels they call the dead zone. These buildings belong to the Greeks. The first morning of the conference they took us to the beach alongside to ‘view’ the zone. Strictly no photographs allowed. One woman took a picture and a guard appeared with a whistle to stop her, so they monitor tourists. In a tiny village I sat in a café with the lady of the establishment and asked her about the age of her beautiful old house. She told me that she had no idea as they had only been there since 1974. She said her house in the south was abandoned and falling down noow, but they cannot return. Her current house belongs to the Greeks who fled the invasion. People on both sides of the green zone that divides the country have lost their homes, their personal possessions, photographs, heirlooms and so on. These people lived in peace for generations until the troubles that started when the British left. In fact Cyprus has always been subject to invasions since the beginning of history, so the situation today is pretty much business as usual. Yet everyone I have met here is friendly, outgoing, proud of their country and eager to talk about it.

Everything but the donkeys. April 24th, 2009

A wild and windy day on the Karpas

ruins

more ruins

The cafe at the Arch Houses where we ate very well.

A ruined (and abandoned) greek church. The icons are fakes, the real ones have been removed for safe keeping.

The Mediterranean Sea

Today was my first day off after the conference. I woke up feeling like staying in bed, but dragged myself out to sort out my return ticket and accommodation. That done, the nice man from Pacific car rental dropped the car in and the day was underway. The car is a real bomb, a Nissan Sunny that is maybe 10 year sold, but it goes fine and I have no energy to fight for something better. I was joined on my travels by Malaysian woman from the conference who doesn’t leave until Saturday, Indriaty Ismail.

We decided that a day away from the hustle and bustle of tourist areas, so set off to the Karpas peninsula. This is supposedly a pristine area formed by the peninsula at the northern end of Cyprus, and I was excited to hear that it is the home of not only ancient ruins, but also wild donkeys.

We set off at about 10.30 am, the scenery is delightful but quickly being destroyed by the rampant development of holiday villas, which seem to be for English speakers.(read the English), Still we saw lots of ruins, had a delightful meal at The Arches restaurant in a tiny village and spent the entire day exploring the peninsula. The beaches are wild and wonderful. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.. There are few road signs and the ruins are seldom signed, so we had no idea what we were seeing most of the time, so we spent lots of time driving around getting lost. There is no protectionj fo the ancient ruins either, so they continue to fall down.

All up, it was a delightful day, but the wild donkeys were nowhere to b e seen. We did see two donkeys, but I suspect they were weren’t wild ones. They were awfully pretty, but a long way off, so no decent pictures.

'The' donkey. See him? on the right, the dot in the background.

Conference organisers relaxing in Girne after their hard work.

Indriaty and Halima at dinner in Nicosia

The waterfront at Girne

Dinner at the old inn in Nicosia

Cate in her natural habitat (shopping)

In the village of Bellapais this delightful woman joined me in her garden cafe for a drink while the intrepid members of our group explored elsewhere. I learned more form her about the partition of Cyprus in 1974.


Aboard the bus

Throughout the conference the agent who handled all our bookings here has been present in the hotel to handle any enquiries and hold our hands in a myriad of ways. Evran has been a tower of strength in all out tribulations, and we have all come to think very fondly of him. Right after the end of the last session we were loaded onto a tour bus for more of the social program. To my surprise, Evran was not present, but we were taken over by another representative of the travel agency, whose name I did not get, but I know him as Mr Red Hat.

Mr Red Hat is a control freak who loves the sound of his own voice. First we went to the seaside town of Girne, about an hours drive. Mr Red Hat talked all the way. It might have been interesting except we were all tired and had been hard at it for 3 days, so more talking was too much. . Needelss to say after a half day ont he bus with the man whonever stopped talking, we were happy when he left!

Wednesday April 22nd. Last day of the conference

The conference has been very full, the papers diverse and mostly interesting and the organisation mostly good. It seems like a lot of people put in papers and then don’t turn up, spo there were a lot of spaces in sessions and we weren’t told, so rushed through in our allotted time only to find there was plenty of time for all the presentations and discussion because one or two people scheduled to present had not come. I was told that this was because people can’t get funding to come at the last minute and don’t bother to tell the organisers. C’est la vie.

My paper was about the primary prevention of violence against women. Many of the participants didn’t get the idea of culture change. Not surprising when you think they are still struggling to have violence against women made illegal. Many of the people at the conference come from Islamic countries; if I had understood the politics of Northern Cyprus better I would have been better prepared. Not that this has been a problem, to the contrary, I have learned a lot about Islamic feminists and met some delightful new friends.

The diversity of the papers and the participants was one of the best parts of the conference. Europeans, Asians, Israelis, Arabs, and Africans (as well as two Australian) came together in harmony. The picture of the final session of the conference says it all I think. An Afro Caribbean British woman presented on black English women’s work, an Israeli gynaecologist reported on the first WSW clinic in Jerusalem (and Israel), an Indonesian woman presented on portrayals of women in Indonesian horror movies and a Malaysian woman presented on Sisters in Islam who are reading the Koran to challenge traditional interpretations that oppress women.

I sat next to an Israeli woman on the bus and commented on the apparent harmony at the conference, thinking perhaps I was ignorant to undercurrents. She told me that she had no sense of disharmony either. There was apparently one incident though. In a session I did not attend, a Belgian woman presented a defence of evolutionary gender development, after which Sue Thornham, a professor of gender studies at Sussex University, attacked her for talking rubbish! My experience of British feminists has been that they are not all that tolerant of ideas they do not share, so that only confirmed my prejudice about the Brits!

April 19th: A perfect day

Today (Sunday) I decided to grasp the nettle and rented a car for the day. I was joined by another Australian woman from Brisbane, Cate Morriss, and we explored old Famagusta. It's amazing the feedom one gets from having a car. Saw the most wodnerful ruins, wandered around, stopped frequently fro drinks and snacks and all up had a perfect day.

The old walled town (or castle district) of Famagusta

The old cathedral of St Nicholas, now the Pasha Mustapha Mosque. All christian icons and symbols have been erased.

Cate & Sue enjoying a break at Ancient Salamis

Greco Roman ruins at ancient Salamis Bay.

Finished off with a fantastic Mezze dinner.