Pearl of Crumlin

20 August 2009

Not many get to do rock and roll without lots of sex and drugs, and Phil Lynott, born 60 years ago today, was no exception.

There were three remarkable things about him (ok, ok, four allegedly
but I'm not going to comment on the nature of THAT gift).

The fact that he was black, in the 70s in Ireland made him stand out. That he
succeeded in rock (then a predominantly white genre) was unusual, but a reflection of his massive talent. And oh man was he charismatic.

Tall and scrawny, with the one eye blocked out by the Afro mane. The 'tache, the stance, the cheeky grin. He was a magnet, a role model for teenage lads like us at the time. And when he'd walk past a bunch of female fans, well... you could hear the moist thud of wet cotton hitting the floor at thirty paces.

There was something awe-inspiring about the man. The looks of Hendrix, the seamless segue of the rolling bass to his deep voice. That quintessential Dublin accent... who else made "knowwarrimean?" his own?

Saying he was a complex character is a) stating the bleedin obvious, and b) not my right as we never met. All I can judge him on is his music, some of which I found frankly shite, but most of it I just adored. I'll still reach for "The Boys are back in town" when I need some energy, a hit of summer, a bit of the Lothario, devil-may-care swagger. He got away with a lot Phil, being Irish, being black and being so cool... red hot... I mean he was steaming.

Could any Irish singer get away with it these days? Can you see Ronan Keating shwhshsing his way through lines like "And that time over at Johnny's place
Well this chick got up and she slapped Johnny's face Man we just fell about the place If that chick don't want to know, forget her"

I only saw saw Thin Lizzy play the once, live, in Dublin. It was 1980 and my first big gig. We were there before the doors opened, jammed against the front of the stage, having to endure a truly awful band called "The Lookalikes" in pastel satin suits before Lizzy hit the stage. The crush was immense, scary. I was dragged from one side of Simmonscourt to the other and eventually spun out of the wringer enough to bang my head and play air guitar for a couple of glorious
hours.

And how did they end the gig? The crowd roaring for Whiskey in the Jar and Philo looking bemused. "Wha'? Nah, we can't play that. We need Eric Bell on lead guitar...ah Jayzis howya Eric."

Cue Eric Bell and the roof raised. We stumbled out into the June night, sweat steaming off us and onto the bus home. Unable to hear properly for two days. The inter cert starting in three days. Who gave a fiddlers? Magic.

28 years on and I meet Eric Bell on in the River Palace casino in Kiev. He's playing mighty blues and does more than one spirited version of Whiskey in the Jar. Ironic, as all the websites have it that he quit Lizzy because he thought playing a jazzed-up trad song night after night was just infra dig.

Our mate Ray, the manager of River Place takes me into the star's dressing room before the gig. I got to shake the hand that played all those great solos and mumble something about the 1980 gig. Bell's face tells a tale or seven of
life on the road, and one wonders how Phil would look today.

In fact he'd been seriously ill in the States in the mid 70s with hepatitis. "I contracted a disease I knew could put you of of business completely. It scared me because I had never been ill before, suddenly I was catching every bug going. When I got hepatitis I became a half strength person. The doctor told me to give up drugs, sex and alcohol. Give up all that. No way! So I gave up half of them. I won't tell you which half. The illness made me very sensible."

What's great about Philip Lynott's legacy is that no one has a bad word to say about him. That in a country who's capital city is vicious for the tall poppy syndrome. In fact it's almost the reverse with Phil. Dublin indulges and assists his mother Philomena in keeping his memory alive and loved. The annual Vibe for Philo, run by his mates, just gets bigger every year.

So, let's let her have the final word (see the clip below). She used to call me and my sidekick Tony Mac a lot in the Northside People newspaper, years ago, when the loss of Phil hurt like a raw wound. Organising this. Refuting that. Always up for a chat. Now she carries the loss with dignity, even humour, the same humour that carried Phil through his turbulent life.

On Live and Dangerous he says: "Are there any of yiz out there with a bit of the Irish in them? Are there any of the girls who'd like a bit more of the Irish in them?" Good God. Imagine anyone in Westlife saying that on stage.

Or his famous reply to the quesiton "what's it like being Irish and Black?"

"Just like a pint of Guinness".

Good on ya Phil. Gifted, Irish and Black. Shame you were a Man U fan,
sorry if Burnley ruined your 60th. Sleep well, even in the darkest
night.... And God bless you, Philomena.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FFNN2feZ5M&feature=related

Curious Combinations

I'll let Conneally or Lacken or McClean or Deely someone else wax
lyrical on the curious combinations but for now I want to celebrate
the man and the method behind the words of one of Ireland's most
famous and badly-sung songs, "Spancilhill". Or "Spencer Hill" as I
thought it was when first I heard it. No wonder, it's usually
butchered by booze, verses juxtaposed and half sung, or even put to
the music of "Ghost riders in the sky" complete with "Yippie-yi-ya,
yippy-i-o"s.

Oh yes Spancilhill exists, there's even a website
http://www.spancilhillfair.com/ warning ORGANISING COMMITTEE ACCEPTS
NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACCIDENTS TO HORSE RIDER OR INDIVIDUALS. But as
I've never been, I'll leave it to others to reminisce on the famous
fair. Or the disused Calcite mines.

The song's been on my mind as emigration increases from Ireland, and
begins to take on a similar mythology it had in previous waves. The
early Ryanair out of Dublin the equivalent of the 8.45 (am and pm)
boat-train from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire in the 80s, or the mailboat
in the 50s. Scattered to the wind and waves, re-convening on large
islands like Australia, or smaller ones; Ellis, Staten, Dogs. Or like
myself, isolated in a country without an Irish community. Is the
"saudade" worse when lived alone, or with peers? Answers on a
postcard...

Probably the greatest song of emigration, at least of how it relates
to my generation, the soundtrack to the "hungry eighties" is
"Thousands are Sailing" by the Pogues, which is well worth a
post-Tiger spin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IooPBuFoJCM&feature=PlayList&p=76FEEA6D3531D10B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=9

McGowan is a gifted poet in his own right. we'll celebrate him
elsewhere on this blog I am sure. He has done the one thing that
Michael Considine, author of "Spancilhill" couldn't: he has lived. And
- sweet Jesus - how he has lived. Or perhaps, sweet Jesus, how has he
lived?

Considine was born around 1850 and emigrated to the USA from
Spancillhill around 1870. Some of his siblings came with him, but some
stayed behind. One of his brothers, Patrick, died, leaving his widow
to look after a five month old son called John (pay attention, that
detail is important).

Michael went to the USA with the intention of bringing his sweetheart
over and for them to be married, but he never saved enough money for
her passage. His sweetheart was "Mack the Ranger's Daughter" and not
"Ned the Farmers daughter" as in the popularised version. She was his
childhood sweetheart, Mary MacNamara.

Michael worked in Boston for two years or so before moving to
California. He suffered from ill health for a long time. Knowing he
hadn't long to live, he wrote the poem "Spancilhill" to send home in
remembrance of his love. He sent the poem to his nephew, John,
Patrick's son, in Ireland.

Michael Considine died sometime in 1873. Some sources say he was
buried in Spancillhill, but others say he was buried in California.
Mary MacNamara remained faithful to his memory and never married.

In the late 1930s or early '40s, Robbie McMahon, a local folk singer
and composer, during an Irish traditional music session in
Spancillhill, was in a neighbour's house with some friends singing
when someone suggested singing "Spancillhill". The woman of the house,
Moira Keane, left the room and when she came back said, "If ye are
going to sing that song ye might as well sing it right" and she gave
Robbie a script of the original.

Some time later at another session in the parish Robbie was asked to
sing "Spancilhill" when a gruff voice in the corner growled out "Don't
sing that song". When asked "Why not?" the voice barked back " 'Cos ye
don't know it."

Robbie, however insisted he did and launched into the version he'd got
from Moira Keane. After singing a few lines Robbie noticed the gruff
man sitting up and paying attention. As Robbie progressed with the
song the gruff man foostered more and more with his cap and became
agitated. When the song ended, the gruff voice in the corner demanded
"Where did ya get that song?" in a tone both perturbed and pleased.

Moira Keane was the gruff man's aunt and the gruff man was 76 year old
John Considine, who had kept his uncle Mike's song safe for 70 years.

Despite being a terribly simple rhyme, the type you'll find on any
hallmark card, the song is deep and lovely. The rhyming scheme is AABB
(or in fact AABB CCBB DDBB etc, as the third and fourth lines end with
"...ill". Whenever I hear it now I can't help but think of the tragedy
of Michael Considine, composing this piece of beauty sititng in a
chair or propped up in a bed in California, slipping in and out of
consciousness, knowing he'd never, ever again see Mary. No facebook in
those days, no webcams. Probably for the best.

So forgive me for taking up your screen, but here's all eleven stanzas
and a sung version. I've searched the web high and low for something
approaching a definitive version, and the one by Geasa, which I'd
never come across before ain't bad. Nor is Paddy Reilly's, the
Dubliners' or many others. If, however, you can't afford an emetic,
and botulism is too extreme, I recommend the Corrs wimpish piece of
saccharine.

There's a few hundred versions out there in webland, many of them
good, too many contrived, and just a few verging on brilliant. And as
if to prove that you have to be very very good to make anything look
effortless, I've picked Shane and Christy's version. Ruined slightly
by Gaybo's whooping at the end, but still and all a great piece of
work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iUEwB4ME3I


Spancilhill

Last night as I lay dreaming, of the pleasant days gone by,
My mind being bent on rambling and to Erin's Isle I did fly.
I stepped on board a vision and sailed out with a will,
'Till I gladly came to anchor at the Cross of Spancilhill.

Enchanted by the novelty, delighted with the scenes,
Where in my early childhood, I often times have been.
I thought I heard a murmur, I think I hear it still,
'Tis that little stream of water at the Cross of Spancilhill.

And to amuse my fancy, I lay upon the ground,
Where all my school companions, in crowds assembled 'round.
Some have grown to manhood, while more their graves did fill,
Oh I thought we were all young again, at the Cross of Spancilhill.

It being on a Sabbath morning, I thought I heard a bell,
O'er hills and vallies sounded, in notes that seemed to tell,
That Father Dan was coming, his duty to fulfill,
At the parish church of Clooney, just one mile from Spancilhill.

And when our duty did commence, we all knelt down in prayer,
In hopes for to be ready, to climb the Golden Stair.
And when back home returning, we danced with right good will,
To Martin Moilens music, at the Cross of Spancilhill.

It being on the twenty third of June, the day before the fair,
Sure Erin's sons and daughters, they all assembled there.
The young, the old, the stout and the bold, they came to sport and kill,
What a curious combination, at the Fair of Spancilhill.

I went into my old home, as every stone can tell,
The old boreen was just the same, and the apple tree over the well,
I miss my sister Ellen, my brothers Pat and Bill,
Sure I only met my strange faces at my home in Spancilhill.

I called to see my neighbors, to hear what they might say,
The old were getting feeble, and the young ones turning grey.
I met with tailor Quigley, he's as brave as ever still,
Sure he always made my breeches when I lived in Spancilhill.

I paid a flying visit, to my first and only love,
She's as pure as any lilly, and as gentle as a dove.
She threw her arms around me, saying Mike I love you still,
She is Mack the Rangers daughter, the Pride of Spancilhill.

I thought I stooped to kiss her, as I did in days of yore,
Says she Mike you're only joking, as you often were before,
The cock crew on the roost again, he crew both loud and shrill,
And I awoke in California, far far from Spancilhill.

But when my vision faded, the tears came in my eyes,
In hope to see that dear old spot, some day before I die.
May the Joyous King of Angels, His Choicest Blessings spill,
On that Glorious spot of Nature, the Cross of Spancilhill.

A Challenge to Aid Workers

We are surprised, and unpleasantly.

The congruence of aid workers, digital cameras and social media should allow us to be posting up-to-the-second images of our work in disasters to our own pages, to our blogs, and to our peers. What's happening? Maybe its the rarefied air of management that I breath these days but I am seeing very little outside of our corporate websites of the victims and consequences of natural, social and man-made disasters.

And why? It's happening all around us. Yes, even in the stable cities to which have retreated to headquarter ourselves. Do we think our personal involvement is prurient? Undignified? Or do we only want to show the shiny happy side of aid work, the clapping families in their new tsunami-proof houses? The well-nourished babies at "our" feeding centres? The old ladies with nice new blue rinses getting a lift to the social centre from a young friend with slicked-back hair and neat teeth?

I got a gallery of pics from Reuters this morning that made me feel physically ill but I'm damn glad I saw it. It was from Slovenia, that well-known crisis hotspot. And it showed, in clean, graphic detail, a person shooting heroin. None of your Trainspotting "oooh that's gooooood" to be seen here. Just a manky falling down shooting gallery, blue-blistered scabby veins, bleeding knuckles, lit up by summer sun coming in through the gaps in the walls.

What's he banging on about now? you are wondering. Well folks, this person is our client, our raison d'etre. (Not to mention our brother).

He's clearly given consent to being photographed, knowing that this is the one great gesture he can make, to show injecting drug use with all its glamour stripped away. The end of the road.

The point, from the pictures, seems to be that the needles are clean and this guy has been reached. He has, at least, the option of safe fixing and perhaps a way out of an expensive, disabling addiction that has long ceased to have any joy attached to it. And so he won't go on to contract HIV and infect his partner and their unborn kid.

The pictures are ugly, but dignified. No one is being objectified here. I don't suggest that we all (re)start sticking our Canons and Nokias into the faces of starving African babies or recording the death-rattle of a TB victim in the depths of a Siberian winter. I'd rather those cliches remained rare but powerful. But I am getting mightily bored of the holiday snaps we are posting in our travels round the scarred planet.

I think the reason may be that we are nervy of being seeing as wearing our bleeding hearts on our sleeves. "C'mon, we know you work for an aid organisation, we can see our friends commenting. "Don't ram it down our throats, eh?"

To which, my diplomatic reply would be "sod off".

We "aid workers" (do we even like that nomenclature?) are so bloody privileged to zip round the world, generally staying in pretty groovy digs where we solve the word's problems from air conditioned conference-rooms with regular coffee breaks at which we've long since forgotten the irony as we freeload up on canapes and sushi ("they're paid for anyway").

Surely our duty, as well as our privilege, is to bear witness. To what we see, what we hear about. Our "civilian" friends are not going to see the depth of squalor, the abomination of the human condition that we get to see (well, if we choose to truly partner local NGOs and stick a toe outside the hotel lobby).

And my other contention (or conceit as my old boss DLP liked to call his contentions) is that we are obsessed with public relations. Urgh. Phtoo. Spit. Gargle. Rinse.



We are so donor driven that we think the only obligation we truly have is to the governments and fat cat philanthropists who assuage their guilt at ignoring the injustices that lead to favelas, filthy hospitals and empty schools by throwing money at us. And we dutifully round up the gap-toothed kiddies, the prettiest urchins, and snap them goofily glugging from a new waterpump, cutely yelping as they get their vaccination and so on and so predictably on, all under a sticker of the donor, the donor. the donor.

Friends, comrades, colleagues. Our world is in a mess. Make your move. You have the tools to tell the story of the slum kids, the abandonded oldsters, the homeless. who still haven't gotten round to opening up a facebook account. Tell is as it is right now, as you see it, before the aftersales service. Don't wait till they get their annual jab of charity. Be a friend. Be more. And if your mates don't like it, remember your diplomatic training. Sod them. Life's too short, literally.

Brezhnev's Eyes of Stone

Thursday, July 16, 2009

How many times in my sorrowful separation,

In my wandering fate,

Have I thought of you, O Moscow!

Pushkin probably noticed it when he came back after a long time away too. The fact is, Moscow, like most of us, has gotten a little more orderly as the years pass. The last time HDEO spent a night in the stolitsa, and had time for a good stomp around was five years ago when Russiana was kinda cool, Ta-tu were shocking and life was gas gas gas.

It’s all a bit cookie cutter now, the wild east. Yes, you can see flathead no-neck gangsters tooling around in their 200,000 buck cars (we are driving on the ring road as I type and a blood-red Jaguar Cabriolet just growled past). You can check out the booty (in both senses of the word) in Gum, that Palace to consumerism that nuzzles Red Square, and you can chug James Bond Martinis and dance to the best NY club sounds next to chillingly bored androgynous teenage billionares glued to their iphones. But it’s all too passé.

The centre of Moscow is almost neat. It no longer terrifies, or awes. Yes, it’s massive, and snarled up with the worst jams this side of Bangkok. People are rattled of course, by the sudden shrivelling of the power of their Rouble. But the arrogance that made Moscow so cool, so tragically hip, has gone. If you find a few grams of it, it’s not the pure sort that fuelled the boom.

Around the huge new suburbs – shiny with happy high-rises - mega malls dominate. DISKONT SENTR. MEDIA MARKT. EVRO PARK. KROKUS EKSPO. And IKEA IKEA IKEA everywhere. People seem world-weary, shuffling, tired.

So where to go to get inspired, to feel the fine butterfly flutter of that first bump onto the tarmac in Sheremetevyo? Where to go where Moscow feels awesome, terrifying, the heart of the Imperium? Avoid Red Square which feels like a theme park with its myriad Lenin lookalikes, Cossacks with ipods, and the Onion domes a-weeping. Don’t bother with the Bolshoi, clad in chipboard with its gorgeous statues hidden from view.

Head Down into the metro, and Eyes Open at the most amazing underground station in the world bar none. Hundreds of soviet realist statues of the proletariat chasing the communist dream throng Revolution Square station. They seem hewn into the stone arches, bending under the weight of the USSR.

Brandishing Kalashnikovs and sheaves of wheat, toiling with hammer and sickle and pneumatic drill, poring over books, singing, reciting, operating machinery and on people. You can spend half an hour walking underground between Ploshchad Revolutsii, Teatralna and Okhotni Ryad and the architecture, designed to move the masses (again in both senses of the verb), is beautiful and stunning (but do spare a thought for those who perished during its construction).

And if you have time for nothing else, the best way to travel back in time is to follow the Maskva, down to Gorky Park (had to slip in the Scorpions reference somewhere, didn’t I?). Cross over and veer to the right of the big white warehouse that is actually the New Tretyakov gallery.

Part with 20 roubles (try and look local – big mirror shades and/or grunting will do it – you’ll get in cheaper) and you’re in the sculpture garden. It’s a trip. Look, there’s the towering statue of Dzedzhinski, founder of the hated KGB, complete with the anti-communist graffiti it wore when the glasnost gangs ripped it, plinth and all, from outside the Lubyanka.

Who’s that? Stalin himself, set among dismembered heads in barbed wire cages, chillingly honouring those the dictator banished to the gulag. His marble nose is smashed, again from the toppling he took in those perestroika-charged times.

And most poignant of all, for a child of the 70s, when the Russian bogeyman, the Cold War chill, was personified by the man with those eyebrows, Leonid Brezhnev. His bust stands on a plinth, head-height, in a quiet corner.

Here’s where it becomes magic. Walk up to him, and stand in front of him. Closer. Go eyeball to eyeball. The weight of history is palpable. You’re looking into the stone eyes of Brezhnev, doing as he surely did when he approved the original monument. For a moment the trees scream, the sky spins and you feel yourself falling towards a terrible force.

Then you see its just a lump of stone. Cold, dead stone. No terror there, not any more. But you shudder, despite the summer heat.

Stiff Little Bloggers

It was thirty years ago today - just about - that the wakeup call that probably changed my life first bled over the airwaves. A ho(a)rse Belfast voice roaring "INFLAMMABA MATARRIA PLANNEDINMAHED, ITSA SUSPEK DEVICE THASS LEFT TWO THASNDEAD", followed by a snaredrum splat and highhat like a saw being snapped in my face.

A summer's evening, south Dublin, 1979, and my mate John Jones was introducing me to "Inflammable Material" by a Belfast punk band called Stiff Little Fingers. My head swam. I knew that punk was an act of rebellion, "a string of dirty words put to music" as my dad - a closet fan - described it. But my brain, marinating in puberty's chemical cocktail, got fried in the white heat sizzling from Jonesy's stereo.

A hundred miles up the road from us it was the year of the Shankill buchers, the Warrenpoint ambush. The tenth year of "The Troubles". Our island home was at war yet we felt surprisingly little effect in our suburban semi-d's, the fir trees swaying in the mild breeze. Those hundred miles away Jake Burns, SLF's frontman, only a few years older than Jonesy and I, was singing about Wasted Life. Screaming about it:

"I could be a soldier go out there and fight to save this land. Be a people's solider paramilitary gun in hand. I won't be a soldier I won't take no orders from no one. Stuff their fucking armies, killing isn't my idea of fun".

If Van Morrison famously has a voice like rough honey then Jake's is paintstripper. And when he says "stuff their fucking armies" it's not a Roddy Doyle-like fuck for the sake of dialogue. It's dipped in acid, sand blasted, chrome plated. He means it.

Then the song White Noise grabs me my the neck and spits at me. "Paddy is a moron, spud thick mick, breeds like a rabbit, thinks with his prick." It gets wilder: "Ahmed is a paki, curry coffee queer... ponce greasy wanker, worse than the yids". For a while we're stunned. SLF are a bunch of racists... but then the fist slams into our faces: this is a protest AGAINST racism/facism the oi oi oi yobs of the football stadia and plastic pubs.

This is punk with a conscience. And it's not the Sex Pistols, smacked up and puking, it's not even the Clash arty smarty lefty halfway round the world. This punk's for us. This drags us down the back alley behind the pub and kneecaps us, this is the "RUC dog of repression" barking at our feet.

It's such a brilliant piece of work on so many levels. Musically, nothing will ever compare with the opening riff of "Alternative Ulster". The humour, black and otherwise is searing and smart. Even the nuance of Alternative Ulster and Alter Native Ulster is priceless. Barbed Wire Love, about loving someone from the other side. Catholic? Protestant? Back? Arabic? Gay? Does it matter when you have lyrics like "hearts a bubble in the rubble, it was love at bombsite" to express it, to set the armalight?

And the genius of taking Johnny Was, Bob Marley's Rastaman vibration, from Trenchtown to Andytown. The drumming evoking a Belfast march throbbing towards an exploding AK. Highlighting the ultimate, the deepest grief of war, the mother losing her son. "A single shot rings out in a Belfast night. Can a woman's care cease towards the child she bears?"

Did you ever think punk could be poignant enough to prick tears to your eyes?

The album has been part of my life's soundtrack in many ways. Surely, on visits to my teenage pen-friend Miceal in Newry (sadly an Undertones fan). Later, on the night of my 30th birthday I drove high above the city of Tbilisi, looking down on the prison, and let Inflammable Material blast though the deep night.

Then in 2002 I raced home from Switzerland to take in a Stiffs concert in Dublin. I arrived in the middle of the set, smashed my way through to the front railing, and plunged into pungent, plangent punk with my oldest mate Richo. And we'd do it again tomorrow. Two suburban pappas, pogoing our polemics off.

Listening to the album now, as I am, I'm churning. I'm realising that the train of my life was shunted off the suburban sidetrack and onto a wild intercontinental ride thanks in no small way to the Belfast boys, the Stiffs, Sleff. They implanted a suspect device that ticked away inside me until one day, thank you Jake, it exploded, blasting me into a world I have been privileged, at times terrified, to see.

Another pal in punk, Blair, plays in a Kiev-based punk band, the C-men. On his Facebook page recently his status was "listening to beautiful, healing punk." That's the paradox of punk. Just like the blues can lift you when you are at your lowest, or how Leonard Cohen can make a mad world seem sane. When you let that rage wash over you, it can soothe the soul. You know why? Because this world is unjust, cynical, hypocritical and stacked against you. It was when you were fourteen, and it still is. You were right to be angry then and you're damn fucking right now. That's why.

Moving Moolah, Somali style

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Anyone out there guess the fastest, surest and cheapest way of transferring money these days? Western Union you say? Wrong. It's Hawala, and its likely to be for some time to come.

You haven't heard of it because you've never been in a foreign city and received a desperate call from the folks back home who need cash fast to buy an air ticket out, bury a body, pay for a wedding, repair a bombed house, or any one of the myriad emergencies that can strike your average Somali family.

This is how it works. You bring your money to a Hawala point or contact. He then contacts, either by phone or e-mail, an agent in the other location. The first agent confirms that money has been received for transfer, the second confirms that he has enough cash on hand to complete the transfer. If this is the case, a password is shared among the originator, the recipient and the two agents. The originator passes the password along to the recipient who then provides the second agent with the password to receive the money. The cash debt is settled later between the two money transfer agents, usually by using traditional banks to transfer funds to a central bank account, in a third country in the case of Somalia.

The fee is about three to five per cent, and the money is normally in the hands of the intended recipient within 24 hours. Incredible when you think of it, that some sophisticated systems can survive 20 years of bloody conflict, a tattered, battered, shattered infrastructure and the absence of any real rule of law. Money can fly over borders in seconds, evading the grubby fingers of customs officers or crooked postal workers. How? Because it works on honour, a word not normally associated with the banking system that we know and tolerate.

There's some dispute over the provenance of the word Hawala. The original Arabic means to change or transform, and when the word passed into Hindi it took on the meaning of "trust". And I remember buying a board game in Abidjan called "Awalé" which I was told meant "to share" in one of the local languages.)

Hawala exists in many parts of the world but is probably most famous - and successful - in Somalia where the World Bank (how sweetly that spoonerises!) even coined a name for it. Don't get excited, the name was invented by bankers after all, the prosaic "Somali Remittance Organisation".

Back in the days of BC (Before Children) Head Down Eyes Opener in Chief and myself broke bread together on a regular basis in Geneva, that bastion of world bankers. On one of those fine occasions we got a lesson in the Somali Remittance Organisation form a wily old Somali, with the standard issue impish grin and straggly beard so frequent back in Hamar.

Our friend, let's call him Hassan, even gave us a real time illustration of how it worked - cash was transferred in front of our eyes from the counter of an Irish bar to the fragrant African night, within an hour. It was a little piece of sorcery Hassan weaved for us. You couldn't help but imagine a knock on the door somewhere in downtown Mogadishu, hushed voices, a torch flitting over a face, a child crying out, a crackle of nearby gunfire, a handshake, and the relieved sigh from the woman of the house at the soft thud of notes hitting the table.

Sadly, that picture is being seen less and less in these straightened times. Remittances from overseas are 25 per cent down in the first quarter of 2009. This is seriously bad news for a country where the one million Somalis in the diaspora basically keep the country's economy - such as it is - afloat with remittances of up to US$1 billion. These funds - "money from America without writin for it" as we used to call it in Ireland, have kept a third of the population alive.

Some 3.4 million people are dependent on food aid in Somalia, where violence is on the up and where the worst drought in ten years is causing concern. Another 120,000 people fled the capital in May and the UN is warning of an emerging catastrophe. Mark Bowden, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the country said: "this is a critical year for Somalia because of the potentially collapsing economy due to the drought," he said. "There is a real danger that Somalia can become more dependent on humanitarian assistance than ever before".

The UN is looking for almost a billion bucks for its operations in Somalia this year (ironic that it's almost the same sum that the diaspora has been sending home) but has only received one third of that appeal to date. (Some would say that even that response is a miracle, given the complexities of working in Somalia.)

I penned a few lines on leaving Somalia in June 1993 after the most intense six months of my life. They're still rattling round my skull - excuse the ultimate introspection of quoting myself:

Sometimes I see a star

bleached white on blue

like bones in the ocean

and I hear your voice Mohammad Farah:

"Defend your freedom, your honour"

Sometimes I catch myself staring at a child with a baby in her arms

And I remember your choking heat, your shimmering expanses

An old man atop a termite hill

watching in quet despair as the tanks roll by.

I remember coffee-coloured pools of shit on main street

And the agonies you caused me

Nights of sweat and anguish

as together we tore our hearts out

Was any of it worthwhile?

Whose bodies, souls, hearts and minds did any of us save?

Mama meets Maslow in her African hut

Monday, June 15, 2009

They say you're only three pay checks from the street. For the majority of HQ-based aid workers, this means anything from $6,000 to $60,000, and with three months notice factored in HDEO reckons we've got it pretty good.

For the corporate drone, website geek or unionised labourer things are possibly a little tougher. And for the semi-legal plasterer, plumber or prostitute, things start to get really tricky. For the migrant, as long as the return ticket is paid, there is the option of returning home, to the poverty you left, to the scorn of your village, to the derision of your peers, the anguish of your family. Not much of an option, but at least you'll know the language and the geography.

So who is at the bottom of the pile, when it comes to having to relocate due to "trouble at mill?" Who's left holding the baby (literally) when the bombs start to fall, the men on horseback ride into town, or the fields dry up?

Mama of course. Mama might be a fourteen year old whose man gets killed defending the region, or Mama in her thirties might have to herd her six ducklings out of town under cover of darkness to avoid rape or any other one of war's weapons. Or Mama might be in her sixties, with bad eyesight and brittle bones, pushed out by a rising river.

Either way, life for Mama can continue with only what she can carry on her head and strapped to her back. And when she gets her chickens to somewhere "safe", where there's at least no one shooting or ripping at her clothes, she has one or two things to do before she can sleep.

Shelter will be the first priority. Without having to quote Maslow, she knows "safety" is crucial in her hierarchy of need. Maslow - interestingly - doesn't explicitly mention shelter, but perhaps "security of property" covers it. (Perhaps. Or does that refer to the apartment Fiachra and Tara bought in Tallinn in 2006 that's not worth much these days?)

Mama will first have to find about forty good-sized branches to twist into a frame. Then beg or borrow enough grass, cloth or plastic sheeting to cover at least the top, if it's raining or the sides, if it's windy. (Of course, she may have to trade sex with a stranger for this basic human right, with the kids watching, but what to do?)

Next on the agenda, clean water (and something to carry it in, and store it), some rice or wheat, fuel to cook it, a pot to cook it in, a dish to serve it in, and ultimately, somewhere to shit. That's about it for day one. It doesn't even get Mama much onto Maslow's third level (friendship, family, sexual intimacy... although one could argue that Mama has outgrown Maslow, arriving at "acceptance of facts, spontaneity and problem solving", without the luxury of passing through the prisms of "respect" and "self-esteem" Maslow thought essential.)

Feisil Omar's picture, at the top of top of this post, made my heart bleed for all its banality. It was taken yesterday, but could just as easily have been taken seventeen years ago. That's was when, almost to the day, I left Somalia, having been surrounded (albeit from a house with clean sheets and a fridge) by these little beehives that people have to call home when they lose their roots. They sprout up along the roadside like mushrooms, like rainclouds, like warts, thousands and thousands, bringing with them the crackle of terror, the glow of disease. They burn down, they wash away, they deny education, animals and snakes get in, insects too, water, filthy water, is often kilometres away.

So remember, no matter how awful it seems, it could all be a lot, lot worse.

And give your Mama, or someone's Mama a call one of these days.