From Walter Rodney’s wonderful How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, this passage on the making of infrastructures in Africa: The combination of being oppressed, being exploited, and being disregarded is best illustrated by the pattern of the economic infrastructure of African colonies : notably, their roads and railways. These had a clear geographical distribution according to the extent […]
This really is the best journalism about Somali piracy I have read. It is immensely sympathetic to the ordinary crewmen, many often belonging to the global South, who are the victims of the piracy. But it also shows the extent to which piracy itself is today a form of enterprise; with wage workers who are starving […]
15 February 2015 16.00 We have arrived too soon, because of steaming at high speed through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, in order for the ship to make it to Ningbo for an earlier slot that has come free, but now the slot has been given up for Chinese […]
14 February 2015 in Khor Fakkan port After several hours of watching the unloading of the ship, and after walking on the port to go to the duty-free shop (to buy a new memory card for my camera), it is rather interesting to see that my “fresh” ethnographic eyes have become more accustomed to the […]
“and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick The first incident of its kind happened last night. Hopefully, also the last. I was in the wheelroom in the dark, keeping easy company with my favourite ship’s officer and favourite cadet. One of the below-deck officers who had […]
12 February 2015 Morning We passed Salalah in the night, and the sea is not as lonely as it was yesterday, with the AIS showing at least 5 or 6 ships at a time (when it was sometimes entirely bereft of ships yesterday). Now, as we pass Khuriya Muriya islands, the captain says that when […]
9 February 2015 20.00 “Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, [… the] prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I could see.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick For the next few days, we shall be traveling on the sea in a monotony of sunshine, humidity, warmth, and reading […]
8 February 2015 You begin to realise how much Marx actually crafted his writing when you compare Capital I to Capital II. The former is beautifully edited, funny, extensively footnoted, erudite, and with a gorgeous narrative structure that inexorably push you forward as the book goes on. Not so Capital II which was assembled from […]
7 February 2015 15.00 Last night I was invited by the Filipino crew members to one of the crew members’ birthday party. He is an engine -fitter and he will be turning 40 tomorrow. The crew recreation room unsurprisingly had a karaoke machine playing soft-rock versions of already soft rock songs. There were big bottles […]
6 February 2015 “For a ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.” (Melville, White-Jacket – did Conrad plagiarise Melville as I often think he does? See the Conrad quote I use as an epigram) This might have been […]
