Paris Diary (Aug-Sep 2011) Page 2 The Seine and the Notre Dame

 When anyone says the word "Seine", the first image that comes to mind is "bridge", and that's because no less than 37 functional bridges can be found over this beautiful river.  The best way of admiring these bridges, some of which are extremely ornate and beautiful is to take a cruise down the river in a Batobus. If possible try to do it at night so you can see the "City of Light" in all her glory.

One of the oldest bridges in Paris "Pont de Neuf"

The beautiful Alexandre Pont III Bridge (above and below) is perhaps the most ornately decorated of all the Paris bridges.  The beautiful detail took my breath away.  The bridge was built to commemorate the friendship between France and Russia and was named after Tsar Alexander

"Love padlocks" on the Pont des Arts Bridge (one that links the Notre Dame to the Left Bank).  Each of these locks bears the name of a couple in love..it was really fun to see some of the names and read the messages of love eternal! :)  When your river boat passes under this bridge you will be asked to make a wish and to kiss the person to the right of you....apparently your wish will come true if this is your first visit to Paris.  Needless to say I did it!!!  

I once read that every Parisian is in a relationship.  To be single is to be a loser. I guess that tells me every Parisian is an eternal romantic...perhaps that also will explain why it is so common to see so many kissing couples all around the city!

 Getting ready for the night cruise on the River Seine...Paris is absolutely gorgeous at night with just about every building all lit up.

La Conciergerie: The building where Queen Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned while she awaited execution. 

The Notre Dame at night and a group of Parisians spending their evening on the Seine. Look

to the left of the picture and you will see one of them waving to us.  Little groups of people hang out

by the Seine all through the day but it is at night when the area comes to life with little bonfires, guitar playing, cook outs....we even saw a Tango dance competition taking place.  This is where all of Paris seems to come to for a little R &R.

The Notre Dame from the Pont des Arts Bridge.  Of all the buildings in Paris I was most excited to see the Notre Dame ( I suppose you could blame Victor Hugo and his "Hunchback of Notredame" for that). The day we visited this ornate church was a very rainy day. The sky was perpetually overcast and grey and the colours of the pictures reflect the weather...sadly.

The famous South "Rose Window" facade of the Notre Dame...the darn thing is 43ft high!

Notre Dame detail...can you spot some of the gargoyles?  These gargoyles are actually rainspouts!  Stay tuned for the gargoyles made famous by the Hunchback of Notredame.

Voila, here are the famous Notre Dame gargoyles (some of them at least). I must be honest and tell you this not my pic (courtesy Euro travelogue) but I borrowed it because what is a photo blog about the Notre Dame if you don't have gargoyles in them? I could have had my own picture if I was prepared to walk up the 387 steps to the top of the South Bell tower but after walking 10 kms all around Paris on a daily basis,believe me I had no energy for the climb.  They are beautiful, aren't they? The next time I will get up close and personal with them!

Well, this concludes page 2 of my Paris Diary.  I hope you're enjoying the walkabout through Paris with me.  Most of the photos were taken by my daughter but with two different cameras. One was a regular 'point and click' and the other, a Nikon D5000.

Paris Diary Aug-Sep 2011 (Page One)

This year I thought I'd do something different with my vacation photos. Instead of cramming them into an album and posting them to FB which is what I usually do, how much better to write a blog post and post some of them here instead.

Like most of us do, I read a lot of books in preparation for our trip to Paris and each one left me feeling more despondent than the other.  No, it wasn't the food and it certainly wasn't the fashion that had me troubled...what left me quaking in my boots was dealing with the Parisian!!!  You see, in almost all the books I read, the Parisian was made to sound like an evil character from a Grimm's fairytale.  Over and over I'd read about their rudeness, their impatience with foreigners, their agile ability to jump queues and then pretend to be deaf when you protest.  Also, I wasn't looking forward to shopping in Paris because I had been warned that once you touch something in their exquisitely-laid out stores you may as well have bought it.  I wasn't even looking forward to eating in one of their drool-worthy restaurants because the rudeness of their waiters is legendary.  However, the appeal of the land of Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Claude Monet was strong enough to overcome any trepidation I might have had an off I went, the brave little soul that I was!

As we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport I noticed a plane-load of chic, scarf-wearing French students who were apparently just returning from a weekend trip to London.  They seemed no different from teenagers anywhere else in the world...or so I thought, but as I continued to observe I realized they seemed friendlier and more touchy-feely than most other groups of teenagers that I have watched, and when they were ready to part ways, all the French boys gently kissed the girls three times on their cheeks and said goodbye. Ofcourse, this is the City of Love, and so I shouldn't be surprised, but hadn't I read that Parisians were impatient and rude, I was certainly seeing no sign of that here. 

I booked our family into an apartment in the heart of the Marais district.  This was the first time we were opting for an apartment over a hotel and I was both nervous and excited.  Most apartment buildings in the heart of the city are built around a courtyard the entrance to which is usually a big brightly-coloured door on the main road like in the picture below.

I cannot recommend apartment living in Paris nearly enough...it's the closest thing you'll ever feel to being a real Parisian!

I'm glad I chose the Marais arrondisement to live in....we found it to be a chic, fashionable district with lots of upmarket clothing stores, parks, boulangeries and restaurants.  It is known to the center of Parisian gay life and is also home to one of the oldest Jewish Quarters in Paris.

Rue de Rosiers, in the Jewish Quarter of Le Marais is well worth a visit for its marvellous falafel shops. As you walk along the famous cobblestone paths of Rue du Rosiers, you will be called out to by the falafel shop owners asking you to taste their wares.  Oh, and speaking of cobblestones, the French seem to love them, they're EVERYWHERE, even their new roads seem to be built like the roads of medieval Paris. How do the women of Paris walk these roads in their high heels? I tried and failed miserably!

At a Cafe/Brasserie in La Marais.  Sitting at a cafe with a cafe creme and a brioche watching people as they go by is probably one of the nicest things to do in Paris and believe me, with the amount of walking we did, I made sure to make a cafe stop once every 3-4 hours. Wish the coffee was worth the stop though. We've travelled almost everywhere in Europe and take it from me, Paris has the worst coffee!!!

The Fred Perry store in the Marais.  I took a picture of the store simply because it had at the window the clothing line that Amy Winehouse had  finished designing for them just before her unfortunate demise.  Seeing her designs in the window was a poignant reminder of the great talent she was.

Shopping in Paris is a great experience and NO you do not have to buy anything you touch!  This is one city where window shopping is a real treat because people go to great lengths to make their display windows fun, quirky and a work of art!  By law shops are required to display the prices of everything displayed at their windows, so it's easy to get a sense of whether you want to step inside or not. The picture (above) is of the flagship Louis Vuitton store on the Champs Elysses.  I did step inside only to be shocked at the number of Chinese customers!!!  They seem to be on a buying spree in Paris. I also saw a whole lot of them lining up to buy Longchamps bags at Galeries Lafayette.

But don't let your fondness for window shopping stop you from going into the department stores.  Here we are the Galeries Lafayette...it has got to be one of the most beautiful department stores I have ever been in, so eat your heart out Dubai, your malls don't hold a candle to this classy store!  And, surprise, surprise, the shopping was pretty good too (price wise).  Galeries has an excellent epicerie on the topmost floor and after you have bought French mustard, pate and bon bons, you can walk up to the roof top terrace for a breathtaking view of Paris!

Oooh, that lovely Belle Epoque style!  Apparently the store was modeled after a Middle-Eastern bazaar.  Wish I had more details. 

The beautiful dome at Galeries Lafayette...it's truly worth a visit.

And  the lovely view from the roof top.  Spot the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

This is the first page from my Paris Diary 2011....I hope to have a few more pages before we head for Barcelona, I hope you will stay with me.

Beautiful Thing: Inside The Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro

 

Publisher:  Penguin House, India

Genre:       Non-Fiction

Published   27 OCT 2010

 In 2005, as part of a "Morality Drive", the government of Maharashtra (India) banned bars from featuring dancing girls.  As a result of the edict some 75,000 girls lost their jobs. The government accused the bars of being "brothels" and the girls of prostituting themselves, however, in reality 

 while the girls did sell sex, they didn't do so inside the bars. On the bar premises the girls always danced fully-dressed and customers were never allowed to solicit the girls while they were working.  They could watch them dance and throw money at them, but that was all. If the girl did want to service a customer she was to do it outside the bar premises and in her own time.

The ban, instead of being a move for the good, actually deprived the women (many of them single mothers or victims of rape)

of a regular job, one in which they felt protected, and threw them into the clutches of unscrupulous brothel owners or pimps. Some ended up having to walk the sidewalks alone, with no protection - a surefire way of getting raped, kidnapped or even killed.

I'll be honest, like most people, when I read about the ban I wasn't too perturbed as I bought into the "reasons" given for shutting

down the bar, but I had always wondered about these dancers - who were they?  Where did they come from?  Why did they choose such a career?  Did they ever fall in love? Get married? 

So when I read Sonia Falerio had written a book on these bargirls, I knew it would satiate my curiosity and I asked my sister to send me a copy from India ( I don't think the book has had its US release yet).

  Leela, the protagonist of Faleiro's book "Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars", like most of the other bar girls, had been sold to the local policemen for sex by her own father when she was only 13. Uneducated and young she many have been, but she was smart and she soon

figured out that for as long as she stayed in her father's house her body

would be his to do with as he pleased.  Since she had already been "defiled" she reasoned she could continue with the same occupation but keep her

earnings for herself and so she ran away from home and

ultimately made her way into one of Bombay's famous dance bars.

Again, at the bar she lived by her wits, she befriended the bar owner and enjoyed quite a cushy means of existence thanks to him. As long as she made money for the bar and kept an eye on the other girls, he was prepared

to turn a blind eye while she solicited the occasional customer outside of the bar. The relationship seemed to suit them both

But after the ban came into force, even her bar-owner boyfriend could do nothing to save Leela who was 19 at the time and she soon found herself on the streets and at the mercy of people who exploited her.  This continued

until she was able to get to a shelter.

As I read the book, I kept looking for Leela to curse her fate..I kept waiting to hear her cuss her mother and father for the predicament she found herself in, but I don't think I ever saw her do that, infact, she was a great believer in destiny:

  "Bad luck is in my blood.  It is true what they say - destiny us as strong as iron, it is tougher than steel;

 nothing can change what is written for you" 

Perhaps that is what  purged her of any bitterness and gave her the will to go on. Also, a lot of the bar dancers came from families that has always been 

involved in the business of dubious entertainment - like street dancers or acrobats, trapeze artists in the circus, dancers at private parties and so on,

so in Leela's mind, she actually believed she had done quite well for herself.

I kept reading to see if the book would reveal what Leela wanted for her future for while all the girls hope to get a good man/boyfriend who will be their ticket out of that profession, the truth is, few ever get away.

In the end, the most lofty goal a dancing girl can have is getting a job at a Mujra bar in Dubai where she can hope to make more money and receive more gifts.  Youth is highly prized in this industry and once the girls

reach their prime (early 20's perhaps) many will move on from dancing to keeping dancers (if they have saved up enough money), or if they have a daughter they will probably introduce her to the profession and live off her earnings!

  

"Beautiful Thing" puts a very human face on a profession most of us wouldn't touch with a disinfected bargepole.  Sure, these girls are seducers, liars, cheats, addicts and everything else we have read about them in the media,

but this book helps us see why they are that way.

Most have been sexually abused as children and exploited beyond belief as young adults and, as a result, have developed these coping mechanisms to ensure they don't get hurt over and over again. The book also reveals to the reader how much crime and corruption envelope the industry

and how close the link between bargirls and the underworld dons are.

Faleiro gives centre stage to her subject Leela, unobtrusively asking questions of her and letting her speak  - hallmark of a good reporter. The novel has a lot of dialogue and I enjoyed the author's reproduction

of Leela's Bombay vernacular full of bawdy wit, cuss words and a rough tenderness that may make some readers blush! 

 

 In order to write this book Faleiro had to spend a lot of time, not only with Leela and her friends but also with the other groups that make up this industry, like the hijras (eunuchs), the pimps, brothel owners, bar owners, men who frequented the bars and last, but not least, the thugs that bought and sold these girls to the various bars and clubs - I salute her for being so brave!

  

Even though this is a book is a work of non-fiction, it is a breezy read and in this day of "India Shining", where never a day goes by without reading a newspaper article wax lyrical about India's booming economy, this book is a good reminder of those sections of society which have been totally left out of   India's economic miracle.  

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson

Publishers: Other Press

Genre:       Literary

After a long drought where the only books I read were about Paris, in preparation for our vacation in the City of Light, I was finally able to sink my teeth into a novel that gripped me right away and refused to let go.  I'm sure as readers we all go through a non-reading phase, but mine was particularly painful because I cannot remember going a day without reading a book since I was six years old!  At first, when I found myself having difficulty concentrating on a book, I didn't let it worry me too much, I thought my reading mojo would return in a few days...it's been close to six months!  Phew!

Anyway, back to the book. I'm not attempting a review here, but I cannot let the book that saved my reading life go by without a mention.  "Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away" by Christie Watson is set in the Niger Delta, the oil-rich region of Nigeria.  Its protagonist is a 12-year old girl who has to move from the big city of Lagos to her grandparents' house in the Niger Delta after her parents got a divorce.  Not only was it difficult for her and her brother to come to terms with the change in their geographic status, but also, they went from being considerably well off to hovering just above the poverty line and from a Catholic household (their father was Catholic) to having to pray in the mosque as her mother's family were (Ijaw) Muslim.

Blessing, our protagonist, soon gets caught up in the politics of a big family: a polygamous and patriarchal grandfather; a grandmother who practises midwifery; a brother who gets involved with the Sibeye boys (young, misguided local boys who are given arms with which to sabotage an oil pipeline or to kidnap a foreigner working with one of the large oil companies.)  Central to the story is how oil (first discovered in 1956)  is ruining the lives of the people of the Delta.  Where it should have been a blessing, it is now a curse.  Read this article in the National Geographic for greater insights into the curse of the black gold.

This book has a lot to recommend it: not only is the storytelling spectacular but also, it's set in an area most of us rarely get to read about (sure, there is a lot of literature coming out of Nigeria these days but not too many stories are based in this volatile area of  the country which is rich in oil-deposits and yet its people are among the poorest in the land.  Casting Blessing's grandmother in the role of a midwife was a clever strategy because the reader gets to learn all about female circumcision, another evil that plagues Africa.  The medical details are interesting to read and let me tell you why:  Ms. Watson is a nurse by profession so she certainly knows how to keep it accurate and at the same time her lyrical storytelling ensures we are never bored.  All is not gloom and doom however. Her novel celebrates the happy and gregarious Nigerian spirit in a way few books have done before...it was a delight to read.

Blog Hiatus

Hello everyone!  This blog is going on a short holiday...hopefully I will have some reviews to share after the 19th of this month.  Many thanks and see you soon!

On Black Sisters' Street by Chika Unigwe

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Vintage

That Nigeria is a failed state is no longer in question.  However, a major consequence of that is the organized exodus of Nigerian girls and women to Western Europe, where they are promised exciting jobs but end up trapped in brothels run by their own nationals - Nigerian “Madams”.

"Black Sisters' Street" by Chika Unigwe is a fictional account of four such women - Sisi, Efe, Ama and Joyce - each of whom left Nigeria for Belgium, with dreams of a better tomorrow, only to find themselves working as prostitutes in the red light district of Antwerp, or "Black Sisters' Street" named for the inordinately large number of African woman that work the street.  To tell you that none of the four went to Belgium voluntarily or that they didn't expect to be prostitutes would be to mislead the reader...however...what makes one angry is the fact that these girls felt it necessary to leave their homes, parents (in some cases, children) and enter this sordid industry only because they could barely make ends meet in their home country.  It is sad these girls had to take up a job that stripped them of all self-respect just so that they could be respected back home in Nigeria.

The character sketches of the four girls are detailed and intimate and yet, at the end of the book, none of them feels like a 'best friend', for despite the tiny details - how they dressed, their family lives, their thoughts, dreams and so on - one really doesn't get to "know" them well. For that matter, even though the girls live togther, they are strangers even to each other until one tragic event brings them together.

Unigwe's prose is clear and calm - although some terrible things take place in the book, the reader doesn't feel weighed down by it.  Unigwe is also skilled at introducing into the narrative issues that are typical to Nigerian society like polygamy,sexism, belief in superstitions, tribal divisions and so on, using just a single reference or a passing comment, leaving the reader with a fleeting but precious sort of cultural snapshot.

I also love her descriptions of Nigeria - from the chewing-gum pink walls of the sitting room in Ama's house (and yes, I know they have them, I've seen them in just about every Nigerian house in a Nollywood movie!) to the streets of Lagos in Joyce's story- her writing with its rich detail, truly entertains and informs.

"Lagos streets were rutted,gutted and near impassable,yet they were jam-packed with cars: huge air-conditioned jeeps driving tail to tail with disintigrating jalopies whose fault exhaust pipes sentout clods of dark smoke making the air so thick with pollution that a constant mist hung over the city and the bit of sky that one could see was sullied with dirt."

We get to know some of the girls better than the others.  The story mostly revolves around Sisi, a college graduate who was unable to find a job in Nigeria because she didn't have the right "connections", however, it is Joyce's story that moved me the most, perhaps because it was the saddest and also, of the four girls, she was the only one tricked into going to Antwerp.   To tell you more would be to give much of the story away and I certainly don't want to do that. 

When Chika Unigwe was asked why she wanted to write about Nigerian prosititutes in Antwerp, she had this to say:

Curiosity. The first time I saw the girls in lingerie behind their windows, I was stunned.  Coming from Nigeria where prostitution is very much underground, it was a cultural shock on a massive scale. I had never seen anything like it before. Then when I was told that a great majority of the African prostitutes in Antwerp were Nigerian girls from Benin City, I knew I had to write about it. The statistics are mind boggling. There is a new crop of middle class families cropping up in Benin City, mostly headed by women whose daughters are in Europe

I'm so glad she did (write about it), the novel does much to make us pay attention to that society that we do everything to ignore, also, it was interesting to see Europe - the destination for so many people's hopes and dreams - through the eyes of these four Nigerian girls. I appreciated that while Unigwe reveals to us that three of the girls did indeed travel to Antwerp while fully aware of what the job entailed, the background stories ensure we don't blame them...it's easy to see how girls like Ama, Sisi and Ete are pressured into taking up these jobs, if anything. it makes you angry at a society that sits back and allows these girls to sacrifice their bodies in order to put meals on the table.

Lastly, but not importantly, I noticed a few digs against Ghanaians in the book...would someone be able to tell me if there is friendly rivalry between the citizens of these two countries?

"Ama spied two Ghanaian guests going back for a second helping rice and smirked to Sisi that surely, surely Nigerians cooked better, made tastier fried rice than Ghanaians.  (People who threw whole tomatoes in sauces couldn't really cook, could they?) And both women agreed that Ghanaians were just wannabe Nigerians."

 An award-winning short story writer, Chika Unigwe, 34, was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Belgium with her husband and four children.

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