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Satis Shroff's CATMANDU CHRONICLES
Satis Shroff's CATMANDU CHRONICLES
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Pedagogic Poems
Related to country: Germany
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic


Deleting Lives in the Cyberworld (Satis Shroff)

The young man and his double-clicks
In a cyberworld
Of bits and bytes,
Full of elves, tough turtles, dementors,
Warriors and evil beings,
Who destroy hamlets, towns,
Civilisations,
At the command of a few clicks.

An unreal world
Where the fantasy stories
Are pre-programmed.
The elimination of farmers, slaves,
Knaves and enemy warriors,
But a click away.

You are the creator,
The maker and destroyer,
You are Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma.
Thumbs up or down,
Death to you,
Delete.
Yawn!
Your’re short of amphetamines.
It’s a long way to the apothecary.
More clicks,
More tiredness,
You’re falling asleep.
Drowsy bits and bytes,
You haven’t taken a bite.
Your inner man is growling,
But you have no time,
For bodily needs.
You’re hooked
To your bits and bytes.
Oh, it bites.
--------------------------------------

Groggy in the Afternoon (Satis Shroff)

Groggy from the Cyberworld at home,
Fritz goes to school.
He’s tired of school,
And is restless.
Retalin doesn’t seem to work today.
The lessons are irrelevant,
He sees not the classmates.
He sees the goblins, Power Rangers,
Sword-fighting Ninjas ,
Scores of other figures
With terrifying grimaces.
Fritz also makes a grimace.
He is now a monster in his thoughts,
Has to strike the others
With his laser-sword.

The enemy surrounds him,
Laser-blades flash like lightning.
A gash and Fritz falls on the floor.
He’s wounded,
But rotates his prostrate torso
With his fast working legs,
Lashes out with his sword.
He’s almost killed them all.
He’s a hero who never gives up.

Suddenly he hears teacher Frau Hess’s voice:
’Fritz, steh auf!’
He becomes calm,
Gets up.
Gone are the warriors, Power Rangers,
And super heroes and mighty enemies.
Fritz recognises his classmates,
Hans, Joachim, Cassandra, Brunhild,
As they shake their heads.

Was it a dream?
Oh je! Frau Hess will certainly call Mom.
And tell it all.
‘Scheiß ADS!’ mutters Kevin.

Glossary:
ADS: Allgemeine Deficiency Syndrome
-------------------------------------------------

The Japanese Garden (Satis Shroff)

Nine Hauptschule kids in their teens,
Sit on benches in the Japanese Garden,
Near the placid, torquoise lake.

The homework is done sloppily.
Who cares?
The boys are bursting with hormones,
As they tease the only blonde from Siberia.

A fat guy named Heino likes the blonde,
But she doesn’t fancy him.
Annäherung, Vermeidung:
A conflict develops.

The teacher tells him in no uncertain terms:
“Lass Sie bitte in Ruhe!”
But Heino with the MP3 doesn’t care
And carries on:
Grasping her breasts,
Caressing her groin.
She puts up a fight to no avail.

Heino is stronger, impertinent,
And full of street rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the other teenies
Are climbing, kicking the Japanese pavilion,
Spitting, cursing shouting
At all and sundry in German.

The grey-haired gardener in charge comes,
Tells the boys to behave
And goes.
Boredom in the afternoon.
The boys don’t want to play soccer,
Handball or basketball.
Sitting around, criticising, irritating each other,
Is cool.

Creative workshops: music, songs, essays, own movies?
Nothing interests them.
Killing time together,
Cursing at each other,
Getting a kick provoking passersby,
This is the Hauptschule in Germany today.

The clever kids go to the Gymnasium,
After the fourth class.
The trouble-makers, aggressive alpha-wolves
And clowns remain in the Hauptschule.
An ironical name for a school,
For Haupt means the ‘main’
Comprising the lower class of the society:
Kids of foreigners, ethnic Germans from the East Bloc,
Who hope to make it somehow,
As apprentices for hair salons, car repair garages,
Kebab shops, Italian restaurants, Balkan kitchens,
Roofers and masons.

The Japanese Garden, a present from Matsuyama
To the people of Freiburg,
With truncated shrubs and rounded trees.
A waterfall and quiet niches,
A place for contemplation and solitude.

For the Hauptschule kids,
A place to get together,
Be loud, grunt, fight with fists, shove, scratch,
Slap, spit everywhere,
And play the gangsta.
“At night they throw empty alcohol bottles
Where ever they like,” says an elderly lady
From the neighbourhood.
Wonder how the kids are in Matsuyama?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sonderschule (Satis Shroff)

“Halt’s Maul, Du Missgeburt!”
Says one to the other.
‘Halt dein Mund, Du Jude!
Ich hasse Juden, Mann!’ barks an obese Hauptschuler.

The others play football in the classroom.
The teacher says emphatically,
‘It’s forbidden to play soccer here!’
They reply in chorus:
‘It doesn’t disturb anybody.’
A grey-blonde teacher barges into the room and says:
‘Leben Sie hier noch?’ to his colleague.
Are you still alive?

Boris has an appointment with the police.
They nabbed him stealing a car.
Nicky quips to Suleika:
‘Du hast einen fetten Arsch!
Gebärfreudige Hintern.’

Albin runs helter skelter,
Settles down on a table,
Chewing gum between his yellow teeth,
Doesn’t like authority.
Hans, Fritz and Bruno do their extra homework,
Meted out as a punishment by the English teacher.

Vitaly throws scissors in the classroom,
Which land with a thud on the cork wall.
Heino is doing his best to disturb the group,
With his loud MP3 music.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Du Hurensohn!’ he says,
To a fellow classmate.

A Kosovo-kid who’s hyperactive,
Steals and fights at school.
The Germans send him to a Sonderschule.
His father’s proud for ‘sonder’ means ‘special.’
His son is attending an elite school, he thinks,
Only to realise later,
It was a school for difficult children.
A dead-end.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EAST BLOC KID GOES WEST (Satis Shroff)

A pair of heavy scissors fly
In a dark Hauptschule classroom,
Thrown by an Aussiedler school-kid,
Near Freiburg’s Japanese Garden.

The scissors can slash your face,
Or mine.
You can be maimed for life,
Like Scarface,
If the sharp ends
Bury in your eyes,
Or mine.

Let there be light.
Vitaly, a boy from the former east Bloc
Comes to the West,
In search of ancestors and heritage.
What he gets is rejection but freedom.
Freedom to do as he pleases,
With pleasant negative sanctions.
‘Even in jail they have TV,’ he says with a laugh.

He grows up in a ghetto,
And his anger burns.
Anger at his ageing parents,
Who forced him to come to the West,
But who are themselves lost in this new world
Of democratic, liberal values,
Luxurious and electronic consumer delights,
Where everyone cares for himself or herself,
Where the old structures of the society
They clung to in the east Bloc days
Don’t exist.

A brave new world,
A Schlaraffenland,
Where economy and commerce flourishes,
Where the individual’s view is important,
To himself,
To herself
And to others.

The East Bloc boy learns
To assert himself in the West,
Not with solid arguments and rhetoric
But with his two fists.
He fancies cars and their contents,
Breaks open the windows,
Takes all he wants.
Brushes with the police
At an early age.

English, Latin and French at school,
Irritates him,
He prefers to play the clown:
To dance on the table,
Make suggestive moves with his groin,
High on designer drugs,
High all the time.
Opens the classroom door,
Sees a girl from the seventh grade,
And yells at her:
‘Nach der Schule fick ich Dich.’
‘Screw you after school.’

His behaviour brings laughter
But he turns off the girls he admires.
He grins and insults his peers.
Rejected by youngsters,
Admonished by grown-ups.
He watches the society.

Chic clothes, streamlined cars, plastic money,
But he forgets that there’s personal performance
Behind these worldly riches.
‘The rich German drives his BMW
With his head in the air.
What does he care?
What does he care?’ thinks Vitaly.

A pair of scissors fly
In a dark classroom.
His pent-up emotions,
Let loose in a German Hauptschool,
Near the Japanese Garden.

His classmate from Croatia
Throws chairs at the another.
‘Aus Spass’ he says.
Just for fun.
He shouts at the Putzfrau,
Who cleans the classrooms:
‘Sie Geistesgestörte!’
You mad woman.

Is the school-system to blame?
Is western culture, tradition
Social, liberal values and norms to blame?
Are his parents who speak a conserved Deutsch to blame?
Is his Russian mother-tongue
And his great Russian soul to blame?

Nobody answers his questions,
Nobody cares,
Out in the West.
“Verdammt, I want to be heard!” screams Vitaly.
The people shake their heads,
Mutter, ‘Ein Spinner!’
And walk away.

A pair of sharp, long scissors
Fly in a dark classroom.
The scissors can slash your face,
Or mine.
----------------------------------------------
THE SEA SWELLS (Satis Shroff)

The sea shells on the sea shore
Suddenly the sea swells.
Ring the church and temple bells.
All is not well.
The sea has gone back.

Brown-burnt Tarzans and Janes
From different continents,
Wonder what’s going on.
A man from Sweden
Is immersed in his thriller under the palms.
A mother and daughter from Germany
Frolic on the white sunny beach.

Even the sea-gulls stop and listen
To the foreboding silence.

The sea swells,
Comes back
And brings an apocalyptic destruction:
Sweeping humans, huts and hotels,
Boats, billboards and debris.
Cries for help are stifled by the roaring waves.

The sea goes back.
Leaving behind lost souls,
Caught in suspended animation.
I close my eyes.
Everything dies.

Tsunami. Tsunami.
Om Shanti. Om shanti.

-----------------------------------------------------------
WENN EIN KIND/ When a Child (Anon)

Wenn ein Kind kritisiert wird,
lernt es zu verurteilen.

Wenn ein Kind angefeindet wird,
lernt es zu kämpfen.

Wenn ein Kind verspottet wird,
lernt es schüchtern zu sein.

Wenn ein Kind beschämt wird,
lernt es sich schuldig zu sein.

Wenn ein Kind verstanden und toleriert wird,
lernt es geduldig zu sein.

Wenn ein Kind ermutigt wird,
lernt es sich selbst zu vertrauen.

Wenn ein Kind gelobt wird,
lernt es sich selbst zu schätzen.

Wenn ein Kind gerecht behandelt wird,
lernt es sich gerecht zu sein.

Wenn ein Kind geborgen lebt,
lernt es zu vertrauen.

Wenn ein Kind anerkannt wird,
lernt es sich selbst zu mögen.

Wenn ein Kind in Freundschaft angenommen wird,
lernt es in der Welt Liebe zu finden.

(Text über dem Eingang einer tibetischen Schule)


What others have said about the author:
'Brilliant, I enjoyed your poems throughly. I can hear the underlying German and Nepali thoughts within your English language. The strictness of the German form mixed with the vividness of your Nepalese mother tongue. An interesting mix. Nepal is a jewel on the Earths surface, her majesty and charm should be protected, and yet exposed with dignity through words. You do your country justice and I find your bicultural understanding so unique and a marvel to read.' Reviewed by Heide Poudel in WritersDen.com 6/4/2007.

'Since 1974 I have been living on and off in Nepal, writing articles and publishing books about Nepal-- this beautiful Himalayan country. Even before I knew Satis Shroff personally (later) I was deeply impressed by his articles, which helped me very much to deepen my knowledge about Nepal.Satis Shroff is one of the very few Nepalese writers being able to compare ecology, development and modernisation in the ‘Third’ and ‘First’ World. He is doing this with great enthusiasm, competence and intelligence, showing his great concern for the development of his own country.' (Ludmilla Tüting, journalist and publisher, Berlin).

February 15, 2008 | 9:12 AM Comments  0 comments


Switzerland's Famous Carnival: Morgenstraich (Satis Shroff)
Related to country: Switzerland
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Morgenstraich: Switzerland’s Famous Carnival (Satis Shroff)

Switzerland’s famous carnival, the Morgenstraich, began on Monday morning at 4am, and is a world attraction with its magical atmosphere. The official lights of this cultural town went out and suddenly artistically decorated, self-made lanterns began to glow in the darkness that had enveloped Switzerland’s second biggest city.

The cliques of the Basler Fastnacht were gathered in their individual costumes in the narrow cobbled alleys of the olde historical town. Just before the signal was given, the motley clad people donned their outsized masks (Larven) and stood in formation like infanterists out to conquer a town, not with muskets but music. You hold your breath for a second in the darkness, even though you know that Basle vibrates with life.

Someone shouted at the top of his voice: “Morgenstraich, forwards march!” The people began to move to the melody of drums and piccolo flutes. If you didn’t want to lose contact with your near and dear ones you had to catch hands lest they be lost in the crowd. The piccolo flutes with their shrill notes are characteristic of Basle.

In the three days that follow there’s an outburst of colour, grotesque masks, music and satirical comments that are distributed on long strips of coloured paper along with tons of confetti and goodies for all and sundry. The people of Basle do it perfection, painstaking creativity and you can sense the dedication behind the celebrations.

The Rhine town vibrates to the music of the Fastnacht for three days and nights till Thursday at 3:59 according to Swiss time. The celebrations have an air of joy combined with disciplined behaviour, especially among the members of the Swiss cliques, where they see to it that no clique members starts dancing out of the disciplined formation. It is indeed the biggest flute concert in the world along the cobbled old town as they go about with their piccolos and drums---peacefully and traditionally. There’s none of the noisy ‘Narri, narro, helau’ that you hear and get to see on the German side of the Rhine.

And when you’re tired of walking around in the cold, cobbled streets of Basle, you enter one of the Altstadt Cafes where you can eat the traditional brown Mehlsuppe (flour-soup) with white Swiss wine and round onion and cheese cakes.

The Basler Fasnacht is regarded this year as an ideal chance to integrate foreign youth in the cliques, since they live in the town and their parents work who are migrants work in the area. Thomas Kessler, a guy from Zürich, who’s an admirer of the Basler Fastnacht, is also the chief of the ‘Integration Basle’ of the Security Department. He has integrated the second generation of migrant youth into the cliques because they need new members to carry out the Swiss tradition. The number of Swiss nationals taking part in the Basler Fastnacht has gone down to 20 per cent but a lot of children of the foreigners living in Basle and its suburbs take delight in the celebration and join the cliques when they reach their teens. To this effect the cliques have distributed flyers in nine languages in Basle’s schools. More and more Turks, who are actually Moslems, have been buying Fastnacht costumes for their kids so that their children have a sense of belonging to Basle’s Fastnacht tradition, which in turn is a Catholic festival. When it comes to the Basler Fastnacht, the boundaries between culture, religion and tradition seem to disappear. What counts is: do in Basle as the Basler do, namely celebrate Morgenstraich in this world-open city. And the Basler are an exuberant, fun-loving folk. Celebrating the Morgenstraich can be infectious and visitors are known to come again and again. Like yours truly for instance.
In the pre-Fastnacht days there are a lot of events in the theatres with the many cliques carrying names like: Barfiessler (barefoot), drummeli (drums) for music lovers, Pfyfferli for the friends of theatre, Mimosli for people who’re jolly, Zofinger-conzärtli for two finger concerts, which is meant for insiders, Drufftaggt for those who’d like to experiment, and the Charivari at the Volkshaus, which was originally created as an alternative to the Drummli and which was visited by Miss Switzerland Claudia Wambululu, and naturally a children’s Charivari version for the kiddies at the Theatre Basle, in which a certain Frau Fastnacht wants to do away with the Fastnacht celebrations, because she thinks that the children only think about the forthcoming Euro 08. The list of the pre-Fastnacht events seem to be longer each year.

The taverns, inns and restaurants are open all the time for the next 72 hours. The three beautiful days are called ‘drey scheenste Dääg’ in Schwyzer Deutsch. You can google or yahoo for these celebrations and events till Thursday in the internet under: http://fastnacht.ch.
Gruezi Miteinander. Cherrio.

February 10, 2008 | 4:50 PM Comments  0 comments


Seasonal event: Banishing Winter in Germany (Satis Shroff)
Related to country: Germany
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Seasonal event: ADIEU WINTER, PARTING IS PAINFUL (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)


It was 8 am on a snowy Monday morning. There were hundreds of motley clad and coloured spectators stomping their cold feet, all waiting for the boistrous merrymaking (Narrensprung) at Oberndorf, a picturesque town in south-west Germany.

On this cold, wintry morning the ghoulish, tragi-comical figures of Swabian-Allemanic origin were underway to drive away the chilly, unfriendly, bitter winter with much noise and ado. And there they came all 1,468 of them. Rows of toddlers and grown-ups, Swabian men and women in yellow and scarlet dresses with big cow-bells hanging from their shoulder-straps, and red roses and black-painted beards. Each had a small basket filled with bon-bons, sweets and chocolates which they threw to the public who greeted them with: ‘Narri, Narro!’ The costumed Narren, as they are called in Germany, were preceded by the eleven elders of the town.

The other masked figures were: the cute Hansele, the lame Schantle, Grottagoscha and the witches, whom you could recognize from the masks they were wearing and the notorious broom-sticks with which they’d provoke you. They came with pomp, music, tomfoolery and their characteristic movements, distributing sweets, oranges, brezeln (salty-bread), sausages and dry humour.

The fast-night (Fasnet) was originally the season of merrymaking just before Lent. But today it’s three days between Christmas and Ash Wednesday. The Fasnet is run by the different cliques (Zünfte) and there are : musical corps, garde-girls with beautiful long legs, gymnastic and acrobatic groups, clowns, witches, sheiks, belly dancers, people in their night-gowns. You name ‘em, they have ‘em. In Germany they say, when three Germans get together they create an association (Verein) and get organised. The planning, coordination and discipline that the German fasnet demands is organised with typical German thoroughness.

Masks always have an element of religion, myth or magic in them. There are people who wear masks to hide their Id which is normally written all over one’s face. With a mask you can transform your current facial expressions into another permanent one. You symbolise another being. At Fasnet or carnival-time a participant goes costumed in order to be what he always wanted to be, but never dared due to social inhibitions. If you’re wearing a mask you can really flip-out, without being recognised. A bored housewife might play the vamp for three days, and an over-worked and under-paid clerk portrays a billion-dollar sheik.

Back to the Narrensprung again. The most adorable cavalier amongst the Narren is the Narro from Oberndorf, with his Brezelstange (salty bread held on a long pole). The motley fools (Narren) besides having their carnival licence, freedom and rights, also have their rules of conduct during the processions and the merry-making period. For instance in Schramberg, which I had visited the previous winter, you have to sing the refrain: ‘Hairy, hairy is the cat. And when the cat isn’t hairy, then the maidens will not like it!’ Then and only then, will you be blessed with a delicious brezel. Horst and Andrea, some friends of mine who took part in the costumed proces­sion had certainly made me sing the Fasnet-song before they handed me the Brezelsegen. It had been lovely to know someone under the masks.

But don’t be surprised if a Narro clobbers you with an inflated pig’s bladder tied at the end of a stick in Elzach. Or when another holds you with his wooden scissors, and a pair of hideously masked witches grab your arms and legs,in case you are a pretty female, put you in a cart and you become a part of the procession, and the nasty witches pour buckets of confetti over you. It’s carnival time, and you can’t afford to get mad at anyone. Humour is the order of the day.

During the Third Reich the National Socialists tried to cover up the religious origin of the Fasnet, by giving it so-called Germanic traits. But even they didn’t really succeed in changing the tradition of the Narrensprung and the meeting-of the-cliques (Zünftetreffen). The historical and traditional springing-of-the-knaves in Villingen, Überlingen, Elzach, Rottweil and Oberndorf-upon-the-Neckar dates back to the early Middle Ages. In the beautiful town of Rottweil you can get to see 3,000 Narren in historical masks: the Federhannes, Schantle and the Biter or Guller.

However, with urbanisation the old Fasnet traditions have somehow lost their true colours, religious significance and the vegetarian-cult. Fasnet has sadly enough become merely an excuse for fun-making and revelry in the towns. The province, nevertheless, tries to retain the traditional character, with strict dress, mask and behavioural regulations. For instance a narro who gets drunk and creates a nuisance risks getting banned by the organisation committee.

On Wednesday night at 7:30 pm some German friends of mine and I drove to Dorhan, a small village near Oberndorf to watch the traditional Fasnet-burning. In the middle of this Swabian village there was an open space surrounded by fir-trees. The eerie Fasnet figures came wildly dancing from all sides with flaming torches. There were ugly witches with crooked noses, Dornhaner Lauser with lice painted on the backs of their tunics, the charming leggy garde-girls in Prussian step, the village band and naturally a figure dressed like an old witch to symbolise winter.

After a short speech in Swabian dialect with the words: ‘Now the winter will be burnt and banned and the days of revelry are over’, the figure was set afire. As the flames grew bigger and bigger, their shadows also took gigantic proportions and the witches and ghoulish Lausers and Narros shed tears and wailed and howled (feigned naturally).
Well, the winter was driven away, but I still had cold feet.
ENDS

(Satis Shroff is a writer and poet who lives in Freiburg (Germany). He writes regularly for The American Chronicle (www.Amchron.com) and its affiliated twenty-one newspapers in the USA. He has published two text-books on Nepali for Germans (Horlemann Verlag, Bad Honnef) and has written for Nelles Verlag's guidebook ' Nepal' (Munich), The Christian Science Monitor, The Fryburger, The Rising Nepal, The Independent, Himal Asia and Radio Nepal).

February 5, 2008 | 1:39 AM Comments  0 comments
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Fasnetzeit: How the Germans and the Swiss Celebrate Their Days of Fasting (Satis Shroff)
Related to country: Switzerland
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Fastnachtzeit in Friburg (Germany) and Basle (Switzerland) (Satis Shroff)

When we cry ‘Narri, Narro!’in Freiburg, they rejoice in Cologne, Mainz and Düsseldorf, for it is carnival-time. And the German and Swiss TV channels have mostly carnivals on their screens. But most of the people, young and old, are out in the streets of their towns and enjoying themselves with merry-making and repitition of Fasnet slogans.

In Freiburg there were the usual shoppers and pedestrians between the Kaiser-Joseph street and the town council (Rathaus) and small costumed kids dubbed “the Eckeplätzer” came with flutes, trumpets and drums what the Germans and Swiss are wont to call ‘Guggemusic.’ The knaves shouted ‘Narri, Narro’ on top of their voices, and the onlookers were treated with long red sausages, crepe,` Flammkuchen, a speciality with cheese and bacon from Alsace and, of course, American doughnuts introduced by the occupation GIs.

This was followed by the big procession of the Badische knaves organisation in the third meeting of the knaves (Narren) with 10,000 participants and many other Freiburger knaves, witches, ghoulish figures as the highlight of the Fasnet celebrations.

On Rose-Monday you are awakened the Wühlmäuse, people masked and costumed as moles at 7:30 am, and a bit later at 8:11 your are startled by the cries of the Ribblinghieler. On February 5, which is called the Fasnet-Zischdig, the celebrations come to an end, like in Tiengen where the decorated Fasnet tree is pulled down , followed by the burial of Ignaz at the Tuniberg house. The Fasnets-burning takes place at 12 o’clock in the night, which symbolises the end of the days of fasting. And on Ash Wednesday the purses and wallets are washed in front of the Freiburger town council building (Rathaus). This tradition demands that empty wallets and purses be immersed in the water of the Freiburger Bächle because till the next year the water of the Bächle is expected to turn into currency notes. What a wonderful Allemanic belief, isn’t it? And they say, if you are a stranger and fall into the Freiburger Bächle (small water-canal), which runs through the city, then you are obliged to marry a Freiburger damsel. I must admit it happened to me, and I wouldn’t change this Allemanic damsel for another. Great customs and beliefs, don’t you think so?

I like it in these times of Fasnet when people are merry, sociable, laughing and there’s a lot of clownery and no seriousness, because life is earnest enough, provided there’s not much alcohol, alcopops involved.

In the Black Forest town of Wolfach the people come out at 5:30 in the morning costumed Narren figures come wearing white night gowns, long caps and white stockings like out of a Carl Spitzberg oil painting. The people of Wolfach are woken up by a lot of noise-making using trumpets, trombones, flutes, drums and in the afternoon there’s a jolly big procession. The Germans and the Swiss like it loud with brass-bands, samba dancing, percussions-on-wheels, Gugge-music and a lot of oomph.

The Fasnet Monday begins in Rottweil at 8am with a four-hour ‘springing-of-the-knaves’ (Narrensprung). Thousands of classical costumed Narren figures come through the old gate of Rottweil and scatter themselves everywhere in the olde town historical town. The Rottweiler do it with style. In Munderking there’s a fountain around which the knaves dance at first before jumping three times into the icy waters of the fountain. They strengthen themselves with a swig of hot wine.

. The highlight of the Fasnet Sunday is in Elzach at 8pm when the torch procession takes place. The torches are lit and the famous and notorious Schuddig, with his inflated pig’s bladder dangling from a stick with which he clobbers the teasing onlookers, walks along this Black Forest town---which is immersed in a ghostly light.

Swiss Fastnacht: It must be mentioned that last year’s Fastnacht celebration in Basle (Switzerland) was marred by the death of a boy, who was eagerly collecting goodies in the street and he was crushed by a procession wagon. This year the security committee has promised to be stricter so that such accidents don’t occur again. 12,000 active members of the Swiss Fastnacht will be taking part in the street parades, and this year 485 groups will be walking, dancing or driving by distributing sweets, chocolates, flying kisses and bombarding the spectators with confetti cannons to the sound of reggae, hip hop, salsa, samba, techno and other rhythms. There will be around 100 sujets or themes, a few of which are listed here: the noise-tolerance of the Basler citizens, littering (the Swiss want to keep their country clean), SVP, a political party, women and gendering, Euro 08 and global climate-problems with Swiss undertones.

You can hear the noisy Guggen music again in Lucern, the monsters dance and quite a few Luzerner are high on alcohol and sway around the sidewalks. Fastnacht, the nights of fasting, have begun in catholic Switzerland. A big bang opens the Narrenzeit with 12,000 early risers, which is 2000 more than last year, and the ‘most beautiful week of the year’ begins. No one is spared in the week of merry-making, satire and lampoonery, not even the politicians, with all their misdeeds of the past year. In traditional Luzern a person named Brother Fritschi get kidnapped and jailed in the town council hall by costumed Swiss soldiers. 500 years ago the Basler stole Luzern’s Fasnacht figure of identification, and the two Swiss cities re-enact the spectacle from those days. Brother Fritschi is put in chains for half a year, till he is kidnapped by the Basler.

On the day of Basle’s Morgenstraich, when the lights go out, people in the streets hold hands and celebrate the traditional Fastnacht, Brother Fritschi and Frau Basilea are invited as the guests of honour by the local government and peer at the Basler Fastnacht procession from the terrace of the town council.

After the long Morgenstraich, I love to have the traditional Basler Mehlsuppe (flour soup), croissant and coffee. You ought to try it too. I personally prefer the Swiss Fasnet to the German one because it’s well-organised, and when the lights go out at 5am in Switzerland’s second biggest city Basle, there’s an eerie atmosphere when the drums begin to beat, followed by the shrill and high sound of the typical piccolo flutes. When the sun shines you see isolated, masked piccolo flute players in their colourful costumes in different parts of the Swiss town playing on their flutes---oblivious of the world.

February 4, 2008 | 1:54 AM Comments  0 comments


Vanishing Nepalese of Alabama (Satis Shroff)
Related to country: Canada
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Updated article:

DESI USA: Media got missing Nepali workers story wrong

For those who heard about the missing Nepali workers from a Huntsville manufacturing company, here is a twist in the story. Kashish Das Shrestha,a New York-based freelancer, who is currently in Huntsville, says that the localnews media had misreported some important facts.

According to his report, the workers did not steal any furniture from the apartments. Also, according to Huntsville's local newspaper, the workers were under nocontract to stay with the job at Cinram. They came to the United States on H-2B visas, still valid for several months.

WAAY-TV, which broke the news, had earlier reported that some of the Nepalese allegedly stole furniture and television sets. CNN's Bill Tucker, reporting for Lou Dobbs Tonight, also repeated the theft allegation with some regular comments on US immigration policy. (read the full transcript below).

Kashish's report is published on Samudaya.org:


The apartments are operated by a company called Total ManagementServices, and are furnished with old couches and beds. The furnitureconsists of no more than plastic tables and chairs, the kind that aremore commonly used in the garden. Most rooms also come with oldtelevision sets, and the landlords had promised to give the Nepalitenants a DVD player per apartment if they paid their rents on thefirst of every month. "We moved furnitures around from room to theother, but we haven't stolen anything," said one of the workersrequesting anonymity.

One thing that is clear amongst the 40 or so Nepalis workers left,from the original lot of about 240, is that each is now stricken withparanoia and embarrassment. "It was very humiliating for us to go towork when the media reported that we were thieves," said a worker. "Andnow, even though we had plans to leave Cinram after some time, forwhatever reason, we are worried that we will be caught."

You can contact Kashish at kashish[at]nepaliaawaz[dot]com.

Post your comments below.

And Huntsville's local newspaper now reports that the workers could leave at any time.


From The Huntsville Times:

Most didn't go home; they found better jobs

As Huntsville's new labor strategy makes headlines onthe opposite side of the globe, the Nepalese workers whocontinue to pack boxes at Cinram say their missingcountrymen didn't leave without an official OK.

The short form letter stated that employment was at-will ofthe company, adding that: "Employees are free torelinquish their positions at any time, with or withoutcause."

Here is the full transcript from Lou Dobbs Tonight.

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Approximately 100 guest workers from Nepal at this Cinram plant in Huntsville, Alabama,have abandoned their jobs and their apartments. No one knows for surewhere any of the workers have gone. The owners of the apartment complexwhere the workers were living say they left without notice and claimthat they stripped the furnished apartments of furniture and TVs.

MARYSNOPL, LANDLORD: I don't know if they're living in Huntsville orsomewhere else. I just know they aren't living with us and they aren'tworking at Cinram.

TUCKER: The initial news of the disappearancetouched off security concerns. One local county official who had beenopposed to the company bringing in the workers raised concerns of aterrorist threat.

MO BROOKS, COUNTY COMMISSIONER: Cinram insistedthat there were long background checks and Cinram was vouching to thecitizenry of Madison County that they had this program under control,when apparently they did not.

TUCKER: Cinram dismisses thoseconcerns, noting that each worker underwent a background check by theDepartment of Homeland Security. The company issued the followingstatement:Quote, "All of the H-2B Visa applications must bescreened by the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department ofLabor, the U.S. Counselor in their local country as well as the U.S.Embassy in their local country."A spokesman for the UnitedStates Citizenship and Immigration Service confirms DHS does dobackground checks, but that doesn't answer the questions of where those100 workers went or why. A company spokesman says he believes as workslowed down, the workers just decided to sightsee the country ratherthan work.

TUCKER: And it also doesn'tanswer the question why the company needed to hire 1,141 workers fromfive foreign countries to work in its plant in Alabamainstead of hiring Americans. The company says there weren't enoughlocals to fill the jobs. They pay around $8.50 an hour so they went toNepal. And while the terms of the H-2B Visa do allow travel, there's noway to know to where these workers went and Kitty (INAUDIBLE) there'sno way to know if in fact they will leave when their visas expire.

PILGRIM: There are so many open questions on this entire story, it's almost preposterous.

TUCKER:I know. You would think that Cleveland, for example, might be a littlecloser than Nepal, so that if workers there needed work, they could gothere. But then Kitty they'd probably have to pay them more.

PILGRIM: Unbelievable. Thanks very much, Bill Tucker.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Older version:

About 100 Nepali migrant workers are missing from a DVD manufacturing plant and nobody seems to know where they went or what happened. But there is plenty speculation.
About 100 people who came from Nepal to work at a north Alabama factory seemingly vanished from a pair of apartment buildings, along with a lot of furniture and appliances, and can't be located, officials said Tuesday.    

Immigration agents are trying to determine what happened to the Nepalese workers, among hundreds brought to the United States to work at a DVD factory operated by Cinram Inc., said Lauren Bethune, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Homeland Security.
These workers were hired to work 12-hour shifts for $8/hour.

WAAY-TV, said the group of workers from Nepal simply disappeared without any warning, creating a potential security risk. Before leaving, some of the Nepalese allegedly stole furniture and television sets from their furnished apartments. Cinram spokeswoman Lyne Fisher says the missing workers do not pose a security threat.

Officials at Cinram and Blair Staffing Agency said they believe most of these workers got homesick and went back to Nepal. That has not been verfified by the tracking system that Homeland Security officials use. Not the most logical reason from Cinram officials. Why would 100 people get homesick at the same time and want to go back home together?

The funny thing is that nobody knows what kind of visas these workers came with. But their landlords seemed to make some sense. Landlords at the apartment complex where the Nepalese workers had lived said they had scattered to New York, Florida, and other places across the country. Homeland Security officials said the investigation is ongoing.

There have been quite a few individual cases in the past where Nepalis, some of whom were famous actors and artists in Nepal, vanished from the place they were issued their visas for and moved to another place in search of work.
The Ontario-based multimedia products manufacturers, had hired about 1,350 foreign workers last fall to package DVDs at its plant in Huntsville. They have two other manufacturing plants in the United States - in  Richmond, Indiana and Olyphant, Pennsylvania.
Besides Nepal, the company has used foreign workers from Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Ukraine.

Please post your thoughts below.

Posted by Anup Kaphle at 07:55 PM in Current Affairs, Immigration, Nepal | Permalink
Comments:This is a really strange story. Everybody around here (Huntsville, Alabama) is really buzzing about it, especially since there was a lot of noise about them being brought in in the first place. What's Going On At Cinram? http://www.eastofhuntsville.com/2008/01/whats-going-on-at-cinram.html

Posted by: EastOfHuntsville.com | January 30, 2008 at 11:46 PM
According to The Associated Press (AP), the officials could not locate the Nepalis who went missing from Huntsville of Alabama state.

"We do not in any way consider it a security threat, but we do think it is important," Lauren Bethune, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Homeland Security, was quoted as saying. Reports last fall said Cinram had hired about 1,350 foreign workers to package DVDs at its plant in Huntsville. Cinram _ which describes itself as the world's largest maker of prerecorded multimedia products _ said it turned to foreign workers because the area job market couldn't fill its needs.

Bethune said about 100 immigrants were believed to be missing. Agents are trying to determine exactly what type of visas they used to enter the United States.

"It's possible that they had work visas, they expired, and they went home," she said.
The workers can earn $8 an hour working 12-hour shifts packing DVDs in boxes. Besides Nepal, Cinram has used foreign workers from Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Ukraine.
Posted by: kds

When will business realize that when they employ foreign workers or they move operations overseas ie out of the country, they remove a consumer base. Unemployed or underemployed American workers cannot purchase product and foreign workers put our money into the foreign nation's economy. No wonder we are in a recession.
Posted by: Mary Ann Watt

Do they make $8 an hour, or is a deduction made for transportation to the US and for rent?
So the company, (after an exhaustive search), could not find a single worker from any city in the entire USA to take this job. They were forced to go to Bolivia, Dominician Republic, Jamaica and Ukraine. It would seem the foreign workers don't get overtime pay and no fringe benefits. So we are looking at another corporation that finds another way to save a buck.
Corporate Greed is the real reason.
Next, will we see child labor being imported because add any reason you want, as long as the corporation saves a buck.
I agree with Mary Ann Watt, no wonder we are in a recession......duh!!
----------------------------------
Quelle/Source: www.saja.org

February 1, 2008 | 1:10 PM Comments  0 comments
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