THIS WEEK FEATURING: The Masai Mara National Park, Saucer Smear, Peter Rojcewicz and the Men In Black, Movies This Week, Mini-review of The Kite Runner, Elderly Ladies Go To Kenya for Sex, Alistair Appleton drinks Ayahuasca, The Sinking of the MV Explorer, Monkey Meat for Thanksgiving Dinner, and more…

 

I prefer ugliness to beauty, because ugliness endures.

                                      Serge Gainsbourg

 

The Masai. The Masai (Maasai) are one of the best known African tribes distinctive for their tall muscular features, fierce reputation, and especially their appearance. As proud warriors they carry their spears and wear a bright blood-red shoulder cloak (shuka).

The women wear bangles and strings of colored beads around their neck and both sexes wear earrings, taking pride in stretching large holes in their ear lobes and cutting the earlobe in two (pictured). The women generally have shaved heads (head-shaving is a significant feature of some rituals, both for men and women).In the early 1960's the Masai lost most of their territory during the government land redistribution programs. With the creation of the Masai Mara National Reserve, the Masai receive 19% of the entry fees.

You can become an honorary member of the Masai for a $400 initiation ceremony. The Masai are semi-nomadic pastoralists. Cattle are a major sign of wealth and exchanged during marriage (10 cows buys a wife). The quantity of cattle is more important than the quality. 

Masai families live in an Enkang (containing 10-20 small squat huts made from branches pasted with fresh cow-dung (by the women) which bakes hard under the hot sun. Masai huts are very small, with not enough height for  people to stand upright or lie fully stretched. They are also very dark with a small door-way and tiny hole in the roof.

Both sexes are initiated into young adulthood through circumcision. For boys it is between the ages of 15-18 and much younger for girls. I asked our Masai guide, when he introduced the subject of male circumcision, about Female Genital Cutting, which the Masai practice. He told me that Westerner organizations have indeed come several times and tried to make them stop female circumcision, but they were told to go home. The Masai were insulted that Westerners have tried to change their customs. A Masai man would never marry a woman who was not circumcised. The Masai are fiercely independent and whatever the Kenyan government does has little effect on them. (Photos: a Masai woman with her child; I look strange posing with the Masai ladies; Masai men win favor with women by how high they can jump; shopping at the Masai Duty Free Shops; and my favorite, a little boy rushed up to help his father make fire. I took a fire-making lesson and had a friend digitally record it for my Survivor audition tape.)

What? You Didn’t Serve Thanksgiving Monkey? A few weeks ago I wrote in TDH about “bushmeat,” so I was surprised to read about a legal case in New York City regarding a woman, Mamie Manneh (she has nine children!), who was charged with meat smuggling that has touched off issues of religious freedom, infectious diseases and wildlife preservation.

The case "appears to be the first of its kind relating to that uniquely African product," Manneh’s defense attorney Jan Rostal said. The federal prosecution also has dampened spirits at the church in Staten Island where Manneh and other African immigrants once packed the pews to practice a religion blending Christianity and tribal customs. One of the few worshippers left, Leona Artis, says the congregation's appetite for monkey meat is deeply misunderstood.

"Where some people have turkey, we'll have monkey meat," Artis said. "Nobody ever ate it, got sick and died from it. I've been eating it all my life. It's delicious."

The monkey meat case dates to early 2006, when federal inspectors at JFK Airport examined a shipment of 12 cardboard boxes from Guinea and addressed to Manneh. Stashed underneath the smoked fish, the customs inspectors found what West Africans refer to as bushmeat: "skulls, limbs and torsos of non- human primate species" plus the hoof and leg of a small antelope, according to court papers.”

Movies This Week. “Strength and Honor,” (YES), “The Savages” (YES), “The Kite Runner” (YES) and “Juno” (YES, YES). 

Fascinating character study and not about kids flying kites.

 

The Kite Runner. “The Kite Runner” is not about Afghanistan kids flying kites; instead it is a harrowing story brought to life by 007’s next director, Marc Forster. Hopefully, “The Kite Runner” foretells what we are in store for with the next installment of the 007 franchise. Forster can handle complex characters without pounding the audience over the head with a message. He has made no concessions to what Hollywood thinks we can handle. “The Kite Runner,” with no stars and subtitles for two-thirds of the film, is a brilliant, must-see film.

 

 

 

 

The story begins in 1978 with two 12-year-old boys, Amir and Hassan (pictured). Yet the two friends come from very different economic and social classes: Amir’s father Baba is an aristocratic scholar and pundit; Hassan’s father Ali has worked as a servant for Amir’s family for 40 years. Ali and Hassan live in Baba’s large compound and while Baba treats the boys equally, Amir feels his father hates him for his mother’s death in childbirth. Hassan is also motherless but is, emotionally and mentally, the stronger of the two. Both boys love the national sport of kite flying and it is the only way that Amir feels he can win his father’s admiration since Baba was a champion when he was a boy.

 

Hassan is Amir’s loyal friend and companion in a society that has strict class codes. In another era Hassan would have been a prince’s “whipping boy.” After Amir wins the kite competition and Hassan goes off to fetch the prized kite, he is assaulted by higher-status boys. Amir watches the sexual attack but does not come to his friend’s aid. To remove his shame – he knows his father believes he is indeed a spineless coward and would have condemned his lack of heroism – he must get rid of Hassan and thus ignites a tragic tale.

 

Why the Taliban came to power and why the Afghan people supported them is not addressed. After the oppressive Soviet occupation and then civil war, Afghans saw the deeply religious Taliban as a solution against widespread corruption and ruthless warlords. The Taliban re-united the country, restored peace, and renewed commerce. However, their success was brought about through the institution of a very strict interpretation of Sharia, Islamic law.

Not shown in “The Kite Runner” was the Taliban's treatment of women. Girls were forbidden to go to school, women were barred from working outside the home and forced to wear the burqa (I asked John to bring me back one from Afghanistan). Women were prohibited from leaving their home without a male relative—those that did so risked being beaten, even shot, by officers of the "ministry for the protection of virtue and prevention of vice." A woman caught wearing fingernail polish may have had her fingertips chopped off.

In 2000 the Taliban cracked down on cultivation of opium production by two-thirds. Unfortunately, the crackdown on opium also abruptly deprived thousands of Afghans of their only source of income. I recently saw a National Geographic Channel program, “Explorer: Heroin Crisis” stating that with the end of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the country now accounts for 93 per cent of the world's opium production, the raw ingredients for heroin. Afghanistan produces 30% more opium than the world uses.

In October, 2001, the U.S. led an invasion of Afghanistan and supposedly got rid of the Taliban.

Yet, as of 2007, the Taliban is coming back!  Civilian deaths caused by the bombing campaigns of international troops are linked to the resurgence of the Taliban.

Our Antarctica Cruise vs. MV Explorer’s Sinking. For the 2004 holidays we took a cruise to Antarctica on the MV Discovery. This was a breathtaking revelatory experience.

 

 

How many people throughout history have been to Antarctica? It also brings into sharp focus that our planet will survive - anything. There is much more to Earth then people!  Man is a side-project. An experiment! Perhaps even a malfunction to be corrected in due time.

 

With much interest, I watched the unfolding drama of the sinking of MV Explorer, supposedly having hit an iceberg.

 

Where’s the iceberg? I’m not implying it didn’t hit an iceberg, but where’s the iceberg?  In the photos we took, you can clearly see the icebergs. They are huge! And on these regular trips, a cruise ship’s path must be pretty routine.

 

According to news reports, the 100-passenger vessel had apparently hit an iceberg and was taking on water. Around 3 a.m. all of Explorer's passengers — plus some crew, though not the captain and a dozen staff — were put into the ship's lifeboats and Zodiacs (small inflatable boats). The Explorer was in the middle of a 19-day tour of South Georgia Island and the Antarctic Peninsula. Twelve miles south of King George Island at the accident position, it was still dark, the air temperature in the low 30s, with water temperature a degree or two below freezing. (Below, on the left, our ship the MV Discovery, on the right, we board Zodiacs to go ashore.)

Accidents in the Antarctic by tourist ships is said to be “not uncommon.” Last year, the Nord Cap, the sister ship to the Nord Norge, ran aground near Deception Island (we were there!) and had to unload its passengers onto the Norge. The last ship to sink in Antarctic waters was the Bahia Paraiso, which sank off Janus and DeLaca islands in 1989. With 25,000 tourists now visiting each year, on more than 50 ships, accidents are an increasing concern.

According to one of the Explorer's crew, the ship had apparently hit something — most likely an iceberg — which made a fist-size hole in the hull. The 2,400-tonne vessel set out from the port of Ushuaia on Argentina's southern tip on November 11 for a 19-day trip through the Drake Passage. (Photo on left of just one iceberg we passed; on right, our charming dinner companions, George Solis (l) and Robert F. Mimm. George and Bob, champion race walkers, were terrific friends and we loved seeing them at every meal. Of course, the staff was alerted – and astonished - to my strictly adhered to shamanic diet.)

The Explorer is said to be one of the best-known specialist cruise ships in the world.

Saucer Smear. Our dear friend James Mosley self-publishes the brilliant “Saucer Smear” – It’s Still Shockingly Close to the Truth – and in his self-anointed glorious Christmas 2007 issue has this report from the October 2007 issue of “UFO Magazine” about two of my friends from my New York days as a UFO huntress/abductee wanna-be.

 

 

 

 

Mosley writes: “First, there is a very long letter to the editor from famed abduction guru Budd Hopkins, in which he severely bashes famed ufologist Whitley Strieber. Both of these gentlemen are known for the emotionalism and god-given ability to take themselves Very Seriously Indeed. One of the issues is whether or not Whitley’s wife once admitted publicly that all of her husband’s books are fiction – not just the ones clearly labeled as fiction.” http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/

 

 

When I lived in New York I was a frequent guest at Budd’s Greenwich Village townhouse. I’ve also known Whitley for many years and whenever he comes to Las Vegas, we meet him and Anne the dinner. So why dreg up the now decades old antagonism between these two? They will be forever linked together. Between them over the years both have lived through illnesses and traumas, yet they are still picking at that abduction scab.

 

I will always cherish what our irascible friend Philip J. Klass said about the whole abduction wave: ''In coming years, when psychotherapists encounter patients who describe nightmares involving curious 'sexual-medical procedures' performed by strange-looking creatures and these patients express fears that they are victims of an extraterrestrial genetic experiment, it would be fitting if their malaise were referred to as 'Hopkins Syndrome,' in honor of the author of 'Intruders.' ''

 

(Group photo taken in the late 1980’s at Dr. Michael Grosso’s Riverdale, New York apartment. In the middle row crouching down is Peter Rojcewicz, Michael Grosso, Louise Grosso, and Jim (holding a glass). Back row immediately behind Jim is literary agent/publisher Sandra Martin. The other photo is of Whitley and my son Vladimir Lacas taken in 1980’s at an upstate New York high school where Whitley gave a talk. Was that the evening the audience held an outdoor vigil calling down a UFO?

 

Peter and The Men In Black. Peter Rojcewicz is a professor of humanities and folklore at Julliard School in New York who also teaches at the C.J. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology. One day in 1980 he found himself in a library on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania browsing through a book on UFOs. The book had been recommended to him by a colleague who erroneously assumed that Rojcewicz, as a folklorist, would be interested in it.

 

At some point Rojcewicz became aware of a wrinkled black pant leg and a scuffed black shoe out of the corner of his eye. He looked up to find a man well over six feet tall and weighing no more than 140 pounds standing before him. The figure was dressed in a black suit which "looked as though [it had been] slept in for three days." The man's shirt was bright white, nearly matching his deathly pallor.

 

 

Completely uninvited, the man flopped down in a chair next to Rojcewicz and asked what he was doing. Rojcewicz replied that he was looking at a book about UFOs. The man asked if Rojcewicz had ever seen a UFO, to which the professor replied in the negative.

The man then asked Rojcewicz if he believed that UFOs were real. Rojcewicz responded that he really didn't have an opinion one way or another and that, after studying the book in front of him, he realized that he didn't have much of an interest in the subject. The man suddenly screamed, "Flying saucers are the most important fact of the century and you are not interested?" The man then suddenly rose as awkwardly as he had sat down and appeared to regain his composure. He put his hand on Rojcewicz's shoulder, said quietly, "Go well on your purpose," and with that took his leave.

Within ten seconds of the strange man's departure, Rojcewicz was engulfed by fear. He believed that he had had a genuinely paranormal experience, and the idea terrified him. He took a walk around the library in an attempt to collect his thoughts. Strangely, he could not find another living soul in the building. He returned to where he had been sitting, absolutely befuddled. An hour or so later he got up to walk the library again. This time everything seemed back to normal. It was not until later that Rojcewicz heard of MIB. He has since become one of the leading authorities on the subject. http://members.tripod.com/~RealMIB/petermib.html. (Private message for Peter: Come to Las Vegas and I’ll introduce to the man in the photo on the left.)

 

Mombasa, Kenya Haven for Older Women Looking for Sex. It used to be the Bahamas and Jamaica (remember the stampede to go there after “How Stella Got Her Grove Back”?) Just like old coots who take decades-younger wives and reward them with acting jobs and boutique businesses, author Terry McMillan bested all of them by writing a book about her 22 years younger Jamaican lover who changed her life into a fairy tale. How did he thank her? After six years of marriage to McMillan, Jonathan Plummer told her he was gay. McMillan was furious, embarrassed and humiliated.

Did she treat him like a house slave? Where Terry’s friends too afraid of her to tell her Jonathan was gay? What’s wrong with having a gay husband? All the gossip says Star Jones’s husband is gay.

Apparently, they had a successful sex life. If Plummer was gay, he must have preformed quite impressively since McMillan moved him into her 4 million dollar mansion and then married him.

Terry, when your husband wants to open a dog grooming business, it’s a clue. (Pictured above, Terry and Jonathan face off on Oprah. Other photo of what I did in Kenya.)

Now it’s Kenya! African men have a different cultural view of women. If you are older than 40 in the U.S., the culture is finished with you as a sexual being. You are told your sexual attractiveness is behind you. Not a size 4, but a size 14? You’ve got white hair and a belly? African men will admire you. They like to see you eat a big meal.

While I was not aware of this when in Kenya (we were on safari not sex-tourism), this story has just appeared in the U.K. press:

“Bethan, 56, lives in southern England next to her best friend Allie, 64.

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls." Hard figures are difficult to come by, but locals estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex!

“Bethan, was with her 20-year-old date, and white-haired Allie was with her six-foot-four 23-year-old “boyfriend” from the Masai tribe.

“As many as 15,000 girls in four coastal districts in Kenya, about a third of all 12-18 year-olds girls, are involved in casual sex for cash. Up to 3,000 more girls and boys are in full-time sex work. Now, there are thousands of elderly white women hoping for romantic, and legal, encounters with much younger Kenyan men.

“Experts say some thrive on the social status and financial power that comes from taking much poorer, younger lovers. "This is what is sold to tourists by tourism companies -- a kind of return to a colonial past, where white women are served, serviced, and pampered by black minions," said Julia Davidson, an academic at Nottingham University.

“Typically, the female tourists are on the lookout for men like Joseph. Flashing a dazzling smile and built like an Olympic basketball star, the 22-year-old said he has slept with more than 100 white women, most of them 30 years his senior. "When I go into the clubs, those are the only women I look for now," he told Reuters.”

 

 

The Man Who Drank the Universe. A link to a film by Brown Eyed Boy & Alistair Appleton was sent to me by Silvia Polivoy since I am a member of the ayahuasca.tribe.net. The 34 minute 17 second video details the October 2004 adventure of Alistair Appleton, a British TV presenter who agreed to drink the hallucinogenic tea with 10 other participants under the watchful eye of Argentinian psychotherapist Silvia Polivoy. the man who drank the universe- Google Video