Samurai Baseball

I fell in love with baseball seven years ago. With Japanese baseball that is. The game, the colours, the fans, the synchronised cheering; I fell in love with it all. When you spend a summer in a typical Japanese family in Osaka, odds are there will be baseball on tv every night during dinner. We cheer for the 'Hanshin Tigers', Osaka's number one baseball team, except for the fact that we don't usually win much. The best thing about the Tigers is the fans. The Tigers are famous for their fanatic devotees, about which many an anthropological study has been conducted (see WW Kelly). I did not know this at the time, but a couple of years after spending my first summer in Japan I wound up studying my team in University in Leiden. Some years after that I went back to Japan and saw my team play 'live' in Osaka against their arch enemies; the Tokyo Yumiori Giants. Life takes the strangest turns sometimes.

This year I found myself in another of such experiences. I went to see a baseball game two days ago, together with my two host-sisters and my host-mom. The experience is worth sharing with you. Baseball is not a male oriented sport here, so we were bringing our girl-power to the new Kyocera Dome in Osaka. Unfortunately our Tigers were fighting the Giants in Tokyo so we went to see 'the other Osaka' team (which obviously takes precedence over any Tokyo team), the Buffaloes. They were playing the Lions. I wondered why you would call your team 'Buffaloes' in a competition where Tigers and Lions are around too...the odds were against us this evening.

The Japanese take their baseball very seriously, like they take most things in life. Japanese baseball is meticulously planned at six in the evening, so ensure that the supporters can come in straight after work and the game ends in time for the last train (Japanese baseball games have a time limit).The dome was beautiful, the blue plastic toy chairs with too little leg space for a foreigner were slightly uncomfortable, the suspense was omnipresent.
Cheerleaders and mascottes with massive cartoon heads were intoducing the players. When the commentator mumbles something non-japanese sounding you'll know the next player will be a Gaijin (lit. outside-person, used to describe all foreigners). Most professional teams in Japan have at least one gaijin player, coming from American or Australian competitions, and they are usually worshiped as tall oddities amongst fans. In comparison: the Tigers' Japanese star batter is 1.69m in height. A 1.98m, 105kg tobaco-chewing American pitcher might look a tad scary to them. These gaijin players often have a translator accompanying them during practice and games, to make sure they understand what's going on. They always look slightly baffled when being interviewed for Japanese tv-shows (worthy of blogs of their own), donned with a general 'what am I doing here?' expression on their face.

We were led to our seats by a girl in a red t-shirt that said 'Security'. These security people are positioned all around the dome during the game. She has a whisle around her neck which she will sound when a foul ball is hit in her direction, in order to warn the spectators to mind their heads. The stadium commentator will say something like: 'Foul ball coming your way, please be careful, Go-chui kudasai!' The word 'security' takes on an entirely different meaning here.

The bellies of the cheerleaders reflected all available light, since tanning is a fashion no-no in Japan. The dome was slowly filling up with salary-men in cheap suits carrying laptop bags coming straight from work for a Kirin-drenched night out with their colleagues. At foul balls you will see them crawling on the floor to find it, most with their sleeves rolled up, some with their jackets still on because they are either too junior or too senior to take them off this early in the evening. Little kids wearing their own baseball outfits carry little plastic bats to clap along with the songs. Make no mistake, grown men and women will be just as enthousiastic in incessantly clapping their bats and waving their scarves at precisely the right moments: that is, when everyone else is doing it too.

The big screen on the other end of the dome showed flashy advertisements between innings and slow motion replays of players donned with sparkling words like 'Good Play!', 'Struck Out', and 'Timely!'. The seating area next to the screen on the other end of the field is reserved for the die-hard fans, the Japanese hooligans, so to speak. This fan-base is very well organised and again, taken very seriously. There are different ranks one can belong to, including those of Small Flag Waver, Drum Player, Trumpet Player, Crowd Conductor and Big Flag Waver. I imagine the Big Flag Wavers are the coolest, because there were only two of those at this game. The hooligan side of the stadium decides which song is sung when and for how long. The rest of the crowd joins in. Every player has their own song (some even have two) which will be performed by the small brass band, accompanied by all the excited fans present. Some songs have dances, too. While walking up to the plate players get everyone to wave their scarves counter-clockwise above their heads or clap their bats in a certain rythm. Battle cries will come from all sides at exactly the same time. Sometimes I wonder if everyone has an earpiece I don't know about...

The game is exciting and the home-runs are fantastic. I am enjoying every second and every sausage-on-a-stick of it. While my host mom was listening to the Tigers lose against the Giants on the radio next to me, the Buffaloes beat the Lions; 9-4. Anything goes in the Japanese jungle.

Dissertation Summary

A three page summary of my Masters dissertation, for those of you interested.

Pluralist Paradise? The Interreligious Situation in Paramaribo, Suriname.
This research aims to help analyse Suriname as a multi-religious society and to see how in this society religion is apparently used as a means for preventing conflict rather than causing it. The situation as it stands in Suriname is worth researching with exactly this in mind. This small and relatively isolated community of 500.000 people seems to be miles ahead when it comes to interreligious participation and sincere tolerance. Suriname appears to be a country in which very few problems occur in interreligious communication. The population consists of people from many different ethnic and religious backgrounds of which none hold an absolute majority. There are many different aspects in Suriname’s history that have contributed to the situation as it now stands.
The diversity of ethnic and religious movements and organisations in Suriname is overwhelming. For the purpose of this dissertation, the focus will lie only on the three major religions Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, which are most prominent in Suriname. Religion and ethnicity are not necessarily connected in Suriname. In this dissertation we deal with a society that consists of several groups with different ethnic and religious identities that all call themselves ‘Surinamese’. Their cultural, ethnic and national identities are fluent and have changed or mixed over time.
The Surinamese people today (with the exception of very few descendants of Dutch farmers and Indians) are all descendants of different peoples, brought there for a certain purpose, that of work. The country’s history is given by all interviewees as a reason for the tolerance displayed by the different ethnic groups in modern times. The sharing of a common oppressor is often cited as a reason for fraternisation. At this point in history there is no absolute, or dominant, majority in ethnic or religious form. Paramaribo is a small community that strives to function well not despite of, but because of, its diversities.
The enormous diversity of colour and practice of the people in Suriname is seen as such a normal thing for those living there that visiting a foreign country can cause some confusion.
“We Surinamese are raised with such great diversity, we are completely used to it. You can compare the diversity in Suriname to a lovely bouquet of mixed flowers. When you visit another country, all you see is roses. To us, that is a strange experience.” (Dr. S. William-Asgarali, personal communication, July 10, 2009)
It is very clear from my experiences that it is mainly social gatherings, parties, food and music that bring the people of Suriname together, despite their religious differences. They might not want to attend a religious ceremony of some differing religious tradition in a church or temple, but all are welcome and happy to attend celebrations regarding marriage, birthdays or celebrations of religious festivals at home or a non-religious space. Most neighbourhoods in Paramaribo are mixed and it is common that neighbours or friends from different religious traditions are invited over to the house for dinner or a celebration. The receiving family usually knows which religious tradition is followed by the guest and will adapt their choice of food for the celebration to the rules given to the guest by their religion.
When it comes to questions about religion, most informants focused on shared moral values and ‘humanity’. Discussion or underlying critique about differing religious truths is present under the surface, but generally it doesn’t surmount in violence or intolerance. Most interviewees gave me a version of this statement: “At the end of the day we focus on everyone being human and sharing the same rights and duties.” Shared moral values include the will not to offend anyone, or speak in negative terms about another’s religion. “If I don’t bother you, you won’t bother me.” The Surinamese are proud of their ability to tolerate everyone, within certain shared moral standards.
Until now, deeper underlying religious differences between groups have never been openly addressed. In the political arena political parties have chosen to use ethnicity as a means of distinction, religion has, as of yet, not entered the equation. Religious issues are not seen as something to be discussed openly, this however does not mean they do not exist. They might be present just under the surface. The unanswered question is, will it be constructive to start theological discussions to try to prevent such possible usage of religion in the political arena or is it better to leave the issues untouched and work instead on the practical implementation of interreligious cooperation on a basis of shared ethics?
Several interreligious or ecumenical bodies are functioning in Suriname to help set up and sustain social projects and humanitarian work. This research focuses on IRIS (Interreligious Council in Suriname) and the CCK (Committee of Christian Churches).
IRIS currently consists of five representatives from different religious institutions who come together every month to discuss predominantly social issues as they arise in Surinamese society and a possible contribution the council could provide in improving the situation. The participating religions are expected to bring their own religious morals and worldview to the table in council meetings. As practice shows, the representatives of the different religious organisations find common ground in complementing ethics and shared moral values. The dissertation pays attention to several projects initiated or supported by IRIS.
The aim of the CCK is to provide a body concerned with social and ecumenical issues. According to my informants members of the CCK are reluctant to join IRIS since this would give out a signal to their followers that could be interpreted as deviating from the churches’ teachings of the uniqueness of the Christian church as the only way to ultimate salvation. The resistance of the CCK, or members of the CCK, to join IRIS seems to be partially based on a misunderstanding of the councils aims and actions. Since the CCK itself does focus on bringing their different ‘Christianities’ closer together it may be that the members, or their followers, might think joining IRIS entails such theological sharing. As I have been told many times, this is not the case. IRIS is solely and exclusively focussed on finding practical solutions for social problems apparent in day to day life for the Surinamese.
It is of course understandable that, when preaching uniqueness and exclusivity in church, far reaching teamwork with other religions could be seen as sidestepping ones’ own teachings. Ultimately, this argument of non-compatibility could be used as a justification by all religions for not participating in any interreligious activities, yet the situation in Suriname provides an interesting look into how it could be when religious bodies do set aside their theological differences to participate in joint social projects and humanitarian work.

In Suriname there are many shared cultural factors emphasising a shared national identity but other cultural factors such as religion and the use of a secondary language also stress diversity. Differences in religion take a back seat to shared factors. It is not seen as a breaking point, nor are differences in language, since there is a shared factor which is emphasised more: that of a common humanity and a shared nationality.
Also remarkable about the situation in Suriname is the apparent capability of contrasting religious institutions to come to a consensus and to deal with social projects from the point of view of moral authorities. They are able to accept each other as equally valid moral authorities and join their forces to reach as high a percentage of the population as possible in fighting for their common goals.
It is clear that IRIS sees their role in providing social support and taking moral and ethical responsibility for what goes on in Suriname very seriously. Most striking is the fact that the inter-faith initiatives are being received so well. Unfortunately these positive projects and initiatives are paired with problems in administration and funds, and a general lack of organisational experience or resources. Regardless of its shortcomings; the successes, press releases and government involvement contribute to a trustworthy image. IRIS is accepted as an authoritative institution in Surinamese society. The Surinamese government actively contributes to the image of Suriname as being an interreligious community in which religions can act as an important player to help retain social cohesion.
Could the IRIS model of interreligious cooperation then be used in other countries as well? Public response and image is very important in helping IRIS to function with as much authority as it does now. The model would thus only function well under the condition that the religious leaders involved are respected and still seen as authoritative figures by the majority of society in the first place. This condition may then prove this Surinamese model to be unsuccessful in ‘western’ countries in which religious leaders have already generally lost their authoritative status. This being said, I also think the entire situation as it stands now in Suriname is unique to such an extent that trying to use it as a utopian interreligious model for other countries might in itself not be effective since it is based on a very complex system of factors.

The end of being studious

You have to excuse me for not posting in the last months. I've been writing my 15.000 word blog on Suriname, a.k.a. my Dissertation.

I'm happy to say that "Pluralist Paradise? The interreligious situation in Paramaribo, Suriname" is done now! It's actually been submitted so I can't do anything about it anymore.

Before I send my dissertation to all those in Suriname that have helped me I will first write a small abstract to go with it. I'll post the abstract on my blog so you can read it, if you like.

You'll be hearing a bit more from me soon... exciting job hunting and networking experiences coming up :P

Food

Food is everything.

I'm not even kidding...if you ever plan on going to Suriname, make sure you like eating:

Chicken

Rice

Fish

Bitter vegetables

Madame Jeanette peppers (HOT!)

If you don't like them, too bad. Every single meal you will eat in this country will have at least two of these in it.

Since the muslims and jews can't eat pork, and the hindoes can't eat beef, chicken is basically what you get. Since the Surinamese invite everyone over for dinner and keep track of what their guests can and can't eat, all stores sell chicken, and only chicken. (or fish)

The only ethnic group that sells pork are the chinese.

If someone invites you over for 'tea' or 'something to drink' or 'a meeting' or 'a church service' you can bet on there being food of some sort. I'll give you an example:

On the 21st of June Wilbert and I were invited to join the Bisshop in his trip to Lelydorp where he was to lead a confirmation ceremony. After the ceremony he would drop us off on the way back to the city at our (my uncles) friends from the market's (Nita) house at Pad van Wanica. After being welcomed there with food, they took us to meet Nita's parents, where, ofcourse, we were welcomed with food.

At about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when one of Nita's daughters dropped us off at home, we'd had more to eat than both of us had ever eaten in one day.....

06:00 Breakfast: Sandwich peanutbutter, orange juice, water
10:30 Second Breakfast: 1 Potato ball-like thing, 1 Plate of food containing Bami, Nasi goreng, White rice, Yellow rice, chicken, coconut stuff, sambal, beansprouts, long green beans (kouseband) etc., 2 glasses of gross softdrink, 1 piece of pie, 4 tiny pieces of cake, 1 beer.
11:45 Lunch: 1 eggroll, 1 kroket, crisps, shrimp crisps, more gross fernandes softdrink, 4 glasses of coke, 3 glasses of water, 1 plate of roti (flatbread, chicken, pepers, HOT), 1 plate of pineapple (with salt, ew)
13:00 Lunch 2.0: 2 glasses of coke, 1 coconut (water/milk & flesh), 1 piece of cake, 1 plate of roti (HOT), 5 fish ball-like-things
13:30 Tea: 1 piece of chocolate cake, 1 glass of fernandes.
We were able to convince Nita that the huge portions of macaroni waiting for us were really a little bit too much. So she made us a big bowl to take home with us. And a couple of babanas, and some other fruit, and some left over roti meat. Fortunately most Surinamese food is great, sometimes it's just a little too much :)
And every time we come to a different household we get overwhelmed by the amount of food offered to us. And most of the time, you get a full meal, and when you ask the host why they are not eating anything they'll say: "I've already eaten"
Yes so have we...about 5 times already today :D

Turtle spotting

Late at night, when the tide is exactly right, they come ashore.

In the pitch black night they drag their enormous bodies as far away from the ocean as possible. And then they dig. When the little hole they make with their hind-flippers eventually reaches a meter's deep, they let them fall. After carefully covering the pile of little pingpong balls with sand and erasing their tracks they heave themselves back home, back into the rushing water.

They'll find their way back to her and her kind. After two months and five days the little ones reach the surface of the hot sandy beach. Their instinct tells them to run. Reach the big white beacons at the end of the waves as soon as you can. Before it's too late. Run, and try not to look back. If you run fast enough, then maybe, you'll taste the ocean. Then you swim for four days and four nights straight to reach your kind. That's if you are fortunate enough to reach them without being eaten by birds or fish or get killed by humans. Only one out of a thousand will live.

Seeing a Leatherback turtle dumping 100 pingpong balls in a hole on a beach in Suriname in the middle of the night is definitely one of the more impressive experiences in my life. Yesterday night Wilbert and me were there, sitting in the sand next to this 50-80 year old female Leatherback making sure her species has a bigger chance of survival. As soon as they start digging they are in such a trance that you can come up extremely close to see what they're doing.

Matapica is one of the beaches on the northern shores of South-America that is protected by StiNaSu (Stichting Natuurbehoud Suriname). You can spend the night at this beach, after spending an hour and a half in the maze of mangrove trees they call 'zwamp' here. It is a remote place. The facilties are only the bare essentials. A house for the StiNaSu 'guard', a hut for visitors and a couple of trees to hang your hammock from.

Wilbert and I booked our trip with a family that lives at the start of the zwamps and has a couple of fishing boats. To earn some extra money the man of the house brings all those who are interested to the beach and camps out with them. He is a very kind man, fortunately knows his way around a zwamp and is very skilled in frying food. Every two hours he fried us something (chicken and chips for dinner, bananas for breakfast, kroketjes for whenever) or added something to the never ending pile of snacks containing crisps, cookies, chocolate, crackers, etc, next to the pile of bottles containing soda, juice, beer and Surinamese rum. Bringing three pallets of little bottles of drinking water seemed a bit too much at first, but after taking hour-long walk after hour-long walk on the beach in search for turtles the pallets seemed to get smaller and smaller.

We found three baby turtles that had gotten lost from their nests and had taken a wrong turn in their run to the sea. One tiny Leatherback and two baby green turtles. We showed them the way to the water and watched them race eachother. Awww...

Unfortunately the bigger turtles didn't show themselves on the first day. We saw their tracks, empty eggshells and little mounds betraying their earlier presence, but the chances of taking a picture of an adult leaterback by day were slimming by the end of the day. At night we would go out to look for them again, but picture-taking is out of the question then.

At least, that was what we were told. The five dutch girls that came with us on the trip figured that if we 'treat' the StiNaSu guide to enough of our rum, the rules might prove to be a bit more bendable. Unfortunately the only consequence of having an intoxicated guide was that he was no longer able to tell us anything about turtles, or shine his flashlight (the only one allowed) straight at them.

But at least we saw them! Four of them, one in all the different stages. The first one was already camouflaging her nest, the next was covering hers up with sand and the third had just started digging. We watched her dig her nest with her flippers and we saw her dropping her little white eggs in it. It was amazing. You think you can image an animal of 1,5 to 2 metres long crawling out of the sea and digging a hole, but the reality is far more impressive. They're huge, and the one thing I hadn't thought of is that they have to breathe. Ofcourse they have to breathe, but I hadn't realized that we would hear it. You can actually hear that huge animal that seems to have come out of prehistory BREATHE. It snorts, grunts and sighs while performing this tedious task of digging a hole at your behind with little fins you cannot see. It was impressive. We hadn't even expected to see the last one. She was just clambering up the beach to lay her eggs straight in front of the entrance to our little camp.

Sleeping in a hammock was our next adventure, but we passed with flying colours. Even with the drunk StiNaSu guy that kept trying to talk to us. Our night was good, but short. We were back at the beach at 6am, hoping to catch another one at daylight. We saw a lot of fresh trails, but no turtles.

After practically giving up (and having about 3 more meals) we tried one last time at half past one in the afternoon. Most of the group were ahead of Wilbert and me, out of sight already when Wilbert turned around and saw a big black shiny thing moving slowly up the beach. HOORAY! After waving ridiculously (zwaaien met je onderbroek, zwaaien met je hemd) at the others she unfortunatele went back into the ocean, apparently because she wanted to go further up the beach but couldn't. They told us she would come back in some time, downstream to find a better place. But still, we were able to take some pictures from up close when she was on her way down again. What an impressive creature.

All of our pictures can be found here:

http://s519.photobucket.com/albums/u357/selmavhalder/Sea%20Turtle%20trip%20at%20Matapica%20in%20Suriname/?albumview=grid

We also shot some videos, I'll post those on here later.

"Aw, it's awesome, Jellyman. Little dudes are just eggs, leave 'em on the beach to hatch, then coo-coo-ca-choo, they find their way back to the big 'ol blue."

- From Finding Nemo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjtcbO3NqlE)

Paramaribo

Sorry guys, not much blogging these last two weeks.

I'm trying to get as much of my dissertation work done before Wilbert arrives, next Saturday (YAY!).

And actually, dissertation wise, it's going quite smoothly! I'm spending most my time meeting new people and getting more phonenumbers from them to contact even more people. All of these people that I meet give me books, articles, pamphlets and other sources of information for me to read through and understand this society a little better. I'm starting to feel like I'm already 'getting' some of the aspects of this multi-ethnic and multi-religious community and I find myself reading, talking and thinking about it all the time. Fortunately I still think it's very interesting :)

Yesterday and today were the first two days in which I actually tried to put some concrete words in my computer. Yesterday I made a draft contents page, just to try and sort my thoughts out a bit and make an outline of the eventual report. Today I'm trying to do some actual writing and put some of my findings to paper (computer). My little flowered notebook is my treasure right now, everything I think of, speak or read about goes in there. Every person I speak with has his/her own page and at least a couple of key words about that person and what he/she told me or that I still have to ask them.

The Bisshop of Paramaribo has been my greatest help until now. He's such a nice man and he really tries to help me wherever he can. Thanks to him I'll be speaking with the head Pandit of one of the two Hindu denominations here (Arya Dewaker) about his involvement in interfaith issues next week.

I've already seen and done too much here to tell you all about it now, especially since the Dutch national team is playing Iceland soon and I still have to make my way to a bar in this tropical rainstorm that's been going on for about 2 hours now...

For now I'll give you a link to my Facebook album with some of my pictures made in the last two weeks.

Enjoy :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=84367&id=565292619&l=8e80f3d561

Suriname

I'm here! We've made it! Ánd my internet is working. My uncle is only here till 4 o clock this afternoon, I have to wait here for him now, so I have very little blogging time. But I'll share with you my first impressions:

The trip was great, the crew is lovely, my uncle brought cheese and leverworst for the bustrip to Paramaribo, we stopped at the first bar to pick up some Parbo's (beer) and had a very nice first impression of the country. Also the warm tropical blanket hugging me when I stepped out of the plane made me feel at home. I love it.

Rich and poor live side by side on the road to the city. Huge drug-mansions provide shadow for little wooden huts or unfinished houses with smiling people inside.

It's very strange to travel 9 hours by plane, to a place that looks hugely different from holland, but still see billboards in your own language, you can speak dutch to everyone. Weird, but nice.

As a wonderful surprise two of my stepfathers friends welcomed us at my uncle's hotel unplanned. They live here and drove me and my stuff to my new home. And took us out for drinks and some food after meeting my landlady and her family.

Tante Joyce is the sweetest landlady I've ever met (and the biggest). Apparently her granddaughter Rani has been asking for me for over a week. I'm meeting her today. I've brought her a big stack of dutch Donald Ducks :) Many have told me she sings the Surinamese national anthem all day. I love her already.

Joyce has put me 'close to her heart' in the biggest appartment attached to her house. Right next to her own patio. Maybe I'll move to the back of the garden in two weeks, when the people who live there now move away.

Accross from the garden lives a dutch music teacher. He's here for a little while and has already invited me to come to a choir practice he's leading coming thursday. A Mozart mass apparently. I'm there, duh.

It's hot here. Think of some place hot, and multiply it by two :) I like it, but my body has to take some time to learn the right sweating times and quantities....

My appartment is BIG and empty and lit by two huge lamps on the ceiling. I share my bathroom with at least one Gekko. His name is Mr Tjitjak. (Pasar Malay for Gekko) I like Gekkos. I used to stare at them on the ceiling when we were on holiday when I was little and I couldn't sleep. I don't count sheep, I count Gekko's. Haven't seen one in my bedroom here.

I have to go! The city calls. More blogging later!

Love from the green banks of the Suriname River.