Queen Dido
The Galileo with its busy cargo steamed through the strait of Messina that separates mainland Italy from Sicily connecting the Thyrrenian Sea with the Ionian Sea. The strait is 32 km long and 3-8 km wide.
Malta waved as we travelled into the Mediterranean Sea.
Along the coast of Tunisia I thought of the beautiful, legendary queen Dido, founder of the ancient city of Carthago. Her story is told in different versions but ends always unhappily in suicide.
When Dido’s husband was killed she fled to North Africa with her followers, where she founded the great city of Carthago. Jarbu from whom she had purchased the site of her city wanted to marry the prosperous Dido and if she didn’t comply with his wishes and demands he threatened her with war and destruction. She didn’t love him and she had also sworn she would never marry again and would in no way subject herself to his demands and killed herself.
In Virgil’s version Dido fell in love with Aeneas who was shipwrecked at Carthago. When Jupiter warned Aeneas that he had to leave Carthago to follow his mission to found Rome, Dido despaired and killed herself on a funeral pyre. On his journey Aeneas met the ghost of Dido in Hades, but she ignored him completely and never spoke to him again.
Cato the Elder was a sworn enemy of Greek Culture. He campaigned vehemently against the immorality and luxury of roman life. In 157 he went to Africa to arbitrate between the Carthaginians and Numidian tribes people. He became obsessed with the idea that the city of Carthago with its wealth and luxury was a menace to Rome. Every speech he made he ended in the Latin sentence, “ Delende est Carthago” what he said was, Carthago must be destroyed.
In the third Punic war 149-146 BC, Carthago was destroyed by the Romans, under Publicus Cornelius Scipio Aemilicus Africanus Numanticus. In utter contempt they spread salt over Carthagos ruins and nobody was allowed to occupy the city for 25 years. Thus the wish “ Delende est Carthago” of the roman statesman Cato the Elder was fulfilled.
Our history always dramatic, never simple, always violent and rolling on!
Look beyond the horizon
We left Algeria behind and bypassed the rock of Gibraltar, which is steadily a tug of war between Great Britain and Spain, into the Atlantic Ocean, and along Morocco; I wished we had a stopover at Casablanca, the city that optimises exotic and romantic days gone by.
In the Southeast and East, Morocco follows in great sweeps Algeria and clings with broad steps in the South to the Western Sahara. The Argan, a thorny tree is principally found in Morocco. Moroccan women produce a fine cooking oil from its fruits.
The captain didn’t hear my wish for a stopover at Casablanca and headed for Tenerife instead.
Some couples were disembarking there, as their cruise ended within the Canary Islands. It seemed they were not happy with their cruise. I was sitting nearby on a deckchair when I overheard them saying, if they had known that the Galileo was “ein Fluechtlingsschiff” a ship for refugees, they would have chosen a different cruise. I didn’t hide my smile; I thought it rather funny when I looked at their indignant faces eloquent with disapproval. For their sake I hoped they had their last dinner at the captains table that would dissociate them from the “refugees”!
While we travelled on the Galileo we revised our geographical and historical knowledge in the most agreeable way one could imagine.
At Gibraltar we passed into the northern Atlantic Ocean before crossing the Equator into the southern Atlantic.
The name “Atlantic” is resultant from Atlas one of the Titans, the son of Iapetus and the nymph Clymene. Atlas and his fellow Titans fought in the war against the deities of Mount Olympus. His punishment was to bear forever on his back the earth and the heavens and on his shoulders the great pillar that separates them. .
Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders was used in the title pages of early maps. An Atlas now represents a quantity of maps.
The Atlantic is the second largest and the most heavily travelled Ocean.
The Galileo had to take the long way around the Cape of good Hope to get into the Indian Ocean and on to Australia. The Suez Canal was still closed for ships in 1974.
In the 13th century BC. the first canal was excavated between the Nile River Delta and the Red Sea. For the next one thousand years the canal was more or less neglected. Some rulers, at various times had it re-excavated. In the 8th century AD the canal was abandoned. From time to time proposals were made to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Suez. Ferdinand de Lesseps had enlisted in 1854 the interest of the Egyptian Viceroy in the project. In 1858 the Universal Company of the Maritime Suez Canal was established with the authority to excavate a canal and operate it for 99 years.
In 1956 the Egyptian Government nationalized the Suez Canal to finance with its proceeds the construction of the Aswan High Dam. In October 1956 Israel invaded Egypt. Two days later Britain and French military attacked Egypt to ensure the free passage through the canal. In relation Egypt sank forty ships in the canal effectively blocking it. The Egyptian Government reopened the canal in March 1957. The canal figured prominently in the conflicts between Egypt and Israel during the 1960s and 1970s. The canal was finally reopened in June 1975.
Tenerife.
I remembered a little of its history from a novel, “Les partages du vainceur”, I read in the sixties,
The story was written about the time when Cristobal Columbus made his voyage of discovery to the Americas. The native people of Tenerife were called Guanche and they had a very effective whistle language. This whistle language was used for communication when they wanted a Message from one place to the next delivered. A man climbed up on a hill and whistled shrilly. As soon as he received a reply he send out the message to the next man who continued the whistling procedure. It was said this way of communication was very effective around 1492 in Tenerife!
They had also the habit of extremely fatten girls that were about to get married; they preferred very plump little brides. They lived in caves and made very sophisticated fine clothes from Goats leather. The Spaniards arrived on their island and conquered the people and their way of life.
I looked at the steep, now bald mountains and out to the Atlantic, what a paradise
they must have had.
The Galileo moored in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Tenerife was always a very important port for cruise ships and with its holiday resorts it caters well for holiday guests.
The stallholders were ready for the Galileo. They had laid out their wares, mostly trashy souvenirs that would be bought by tourists on impulse to take home to be left to gather dust on dressers and windowsills. One stallholder sold colourful woollen garments. I bought a red poncho with an intricate, colourful knitted pattern. Yes, I knew I fell for it too but it was so tempting to buy something so colourful and outlandish. To wear it was a different matter when not used to wear such a garment without sleeves. Once it is pulled over my head I am deprived of arms and hands. It is very awkward, say, I want to hold a cup of coffee; firstly I have to search for my hands under layers of knitwear adorned with fringes and pompons. In Australia it found its way to St. Vincent de Paul and perhaps somewhere someone is still struggling with this garment.
After a day sightseeing in Santa Cruz we said good-bye once more. We had a long stretch of voyage before us to Cape Town.
As soon as the ship was out of the harbour it was announced that there would be a emergency drill at 10 AM after breakfast. The stewards also made their rounds, knocked on cabin doors to alert people to get ready for the drill. We were already old hands at this procedure as we had done it before. When we heard the siren we had to make our way as fast as possible to the main lobby were we were handed our live saving vests and queued at a specified area to get into the boat. The woman and children were separated from the men, as they would go first in to the boats. They lifted the boats down, but we didn’t have to get into them. We only had to know the routine in case of an emergency, but it was still eerie when I heard the siren, because it could also be for real. The upper decks were teaming with people all adorned in their orange vests. Everything was very orderly nobody was pushing, but I wondered if that would be also the case in a real emergency.
The Galileo was now on her way along the west coast and many countries of Africa, to the very tip of the South African republic and the city of Cape Town. I would have loved if we had a stopover at each of these African countries. The Galileo moved on regardless and all I got was just sometimes a glimpse at the horizon.
I was thinking, that the second largest continent with its huge diversity, mountains of gold and precious stones should be the richest on earth. The people should live free from hunger and be quite well off amidst so much wealth. But they are not. The West African Sahel drought, which began in the late 1960s lasted more than ten years. The agriculture of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad were devastated.
Western Governments have also changed boundaries of tribal lands in the manner to suit themselves. After independence of some African countries that instigates a lot of unrest and wars between different ethnic groups.
Wars and hunger herds people together, miserable and homeless they receive some handouts. Where is the justice from a few handfuls of wheat when there is much more needed? Ordinary things to lead a decent life, like homes, clothes, toys, schools and medical help when it is required. When some of the spoils taken for centuries from the African soil and its people are returned then the Africans don’t need cheap handouts anymore.
Africa the cradle of mankind.
Five million years ago a type hominid, a close evolutionary ancestor of present day humans inhabited southern and eastern Africa. More than 1,5 million years ago this toolmaking hominid developed into the more advanced homo habilus and Homo erectus. The earliest true human being in Africa Homo sapiens dates from more than 200’000 years ago, he was a hunter-gatherer capable of making crude stone tools.
The African soil is awash with the tears of the African people.
Most slaves transported to the Americas came from the west central coast of Africa, where we travelled along in leisure.
Although slaves were transported throughout the Americas the vast majority went to sugar plantations in the Caribbean Islands and Brazil. It lasted four Centuries and millions of Africans fell victim to this traffic in human lives.
Further south the Portuguese founded Luanda in 1575 and it was here that half of all the slaves sent to the Americas originated.
During the later 18th century sentiment in Great Britain turned against the slave trade. The British outlawed the slave trade for British citizens in 1807.
This was probably instigated by the years of enlightenment 1768-1786 with its belief that the application of reason and good sense could solve all the problems of mankind.
British efforts to control the east African slave trade led in 1822 to a treaty prohibiting the sale of slaves to subjects of Christian countries
However an active slave trade continued for large numbers of Africans were seized for the clove plantations of Zanzibar and for Middle Eastern slave markets.
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